BBC 5 Radio Interview on Ted Cruz and his Phony Supreme Court "Tradition"

On February 25, BBC 5 Radio program "Up All Night" with Rhod Sharp interviewed me about the Supreme Court vacancy and the post I wrote about Ted Cruz. The audio file is below.

Ted Cruz's Phony Supreme Court "Tradition"

[This post originally appeared on History News Network]

“It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don't do this in an election year."—Senator Ted Cruz 

If he honestly believes it is not legitimate to nominate and confirm a justice in an election year, Ted Cruz must hate the appointment of Chief Justice John Marshall. John Adams nominated him in January 1801, after he lost his re-election bid to Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800. Adams was a lame duck in the truest sense of the term—he was serving out the remainder of his term after being repudiated by the voters. Yet he did not hesitate to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court, and Marshall was confirmed by a lame duck Senate.

Perhaps the most striking irony of Cruz’s position (and increasingly the position of the entire Republican Party) is that this absurd debate is taking place over the replacement of Antonin Scalia. If there is one thing Scalia was known for, it is his originalist interpretation of the Constitution: it means what the founding generation said it meant. So is seems appropriate to ask: what did the Founders actually do in such circumstances?

In the final year of his presidency, George Washington had two nominations to the Supreme Court approved by the Senate. It was an election year and he was not running for reelection. It doesn’t get more "original intent" than that. Adams could easily have left the Supreme Court vacancy for Jefferson—who had already been elected, after all, and would take office in a matter of weeks—and didn’t. That seems as clear as it could be. The founders saw no impediment to a president in the final year--or even in the final weeks--of the presidency successfully appointing new justices to the Supreme Court.

What about Cruz's contention about the last 80 years? Even that does not hold up.

The facts are pretty simple. In the last 80 years there has only been one instance in which a president was in a position to nominate a justice in an election year and did not have the nominee confirmed. In 1968, LBJ’s nomination of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice to succeed Earl Warren (and of Homer Thornberry to take the seat held by Fortas) was blocked in the Senate, but not because of some alleged “tradition.” Certainly there were Senators who wanted the next president to name a new justice. But the opposition to Fortas had everything to do with the specific nominee and specific objections to him (particularly charges of cronyism and inappropriate financial dealings). To the best of my knowledge, no one cited Cruz’s “tradition” to say it was not appropriate for Johnson to nominate someone, or that it would have been inappropriate to confirm anyone.

A second instance took place 28 years earlier. In 1940, FDR nominated Frank Murphy in January of that election year and he was confirmed that same month. There was no “tradition” blocking that election-year appointment. (This also shows that Cruz got the math wrong—this happened 76 years ago, not 80.) [Note: The morning after this post first appeared, Orrin Hatch spoke on NPR and amended the claim to no "term-limited" president had had a nominee confirmed in an election year--evidently an attempt to exempt FDR's confirmed nominee from the "tradition."]

So, there were two instances similar to the current situation in the last 80 years. In one case the nomination was rejected and in the other it wasn’t. To Ted Cruz, this constitutes “a long tradition that you don't do this.”

Ted Cruz’s invention of this alleged "tradition" that we don’t nominate and confirm Supreme Court justices in an election year would be laughable if so many supposedly responsible political leaders were not taking it seriously.

It is absurd on the face of it. If the Republicans in the Senate want to block any nominee Barack Obama sends them, they have the votes to do it. But they should stop hiding behind the obvious fiction that doing so is part of some “tradition.” It would be nothing but the raw, cynical use of their political power. This suggestion that Obama should not even nominate someone (both John Kasich and Marco Rubio said so in Saturday’s debate), or if he does, that the nominee should be rejected out of hand simply because of the timing (as the Senate Majority Leader and many Republican Senators are now saying), is simply silly. 

True conservatives don’t invent traditions. They work to protect existing ones. Our true tradition is that the president nominates and the Senate votes, regardless of when the vacancy occurs. 

The speed with which Cruz jumped to make this claim and with which so many others have fallen in line, speaks to the nihilistic radicalism that has infected today's Republican Party. Any position can be taken if it produces the correct result. Facts can be denied, “traditions” can be invented. The only value taken seriously is “does it work to our advantage?”

This tactic may well work politically. It has already had the effect of framing the debate as “Should Obama nominate someone?” That is truly extraordinary. The actual question should be “Should the Senate confirm Obama’s nominee?” That’s a legitimate debate, but it would put the focus on the nominee and that person’s qualifications. By hiding behind this phony “tradition,” Republicans are trying to avoid having to show that a given nominee should be rejected on the merits. In short, they don’t want to take responsibility for rejecting someone who—in all likelihood—will be eminently qualified for the job. That’s not statesmanship. It’s cowardice.

Won't You Let Me Take You On a Sea Cruise?

Frank Bruni wrote a piece in the New York Times the other day, urging politicians to seek more solitude:

Take more time away. Spend more time alone. Trade the speechifying for solitude, which no longer gets anything close to the veneration it’s due, not just in politics but across many walks of life.
It’s in solitude that much of the sharpest thinking is done and many of the best ideas are hatched.

Coincidentally, I was reading about how FDR came up with the Lend-Lease program to aid Britain before the United States entered World War II, which makes Bruni's point perfectly.

Film title from an earlier FDR cruise,
from an FDR Library archival film

After winning his unprecedented third term the previous month, on December 2, 1940, FDR set off aboard the cruiser USS Tuscaloosa for a two-week cruise in the Caribbean.

Now, try to imagine the indignation today if Barack Obama slipped away from Washington (without any notice, no less!) for a two-week sea cruise.

FDR's cruise was not hidden, but rather
filmed for use in Navy recruiting

Not only did FDR not hesitate to take a vacation, he also did pretend it was a "working" vacation. He took a few close friends and advisors, and according to David Kaiser in his fine new book, No End Save Victory, they "spent the two weeks fishing, playing poker, sunning themselves and watching movies in the evening." Though the White House tried to portray it as a base-inspection tour, FDR "boasted proudly after his return that he did not read any of the working papers he had brought with him."

FDR fishing during a February 1940 southern cruise

That did not mean, however, that this was unproductive time.

FDR did read at least one item of business, what Winston Churchill called one of the most important letters he ever wrote--an appeal for the United States to drop its "cash and carry" requirement on aid to Britain because Britain no longer had the cash to pay.

Churchill later wrote:

Harry Hopkins [one of FDR's companions on the trip] told me later that Mr Roosevelt read and re-read this letter as he sat alone on his deck chair, and that for two days he did not seem to have reached any clear conclusion. He was plunged in intense thought, and brooded silently.

Hopkins said:

I didn't know for quite awhile what he was thinking about, but then--I began to get the idea that he was refueling, the way he so often does when he seems to be resting and care-free. So I didn't ask him any questions. Then, one evening, he suddenly came out with it--the whole program.

Two things are key here--FDR's own understanding that he needed to occasionally "refuel" in order to do his job well, and the understanding of his close friend and advisor Hopkins that FDR needed to be left alone to think. He allowed his boss the time to brood silently.

Could there be a better riposte to today's obsession with being busy for the sake of being busy, meeting for the sake of meeting? None of us bear the tremendous burdens that FDR had at the time--a world war to navigate the nation through--yet we are so prone to exaggerate our own importance and pose as too busy to "waste" time.

FDR was wiser. There was nothing wasteful about his sea cruise vacation. It was an investment, and one that paid off for the entire world.

"A Sweet Fool"

"Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet fool?"--the Fool, in Shakespeare's "King Lear"

Stephen Colbert is leaving "The Colbert Report" to take over David Letterman's slot on "The Late Show" on CBS.

I don't normally post about TV, but then again, this isn't a post about TV. It's about the value of satire in a democracy.

As an avid fan of "The Daily Show," going all the way back to the not-at-all lamented Craig Kilborn days, I can remember when Colbert was "the new guy." (Most people have forgotten that Colbert actually preceded Jon Stewart on TDS by two years.) I had always liked him, but never as much as when he developed the Bill O'Reilly-esque persona for which he is now famous.

By David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons

I've been a devoted fan of the show. I may not have seen every episode, but I've probably come close (and may in fact have seen 100% since I got a DVR). What I've enjoyed the most is the relish Colbert takes in his satire. His talents (and those of his writers) have created what I consider to be the best satirical character in modern American history.

That's why this career move gives me pause.

Joan Walsh published a nice piece just the day before the announcement about Colbert's value to the progressive movement. That's true, but I'd go further. He is valuable to our democracy.

Humor, particularly sharply satirical humor, is incompatible with the totalitarian mind. It punctures holes in the immense pretensions of totalitarians. One of the lesser-acknowledged attributes shared by totalitarians of the right and left alike is their humorlessness. They are so deadly serious about not only their ideas but themselves that they cannot abide any mockery. As O'Brien says to Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984, under Big Brother "[t]here will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy."

By contrast, I think you can judge the health of a democracy by the extent of its self-mocking humor. The liberalism born in the 18th century had as a cornerstone its openness to critique--an acknowledgement that, however well-thought out one may believe a position to be, it is always subject to argument and new evidence--and mockery, which in the form of satire is, itself, a kind of argument that exposes unfounded assumptions and unacknowledged hypocrisy.

Colbert's satire has always been at the expense of the powerful, not of the "defeated enemy." Americans, at their best, have always seen their leaders as fit subjects for mockery. It is one of the ways we remind them that they are, after all, just like us: no better or worse, just temporarily entrusted with power. We have often loved best those leaders who show they have a sense of humor, especially of the self-deprecating kind (Lincoln most of all, FDR to a lesser extent), while judging harshly those who appear humorless (see Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon in particular).

But at the same time, Americans have also been--at least to my mind--insufficiently appreciative of good satire. Ever since the ridiculous controversy over Randy Newman's "Short People" in 1978, it's been clear to me if the general public could not see that Newman's song was meant to satirize prejudice, America must suffer from a severe irony-deficiency. That's why I've been so heartened by the success of Colbert's right-wing pundit character. People got it. That had to be a good thing.

Now that this success has catapulted the real Colbert to late night network stardom, however, that satirical character will be no more. He's a smart, talented man. I'm sure he can and will do other things well, and succeed in his new job. But his gain is our loss.

Colbert's combination of sharp intellect, courage, and human decency has made him ideal for political satire. (His 2006 speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner remains, to use his language, the ballsiest act of political comedy I've ever seen.) There is a deep compassion for the weak, the downtrodden, and the suffering that informs Colbert's satire. No doubt that quality will continue to inform his future work. But in the satire of "The Colbert Report," it combined with the swift sword of his intellect in a particularly effective way. It is hard to imagine it will be the same when he emerges from that character and has to entertain the broad, irony-deficient expanse of all of America.

He may prove me wrong.  I certainly hope so. And if not, America is still the better for nine years of Stephen Colbert's brilliant satire on "The Colbert Report."

Presidents and Precedents

Today is the federal holiday for Washington's Birthday, which we now refer to generically as Presidents' Day. There are many reasons to honor the first president, if only because of the many positive precedents he set--eschewing any form of address that smacked of royalty, e.g., or not running for a third term. The latter is particularly important, because had he done so and won (which he likely would have), he would have died in office in 1799, meaning that the new United States would have had the example of a president holding onto the office until death, instead of voluntarily stepping aside.

In that same light, there was another precedent set by his less-revered successor, that perhaps deserves our notice on Presidents' Day. Few historians would place John Adams up there with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt in the pantheon. But he did at least one thing that should not go unremarked: he gave up power, not because he wanted to, but because the voters wanted him to.

Adams ran for re-election in 1800 and lost the hotly contested campaign to his vice-president, Thomas Jefferson. Throughout the contest, the two sides had predicted calamity if the other prevailed. Abigail Adams believed that "the peace, safety, and security" of the nation depended on her husband's re-election. If he were not returned to office, she wrote, "I am mortally certain we shall never have another" election.

Yet, when the votes went against Adams, he accepted the verdict. Perhaps the near-simultaneous death of his son Charles helped put his electoral defeat into perspective. Rather than plotting how he might remain in office, or how he might later re-gain power, Adams moved on: "The only question remaining with me is what shall I do with myself?" No unquenchable thirst for power consumed him: "I must go out on a morning and evening and fodder my cattle, I believe, and take a walk every afternoon to Penn's Hill--pother in my garden among the fruit trees and cucumbers and plant a potato yard with my own hand."

This precedent is among the most under-appreciated in our history. Yes, Washington chose not to run a third time and gave up power. But Adams had tried to remain in power. He hoped that the garden he would be tending the next four years was the United States. It was not his will to return to Massachusetts in March 1801. He believed in all sincerity that the voters were wrong. But when the vote went against him, he accepted it and went home.

This unquestioning respect for process should have our admiration and emulation. In an age in which far too many people believe that the definition of a "bad process" is one that produces a result they do not like, Adams shows us that respect for process transcends our personal desires, beliefs, and ambitions.

As Pope Benedict showed last week, sometimes the best example to set is not grasping for power, or desperately clinging to it, but the graceful relinquishment of it.

Romney's Foreign Bust

No, I'm not referring to Mitt's misadventures abroad this week. Those have received substantial (and in some cases, hilarious) attention. I mean the Churchill bust.

While holding a fundraiser in London that reportedly raked in over $2 million for Romney's campaign, Romney said: "I’m looking forward to the bust of Winston Churchill being in the Oval Office again."

In doing so, he revived a silly story that made the rounds early in the Obama presidency. In the years since, it has become common in anti-Obama emails bouncing around the internet. It goes like this: Obama, seething with anger over Britain's colonial rule over Kenya, deliberately insulted Great Britain by evicting a bust of Churchill that had been in the Oval Office ever since 9/11 July 2001.

In reality, the bust was on temporary loan, as the White House has repeatedly pointed out. The British Embassy in Washington issued this statement to clear it up:

The bust of Sir Winston Churchill, by Sir Jacob Epstein, was lent to the George W Bush administration from the UK’s Government Art Collection, for the duration of the Presidency. When that administration came to an end so did the loan; the bust now resides in the British Ambassador’s Residence in Washington DC. The White House collection has its own Epstein bust of Churchill, which President Obama showed to Prime Minister Cameron when he visited the White House in March.

In short, there was no anti-colonial pique on Obama's part. So why all the fuss?

Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama examine the bust that still resides in the White House.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

There are two things at work here. One is the ongoing, pervasive attempt to present President Obama as a foreign "other." Obama's alleged motivation in this fable is his identification with this Kenyan heritage. Though not nearly as stupid as the birther claim that he was born in Kenya, this slightly more respectable version plays footsie with bitherism. Its height was Dinesh D'Souza's article in Forbes (later made more famous by Newt Gingrich) that asserted that the key to understanding Obama was that he inherited an "anti-colonial ideology" from his Kenyan father. Lately, Romney has been flirting with this fringe concept by repeatedly referring to Obama's ideas as "extraordinarily foreign."

The other factor, however, has little to do with Obama. It is the odd love affair today's American conservatives have with Winston Churchill.

I'm not saying there is nothing to admire in Churchill. In 2002, a poll in Britain named him the most admired Briton in history (though in 2008, in another poll, 23% of Britons said he was a myth while 53% said Sherlock Holmes was real). In the 1950s, Americans regularly placed him among the top ten most admired figures in the world.

That makes sense. Through radio reports and movie newsreels, Americans came to know Churchill during World War II. He personified the stoic, gritty, stubborn resistance of the British people to Hitler's aggression.

What strikes me as odd, however, is the fawning, uncritical hero-worship of Churchill among American conservatives nearly 50 years after his death.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Churchill's reputation was based to a great extent on his record as a critic of appeasement. Unlike Neville Chamberlain and his government, Churchill recognized Hitler's danger early on. (Churchill's champions rarely recall, however, that three weeks after Hitler came to power in 1933, Churchill criticized the young Englishmen of the Oxford Union Society who voted not to "fight for country or King" by comparing them unfavorably to young Germans: "I think of Germany, with its splendid clear-eyed youth marching forward on the road of the Reich singing their ancient songs, demanding to be conscripted into an army; eagerly seeking the most terrible weapons of war; burning to suffer and die for their fatherland.")

For a generation of Americans that came to see appeasement as the great failure of their times, Churchill was the unheeded prophet. When he came to Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 and delivered his "Iron Curtain" speech, Churchill quite consciously exploited that status and looked to convert it into American support for a hard-line policy against the Soviet Union: "Last time I saw it all coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention."

In conservative circles in the United States after World War II, it became commonplace to deride Franklin D. Roosevelt as the naive, idealistic dupe who was taken in by Stalin at Yalta, while Churchill was the wise, cunning statesman who was never fooled by the communist dictator.

This is a convenient myth. Shortly after the Yalta meeting, Churchill remarked to Hugh Dalton: "Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I am wrong about Stalin."

Like FDR, Churchill thought the Yalta agreement was the best they could do, given the power realities on the ground in Europe. In the decades since, however, the myth of Churchill's prescience has only grown, fostered in no small part by his own conscious cultivation of it in his memoirs and elsewhere. As he once put it: "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

But this image alone is, I think, inadequate to explain the fetishizing of Churchill today--particularly the way it has grown over the last decade.

How is it that a perceived slight to the memory of a British leader has come to suggest a lack of American patriotism?

How did Churchill become more "American" than the American president?

The bust of Churchill is obviously symbolic--but symbolic of what exactly?

I'll attempt to answer that in my next post.

FDR Got Things Done. So Has Obama.

Sunday was a bad day for FDR in the New York Times Sunday Review section.

Ross Douthat, showing a level of understanding of the New Deal that I would find deficient in an undergraduate, used FDR to bash President Obama's decision to pursue health care reform. Bill Scher used FDR's allegedly cozy relationship with corporate heads to praise Obama. Both showed how little they understand about the politics of the 1930s.

Douthat's argument is that, despite the Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Obama was foolish to pursue it early in his first term--that choice, he says, was "disastrous." His evidence for that is that the legislation is "deeply unpopular." (Douthat never deigns to evaluate the actual merits of the legislation. Evidently that is not important--timing is all.)

Douthat says the law is unpopular not because people don't understand it (the usual Democratic argument) but because of the timing. See, people are just mad that Obama pushed this legislation before the economy improved enough. "By turning from economic crisis management to sweeping social legislation before the crisis had actually abated, Obama made himself look more ideological than practical and more liberal than pragmatic." Evidently Obama did this by pursuing a goal he had explicitly campaigned on (the nerve!) and by embracing Republican ideas (eschewing a public option and accepting the individual mandate instituted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts).

Douthat's points are self-evidently wrong on the surface, but he deepens his errors by claiming the authority of history. "This was not a mistake the icons of the liberal past made," he intones. "Franklin Roosevelt spent two years defining himself as a Depression fighter before he set out to establish Social Security."

To call this point simplistic would be an understatement.

FDR announced his intention to implement Social Security in June 1934, 15 months into his presidency. He signed it into law in August 1935, 29 months into his presidency.

Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010, 14 months into his presidency. According to Douthat, 15 months is the difference between political success and political disaster. This is not an argument. It is an assertion without evidence or logic.

More to the point, Douthat's praise of FDR ignores the rather significant fact that FDR had hardly ended the Great Depression when he pushed for Social Security. In fact, he pushed it because the first New Deal had failed, recovery was sluggish, and he was under political pressure to do something, anything, so he could point to successes going into the 1936 election. FDR didn't push for Social Security because the "economic crisis" had passed, as Douthat implies, but because it hadn't.

Scher's argument is a little better. His point is that Obama is to be commended, not criticized, for working with corporate interests on health care. Obama has been unfairly criticized by liberals, Scher says, who neglect how much their heroes FDR and LBJ did the same thing.

It is true that, as Scher says, FDR "was quite adept at bargaining with corporations" in the First 100 Days. What he neglects to note is that the major policy he negotiated with business, the National Recovery Act, is almost universally considered an abject failure.

FDR's most notable successes came after he stopped trying to appease big business. He learned that his attempts to do so were futile, since they excoriated him anyway. By August 1934, they had formed the anti-FDR Liberty League and dedicated their efforts to defeating him in 1936. So much for "bargaining."

After business turned on him, FDR not only passed Social Security, but the Wagner Act (which established union rights) and the WPA (which created jobs for the unemployed). These liberal policies were passed over the objections of businessmen, not by compromise with them.

Scher's point, however, is still a reasonable one: "most of the time politics is exasperating and irritating, not euphoric and cathartic." That's true, and it is also true (though Scher doesn't note it) that FDR returned to a detente with business when American involvement in World War II loomed.

I have no idea whether FDR would have, in Obama's shoes, pushed for health care in his first year in office, or if he would have sought to appease drug companies and the Chamber of Commerce whenever he did it. What I do think I know is that he would be proud of Obama for having gotten it done.

FDR's commission on Social Security recommended including health insurance as part of that program, but FDR feared (probably correctly) that it would be too much for Congress to swallow.

But he did not give up on the idea. In January 1944, when he proposed his postwar political agenda, the "Economic Bill of Rights," he included the following: "The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health."

In short, we owe the very idea of health care as a right to FDR. Given that fact, and his own rather flexible approach to politics, I rather doubt he would care very much how--or when--Obama got it done. FDR got things done. So has Obama.

Santorum's History Lesson: "It's not OK."

Rick Santorum certainly is not squandering his moment in the spotlight.

Over the last week or so, he seems almost to be going out of his way to say things that make many voters ask incredulously: "He said what?!" There are a lot of them to choose from, but I'll stick to the "today is much like when we ignored Hitler" story.

Recently, Santorum told a crowd in Georgia that Republican voters need to wake up to the dangers of our times:

Your country needs you. It's not as clear a challenge. Obviously World War II was pretty obvious. At some point, they knew. But remember, the greatest generation for a year and a half, sat on the sidelines while Europe was under darkness. America sat from 1940 when France fell to December of '41 and did almost nothing... We’re a hopeful people. We think, well, you know it’ll get better. Yeah, he's a nice guy, it won't be near as bad as what we think. This will be OK. Maybe he's not the best guy, after a while you find out some things about this guy over in Europe who’s not so good of a guy after all. But you know what, why do we need to be involved? We'll just take care of our own problems. We'll just get our families off to work and our kids off to school and we'll be OK. That's sort of the optimistic spirit of America. But sometimes, sometimes it’s not OK. 

Leave aside the reckless and outrageous suggestion that there is any way in which President Obama represents a threat to the United States, much less one commensurate to what Hitler did in Europe.

Santorum clearly does not understand the period of American history he's talking about. I happen to be in the midst of writing a book about precisely this period, and it bears little relation to his simple-minded account.

I suppose one could reasonably say that, since the United States did not become an active belligerent until December 1941, it technically "sat on the sidelines." But the assertion that the U.S. "did almost nothing" between June 1940 and December 1941 is just laughable.

As soon as the war in Europe began, FDR stated what seemed to him to be obvious: "every battle that is fought does affect the American future." He immediately asked Congress to amend the neutrality laws to allow the sale of arms and other goods to Britain and France on a "cash and carry" basis, which it did.

In his next State of the Union address in January 1940, he proposed that Congress increase defense spending, which it did.

After the fall of France, FDR accelerated aid to Great Britain, including giving Churchill 50 old destroyers that he had requested.

When the British could no longer pay cash for the goods they ordered, FDR asked Congress to approve the Lend-Lease Act to allow the United States to provide whatever military aid it could spare for Britain's defense, which it did.

In the fall of 1941, the United States occupied Iceland, patrolled the entire western Atlantic, and convoyed British ships--all to relieve the British Navy so it could better confront Nazi Germany.

One can say--as many have since--that that was not enough. But it wasn't "almost nothing."

Santorum is certainly right when he says Americans are "a hopeful people" with an "optimistic spirit." But who were these Americans who were saying Hitler was "a nice guy" or even just "not so good"?

There were virtually none. Even those opposed to American entry into the war rarely had anything good to say about Hitler. When former president Herbert Hoover, on the very day the war began, called for the U.S. to "keep out of this war," he also made a point of saying: "The whole Nazi system is repugnant to the American people."

The vast majority of Americans, whether they supported all-out aid to Britain or opposed it, were under no illusions about Hitler. They were honestly debating the best way to deal with that threat.

Yes, they were also optimistic. Right up until Pearl Harbor, most Americans--about 70%--still hoped to avoid direct involvement in the war. But roughly the same percentage was determined to insure that Hitler did not win, even if that meant going to war eventually.

There were a few Americans with good things to say about Hitler. They were on the far right fringes of American life, people who praised Hitler as a Christian, as a bulwark against atheistic communism.

One was a woman named Elizabeth Dilling. Raised an Episcopalian, she attended Catholic schools as a girl, and considered becoming an evangelist. She called herself a "super patriot, 100 per center" who believed women should stick to "feminine pursuits." She defended the fascist Francisco Franco in Spain because he was "fighting with Spain's decent element for Christianity" against the Loyalists who destroyed churches "with the same satanic Jewish glee shown in Russia."

According to author Glen Jeansonne, she also had kind words for Hitler, because he too "had done a great deal of good ... and helped Christianity flourish." She said those urging the U.S. to fight Hitler in the war were trying to get Americans to "fight the Jews' battles all over again." Most horrifically she made this prediction, which is practically a paraphrase of Hitler's pre-war threat:

If the Jews succeed in hollering America into war, what happened to Jews in Germany might seem like a kindergarten compared to what they might get in America when the dead bodies start coming home, as Americans are a hotter-tempered people.

One of the more notorious Hitler defenders in the U.S., Gerald L. K. Smith, claimed that the "Jews hated Hitler ... because he was a Christian who believed in the Bible." Smith reprinted one of Hitler's speeches which used Biblical passages to justify his policies toward the Jews, and commented:

What good Christian American can find any fault with the above quotations? Could it be that the same Jew-controlled newspapers that lied to us about Father Coughlin and Gerald Smith failed to tell us the truth about Hitler?

This was a man Republican isolationists called to testify before Congress.

The Americans who said Hitler was "a nice guy" were the same ones who called FDR a "dictator" and called his administration the "Jew Deal." They denied Hitler was any threat to the U.S., but were quite certain that FDR was one--a mortal one. They attacked FDR as "the first Communist president," and said that he was deliberately trying to destroy Christian America.

Martin Dies, a Congressman from Texas, who created the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities, noted in 1939 that the "Fascist-Nazi movements in the United States masquerade as Christian patriots."

Yes, these Americans existed. They were not, however, typical. The vast majority of Americans knew Hitler was the real threat, not Franklin Roosevelt. They knew their president--even if they disagreed with him politically--was not trying to ruin the United States. They knew the debate they were having was not an apocalyptic battle between those who were trying to save America and those who wanted to destroy it, but an honest disagreement about how best to defend the country.

But it seems there will always be people who masquerade as Christian patriots, who tear down the president personally, call him a communist, say he believes in a "false theology," and claim he's trying to destroy the country.

You're right, Rick. Sometimes, sometimes, it's not OK.

"You Republicans" and "We Conservatives"

I was reading last week about the 1940 presidential election for a book I'm working on. Coinciding as it did with Mitt Romney's latest stumble on his way to the Republican nomination, I couldn't help thinking he had a few things in common with the GOP's standard bearer that year, Wendell Willkie.

After being crushed in consecutive elections by FDR, Republicans were desperate for a winner in 1940. Prior to 1932, Republicans were accustomed to winning presidential elections: from 1896 through 1928, they won seven out of nine contests. The only exceptions were 1912 and 1916. In the former, the Republican vote split between the sitting Republican president William Howard Taft and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, delivering the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson who got just 41.8% of the popular vote. Four years later, Wilson eked out a narrow re-election victory.

In short, Republicans had come to feel the presidency really belonged to them before FDR. Going into the 1940 campaign, they had two reasons to hope for a comeback: 1) FDR might not be a candidate, because of the two-term tradition; and 2) though the economy was much improved from the depths of the depression in 1932, it was nowhere near true recovery (unemployment was down from 25% to between 14 and 15%).

The problem for the Republicans was that they had not come to any consensus about their way forward as a party. Should they hold onto the low-tax, laissez-faire approach (which many Americans still blamed for the depression) and fight for repeal of the entire New Deal, or reconcile themselves to a "New Deal Lite" policy that merely promised to manage the new social welfare programs better?

As a result, the Republican convention was torn in 1940, needing six ballots to settle at last on a nominee: corporate lawyer and businessman Wendell Willkie. 

Willkie was an odd choice. He had never held elective office. He had been a delegate to the 1932 Democratic convention. 

That fact alone made him highly suspect to many Republicans (and reminds one of Romney's vote in the 1992 Democratic primary, as well as his past claims to be a "moderate" with "progressive" policies).  

One former Republican senator had this reaction to the thought of this former Democrat getting the GOP nomination:

If a whore repented and wanted to join the church, I'd personally welcome her and lead her up the aisle to a pew. But, by the Eternal, I'd not ask her to lead the choir the first night.

Yet this convert bested elected Republican officials like Senators Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, because the business wing of the party and the liberal eastern establishment supported his nomination--because they thought they could control him.

But when it came time to speak to the convention, Willkie slipped. As he finished his acceptance speech, he said:

And so, you Republicans, I call upon you to join me, help me. The cause is great. We must win.

That phrase was the tell: "you Republicans." Willkie had given away the game. Deep down, he didn't really consider himself a Republican.

I couldn't help but think of that phrase when I heard Mitt Romney at CPAC on Friday repeatedly say things like "we, as conservatives ..." He used some form of the word "conservative" over twenty times. He was so intent to avoid pulling a Willkie, that he repeatedly did the anti-Willkie.

The effect, however, was much the same. He was so desperate to say that he is a conservative that he undermined the case that he is one.

There are, of course, many differences between Willkie and Romney, but some of the parallels are telling.

One is the absence of ideological clarity, the focus (in both cases) on "electability."

In 1940, Willkie got the nomination because enough Republicans feared that a real Republican, someone too much like Herbert Hoover, would lose. Though they would have been loathe to admit it openly, they recognized that things like Social Security had been accepted by the public. More importantly, the public had also largely accepted the general idea that the federal government should have a role in managing the economy and mitigating the wild swings of the unregulated market. Willkie would not be a hard-edged ideologue, he would win over disgruntled Democrats, he could win.

As I have noted recently, many of today's Republicans also seem more concerned with defeating President Obama than deciding what exactly the party's principles should be. While they are united in pledging to abolish what they call "Obamacare," you'll rarely hear them say that they want to go back to allowing insurance companies to refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions, or that they want to throw children under 26 off their parents' policies. They rail against the individual mandate, but can't agree on why they do. What they all agree on is that they want to beat Obama, and will support whoever seems most likely to do that.

Second, in both cases, the party looked to a businessman, someone who had not served politically in Washington, someone who claimed expertise as a manager and executive who could run things more efficiently.

As David Kennedy notes in Freedom From Fear, Willkie was "a leading spokesman for those in the business community who felt themselves aggrieved by the New Deal." He would restore a pro-business climate. Willkie did not explicitly reject the New Deal, but he "denounced the Democrats as having acquired vested political interest in the Depression and therefore as having willfully throttled the wealth-making and job-creating potential of private enterprise." 

It takes little imagination to hear Romney saying precisely that about Obama. While Romney served as a governor (and was, as he told CPAC, a "severely conservative" one), his campaign has focused overwhelmingly on his private sector experience in a way that emphasizes pragmatic management more than ideology.

One major difference, however, would be foreign policy.

In 1940, most of the other Republican candidates for president were from the isolationist wing of the party. Though most Americans remained determined to avoid direct involvement in the war, they supported FDR's efforts to aid Britain short of war. So did Willkie.

Willkie even went so far as refusing to exploit foreign policy in the campaign. When FDR decided to send 50 old destroyers to Britain in early September 1940, Willkie did not make an issue of it. When two weeks later the administration supported a peace-time draft, Willkie was told that opposing it would help him politically. But he favored it. Willkie replied, "I'd rather not win the election than do that."

I'd like to think that, if the issue were important enough, Romney would say the same. But given his rank opportunism and foreign policy demagoguery so far in this campaign, I can't say I'm confident he would.

(To be fair, even Willkie, in his desperation late in the campaign, called the destroyers-for-bases deal "the most dictatorial act ever taken by an American president," and dabbled in some FDR-as-war-monger rhetoric.)

In the end, Willkie lost. That was most likely because, with the world in flames, most Americans wanted FDR's experienced hand on the wheel. But that's not how Republican conservatives saw it.

Historian Richard Ketchum says that for "twenty-four years the resentment would fester, the schism would be unresolved."  At the 1964 convention, 

Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen rose on the floor ..., pointed a finger at the New York and Pennsylvania delegations, led by Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, and shouted at those reminders of Wendell Willkie: 'You led us down the road to defeat ...' And at last the Old Guard chose one of its own, Barry Goldwater, only to see him crushed in the worst defeat in any presidential election to that time.

If Romney gets this nomination and loses in the fall, it won't take 24 years. In four years, the Tea Party and conservative wing will likely say "You led us down the road to defeat" to the establishment, and chose one of its own.

If that happens, the big, historic question will be this: will that nominee end up being Goldwater in 1964, or Reagan in 1980?

Coxey's Bonus Army Sit-ins Occupy Wall Street

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box.... The people are demoralized;... public opinion silenced.... homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages... The fruits of the toils of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind.... From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes: ­ tramps and millionaires. 

I've been trying to make sense of the Occupy Wall Street movement for awhile now, wondering where it fits historically.

The quotation above helped place it for me. It's an American political platform, but not from today's protests. It's from 1892.

Given that we've now had several years of relatively high unemployment, something like the Occupy protests is not at all surprising. When people feel this kind of frustration, when they feel their votes don't matter because the political system seems totally dysfunctional, they take to the streets.

It's happened here before.

During the depression of the 1890s, there was Coxey's Army, a group of unemployed Americans led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. People came to Washington from all over the country (many of them marching on foot) demanding a jobs program. They called it a "petition with boots." Estimates are that at various points many thousands were headed for DC, but only about 500 reached the Capitol. Before the protest could even get under way, Coxey was arrested for trespassing and not allowed to give his planned speech.

Even more relevant would be the 1932 Bonus March. At the depths of the depression, thousands of World War I veterans went to Washington, DC and camped out, demanding that Congress pay out immediately the bonus they were eventually entitled to by law. They spent weeks camped out before they were forcibly removed, first by Washington police and then Army troops under the command of Douglas MacArthur. The spectacle of current soldiers forcibly evicting former soldiers further tarnished President Hoover's reputation only months before the 1932 election.

In both cases, dire economic circumstances prompted demonstrations demanding action by Washington. What strikes me as most interesting about what is happening today is that the focus is not on Washington, but on what the protesters consider to be the true source of our problems: Wall Street. That suggests, I think, a desire to focus not on a specific political solution, but to change the public's perception of the nature of the situation in which we find ourselves. They see the problem as the growing power of an unaccountable economic elite. (Though I also suspect that they doubt the answer is in Washington.)

I find the use of the word "occupy" interesting as well. It invokes the military metaphors of Coxey's Army and the Bonus Army, while also emulating the sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement. Despite efforts by some commentators to dismiss the protests, I suspect there is something rather significant going on today, something that has been building not just over the last three years of hard times, but the last thirty years of growing income disparity.

In the words of the old Buffalo Springfield song, "There's something happening here, what is, ain't exactly clear."

But I think it is becoming clearer.

It was easy, and tempting, to dismiss the initial protest. As the movement in New York has grown, and more importantly, has spread, it has become much harder. Those who wanted to stereotype it as a bunch of lazy hippies have had to deal with the sheer growing diversity of it, exemplified by things such as this past week's stirring impromptu lecture to the police by a Marine Sergeant named Shamar Thomas, a veteran of Iraq whose parents have also served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a group called OccupyMarines.

James Sinclair's diagram from his blog

And then there is the Tea Party. Yes, the agendas are different. But I also agree with this post by James Sinclair, which persuasively makes the case that there is a fair amount of overlap. This venn diagram may not be scientifically accurate, but there is some truth here. There are common sources for the angst each expresses.

The more I think about this historical moment, the more it reminds me of the emergence of the Populists in the late 1880s and early 1890s. They too could be both radically left and radically right. The quotation above is from their 1892 platform, in which they called for nationalizing the railroads (the biggest businesses of the day) and limiting immigration; they wanted a graduated income tax and fiscally conservative government finances; they supported "the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor" and opposed bailouts or "any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose."

Perhaps the biggest thing the Populists had going for them was the sense that neither political party was addressing the most pressing issues of the day--the crushing debt of farmers, the pressures of massive immigration, the growth of the corporate trusts. Their 1892 platform stated:

Controlling influences dominating both ... parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise any substantial reform ... They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the alter of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

But then they were co-opted by the Democratic Party in 1896 when William Jennings Bryan stole their signature issue, silver coinage, and the Populist Party went out of existence.

But it did not end there. In many ways, the Populists were the John the Baptist of the Progressive Era. By the early 20th century, there was a bipartisan consensus that the nation needed meaningful reform, many of which the Populists had first called for 10 and 20 years earlier. Under Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Republicans instituted their variety of Progressive reform. Then Woodrow Wilson presided over 8 years of Democratic Progressive reform. Together, they created the regulatory state: the idea that the federal government had to play a role in limiting the power of corporations in the economic and political interests of the public.

The Progressives of both parties created the regulatory state because they came to a common, central understanding: that the industrial revolution had created a new form of power--private economic power--that the Founders never anticipated. That power was unchecked. A democracy, to survive, needed to find a way to check that power. For a time, they did.

When the inevitable backlash came and laissez-faire made its return in the 1920s, and the president crowed that "the business of America is business," taxes were cut, regulators became the creatures of the regulated, and the depression came. Then FDR came in, and with the help of progressive Republicans, triumphed over the "economic royalists," and established reforms that prevented another depression for over 60 years--because both Republicans and Democrats supported the regulatory regime.

I would like to think that eventually the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street could together create a similar bipartisan commitment to reform on the part of both major parties. Maybe they will. But I am bothered by that diagram. Sinclair focuses on the overlap in the center.

I keep seeing the dichotomy.

The Populists of the 1890s saw business (Wall Street) as an enemy, and politics (Washington) as the solution. There is no such unity today. The Tea Party blames Washington, the Occupy movement blames Wall Street.

Ever since Ronald Reagan demonized the federal government in this inaugural address ("Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem"), the disaffected in America have had competing targets for their rage: both Wall Street (primarily Democrats) and Washington (primarily Republicans).

For thirty years, Republicans have claimed the federal government can do little well, and when they have controlled it, they have done their best to turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. They have diminished not the size of government, but its efficacy. They have reduced taxes to the lowest level in 50 years, all while convincing voters that they are intolerably overtaxed. They have used government to empower and enrich the wealthiest, they have dismantled as much of the regulatory state as they could. And when the lack of regulation led to the economic crash, they of course blamed the very government that their ideology had disarmed. When a Democratic president tried to use government to solve the problem, they obstructed every step of the way and claimed that the continuing poor economy showed government cannot work. For them, government is always the problem, its reduction always the solution.

So it was not surprising last week to hear the new Tea Party favorite, Herman Cain, say both that the poor and jobless have no one but themselves to blame, and that they should blame Washington. We were supposed to have a regulatory system to prevent the financial obscenities Wall Street engaged in, but most Americans probably have no idea that safeguards that worked for decades had been dismantled. So they blame Washington.

And Washington does deserve some blame. For thirty years, both parties have bowed and scraped before the new robber barons, competing with each other to cut their taxes, ease their way, and enhance their riches--Republicans because they believed in it; Democrats because they'd been cowed by Reagan into thinking they had to go along to survive politically. Washington ended the bipartisan consensus that protected the average person. And so some, like members of the Tea Party, therefore see Washington as the problem.

In the current situation, however, the Tea Party has it wrong, and Occupy Wall Street has it right. The Progressives knew that the only way to check organized economic power is through the democratic political process. They knew that more democracy was the answer. The referendum, recall, and primary, were all attempts to break the stranglehold of corporations on the political system. So was the the 17th Amendment, which provided for direct election of Senators. (These were all also first proposed by the Populists.)

The Tea Party today argues for the repeal of the 17th Amendment. It supports the union-busting efforts of Scott Walker in Wisconsin. It supports the disenfranchisement of voters via these so-called "voter ID" laws that have suddenly sprouted nearly everywhere. In a variety of ways, even if sometimes unknowingly, the Tea Party serves the interests of Wall Street, and undermines the only real hope for lasting change: a government truly responsive to the many, not the few.

Occupy Wall Street has succeeded in changing the political conversation. Changing our politics will be a lot harder.

Acting President

I spent much of the month of September playing Franklin Roosevelt in the Spartanburg Little Theater's production of "Annie." Having mimicked FDR for decades, it was great fun to actually play the role.

Of course, the pedantic historian in me had to struggle mightily to refrain from pointing out how absurd the storyline involving FDR is. For those who don't know the story (I didn't before being cast), Annie accompanies Daddy Warbucks to a meeting with FDR in December 1933. FDR and his advisors are in despair over the depression, but Annie's sunny optimism rallies them and inspires the New Deal.

Needless to say, this isn't terribly accurate! The phrase "new deal" was first used by FDR in his July 1932 speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president. The famous first hundred days, beginning in March 1933, had already established the tone of the New Deal.  And, as far as I know, an adorable, red-headed, 11-year-old orphan girl had nothing to do with it!

The way the play employs FDR as a dramatic device, however, got me thinking about how we perceive our presidents. At the last performance, one of my Wofford colleagues saw me on his way out of the theater, and said "Good old American optimism prevails again!"

And that really is the message. The ubiquitous "Annie" theme "Tomorrow" is the epitome of sunny optimism. So of course the play uses FDR. The image most Americans maintain of FDR is the one shown here: big grin, cigarette holder jauntily titled upward. It practically oozes optimism.

This is the "character" FDR that we recall. He is, of course, based on reality. "Annie" has FDR twice repeat the most famous line from his first inaugural: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

But more important, I'd argue, is what FDR says before that famous line: "This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today."

FDR's was no mindless optimism. It began with a sober assessment of the real and daunting problems the country faced. It was not mere exhortation, it was a promise: "This Nation is asking for action, and action now." FDR promised action, and delivered. Even when some of those actions failed, people credited him for the effort.

The other hovering presidential presence in "Annie" is Herbert Hoover. He isn't a character, but there is a sarcastic song called "Hooverville." A group of homeless people sing, "We'd like to thank you Herbert Hoover, for really showing us the way... You made us what we are today."

The caricature of Hoover is as complete as that of FDR: he is the dour presence who failed to end the depression. What most people forget is that Hoover was relentlessly optimistic in his rhetoric, too.

In May 1930 Hoover said: "While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States—that is, prosperity."

In October 1932, as the depression was approaching its worst months, he said: "the tide has turned and ... the gigantic forces of depression are today in retreat."

The American people expect optimism from their leaders, but optimism is not enough. They expect results.

Today, President Obama is trying to capture FDR's optimism, but history suggests that won't be enough to win re-election. Yes, the public likes to hear that "tomorrow, there'll be sun," but optimism is not a good election strategy.

Maybe the Republicans will nominate a candidate too extreme for independents to stomach.

Maybe the public will blame the obstructionist Republicans in Congress for preventing action.

Maybe the electorate will go for Obama again, even if the economy hasn't turned around.

Maybe.

But I wouldn't bet my bottom dollar on it.

Obama Should "Welcome Their Hatred"

It's Labor Day, and on Thursday President Obama is scheduled to speak to a joint session of Congress  about the ongoing jobs crisis. Many on the left are urging the president to "go big" and push Congress for a New Deal-style jobs program.

The attraction of the FDR model is obvious. The economy created no net jobs last month (due to continuing government layoffs that totally offset private sector hiring), making it clear that the very weak recovery that was underway has now stalled.

But as I argued over a year and half ago, the circumstances of Obama's administration are significantly different. FDR took over at the absolute depths of the depression in early 1933, while Obama's administration began in the equivalent of 1931 and helped prevent the recession from becoming another Great Depression.

Moreover, Obama's political circumstances are radically different. FDR brought in huge Democratic majorities with him in the 1932 election, and the remaining Republicans were pliant and did not represent meaningful opposition to his policies. The 1934 election enlarged the Democratic majority in the Senate to 69-25 and in the House to 322-103. With those numbers, FDR could largely get Congress to pass whatever economic recovery measures he proposed.

Obama, by contrast, has from day one faced an obstructionist minority in the Senate that has effectively created a minority veto over all legislation by abusing the rules of the Senate, and now faces a Republican majority in the House.

There is, however, one aspect of FDR's early presidency that is often overlooked by his supporters: its failure to bring about quick improvement in the economy, and FDR's political response to that failure. And here, Obama may find some instructive lessons.

The signature policy of what is often called the "first New Deal" was the National Recovery Administration, the NRA. It was a decidedly pro-big business idea, whose premise was that the main problem in the economy was over-supply of goods. The NRA suspended the anti-trust laws and created what were, for all intents and purposes, government-sanctioned cartels in major industries to limit production.

It was an abysmal failure. It combined the worst aspects of government bureaucracy with the complacency of monopolistic business. By the time the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in 1935, FDR was glad to see it go.

Politically, by 1935, FDR was under increasing pressure from the left to do more, and especially to give up trying to work with big business. Dr. Francis Townsend proposed giving the elderly $200 a month, and the popularity of his plan helped push the adoption of Social Security that same year.

Louisiana Senator Huey Long proposed the "Share Our Wealth" plan, which would have capped personal fortunes at $50 million and yearly income at $1 million. Long would then have redistributed the income among the poor. FDR feared the populist appeal of Long's plan might lead the Senator to challenge him for the presidency.

FDR believed people wanted jobs, not relief or redistribution, and in response proposed to Congress the largest single peacetime appropriation to that date: the Works Progress Administration, the WPA.

Its initial appropriation was $1.4 billion, the equivalent of about $1 trillion today. It eventually employed 8 million Americans. It never solved the unemployment problem, but it did significantly improve it.

It is the WPA people have in mind when they tell Obama to "go big."

The problem, of course, is Congress. Republicans would block any such proposal by Obama, and, given his pragmatic bent, he seems unlikely to propose something he knows will fail.

In trying to get anything at all through Congress, Obama faces roadblocks FDR simply did not have. But politically, the advantages of following FDR's approach are clear.

By 1936, the depression had not ended. Unemployment was still perhaps as high as 16-17%. But it was down from the 25% of early 1933. FDR's resounding re-election in 1936 was not because happy days were here again--it was because things were getting better, and, most importantly because people who still had not benefitted from the recovery knew Roosevelt stood for them.

In a powerful speech on the eve of the election, FDR drew the contrast with his opponents clearly:

Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.... We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

FDR spent the first two years of his administration trying to placate business interests. In return, he got nothing but their enmity. By 1935, he gave up trying to win them over, and began trying to defeat them.

That is what Obama needs to do.

What FDR said in 1936 is as true today (maybe more true than) it was then.

Obama cannot make Republicans bent on his political destruction pass policies that will put people to work. He won't get from Congress what he asks for Thursday. So he might as well tell the people of this country what should be done. When Republicans say "no," as we all know they will do, he can make sure the public knows who wanted to help, and which party believes "Government is best which is most indifferent."

Memo to Mitt: It's Not the House

Liberals have had some fun this week at Mitt Romney's expense after the Washington Post reported that Romney "is planning to nearly quadruple the size of his $12 million California beachfront mansion." Rachel Maddow had a segment on her program Tuesday arguing that Romney was going "full Thurston"--a reference to Thurston Howell III, the millionaire castaway played by Jim Backus on the 1960s sitcom "Gilligan's Island."

David Frum tweeted on Monday: "I hope none of those people criticizing Mitt Romney's house voted for John Kerry." Romney's net worth is somewhere between $190 and $250 million dollars, according to his campaign, and Kerry's was estimated to be at least $167 million in 2009, so the two are certainly comparable.

Frum seems to think this is an argument-ender: if you supported Kerry's candidacy, you can't be critical of Romney. But he misses something essential: the problem is not that Romney is rich. It is that he is rich and advocates policies that primarily advance the interests of the rich.

Americans have never had a problem with having wealthy political leaders. George Washington, according to biographer Joseph Ellis, had an "insatiable hunger for land" (at his death he had land in five states, the District of Columbia, and the Ohio territory) and was when he died "one of the richest men in America."

Andrew Jackson was also a wealthy man who had extensive landholdings and dabbled in a wide variety of business ventures. Robert Remini tells us that by the time he first ran for president in 1824, Jackson "was a fairly rich man." (Like Washington, Jackson also owned more than a hundred human beings held as slaves.) That is not, of course, how Americans remember Jackson: he remains the champion of the "common man." Policies, not personal wealth, are what people care about.

We see the same thing in the 20th century: three of the wealthiest presidents were Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy. These are not men who, like Washington and Jackson, made their own fortunes. They were all three born to wealth (as Romney was). By and large, Americans did not hold their inherited wealth against them, precisely because they made themselves into champions of the average person.

TR made his mark as a powerful president by taking on J. P. Morgan's Northern Securities railroad trust (the case that gave him the misleading nickname of "trust-buster"). Most Americans never knew that Morgan made his peace with TR and even contributed to his campaign in 1904. They knew TR intervened in a United Mine Workers strike that resulted in higher wages and lower hours, and that he signed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act to protect consumers.

FDR, it need hardly be pointed out, was considered a "traitor to his class" for his efforts to alleviate the ravages of the Great Depression. He denounced "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking" and "Government by organized money." In his 1936 speech accepting the Democratic nomination, FDR said:

we will continue to seek to improve working conditions for the workers of America--to reduce hours over-long, to increase wages that spell starvation, to end the labor of children, to wipe out sweatshops. Of course we will continue every effort to end monopoly in business, to support collective bargaining, to stop unfair competition, to abolish dishonorable trade practices.

When political leaders talk (and more importantly, act) in this way, no one cares how much personal wealth they have.

JFK was also born in wealth, but he ran in 1960 as the champion of FDR's New Deal. Like his predecessors, he knew that policies exclusively favoring the wealthy were self-defeating: "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

What sorts of policies does Romney advocate?

On extending unemployment benefits, he's against it: "The indisputable fact is that unemployment benefits, despite a web of regulations, actually serve to discourage some individuals from taking jobs, especially when the benefits extend across years." The implication is that there are plenty of jobs available, and people just are not taking them. He should try telling that to the thousands of people who camped out for a job fair in Atlanta last week.

On the payroll tax cut that President Obama insisted on last December: "only the employee's payroll taxes [are] reduced — the portion paid by the employer is to remain the same.... the payroll tax deal will add to the deficit." (Romney did not note that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which he supports, also adds to the deficit--evidently only tax cuts for regular folks do that.)

On extending that payroll tax cut: "Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney did not flatly rule out an extra year for the payroll tax cut, but he 'would prefer to see the payroll tax cut on the employer side' to spur job growth, his campaign said." It's not clear if that means adding an employer tax cut to the worker's cut, or raising the employee's taxes and giving the break instead to the employer, but it sounds like the latter.

This is the context for the reaction to Romney's new California mansion. Americans do not begrudge their leaders their wealth. They do have a problem with people who say tax cuts are only for wealthy "job creators" and who think unemployment insurance makes people lazy. And rightly so. You reap what you sow, Mitt.

Republicans Now Think Herbert Hoover was Wrong

On his blog yesterday, Andrew Sullivan bemoaned the fact that Republican economic orthodoxy is preventing a reasonable deficit reduction deal:

The notion that Herbert Hoover was right has become quite a dogged meme on the reality-challenged right. It's bonkers.

He's half right--Republican orthodoxy that "government spending kills jobs" is "bonkers." But he's wrong that the right thinks Hoover was correct.  It's worse than that--they think he was wrong, but not in the way we usually think.

The conservative consensus is not that Hoover was right and Franklin D. Roosevelt was wrong--it is that Hoover and Roosevelt were essentially the same and both were wrong.

The book most responsible for this "revisionism" is The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. Despite the subtitle, Shlaes is not a historian.  She is a financial columnist. But her book on the Depression, because it fits the right's ideological predispositions, has become the conservative bible on how not to deal with economic depressions.

Shlaes, making the conservative argument against government efforts to combat depression, lumps the two presidents together:

From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped make the Depression Great.

While this characterization would surprise both men, it is the conventional wisdom on the right these days.

The Forgotten Man is the popularization of a position pushed by the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute.  An article on their website, titled "Hoover's Attack on Laissez-Faire," makes this argument:

Herbert Clark Hoover must be considered the founder of the New Deal in America. Hoover, from the very start of the depression, set his course unerringly toward the violation of all the laissez-faire canons.

According to this view, there was no appreciable difference between Hoover and FDR.  Both were "progressives" who together led the U.S. down the primrose path to economic perdition.

There is some kernel of truth in this. Historian Joan Hoff Wilson's book Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive makes the argument that Hoover has been caricatured as a knee-jerk devotee of laissez-faire, when in fact he tried to combat the depression.

Hoover indeed had more in common with the Theodore Roosevelt progressive wing of the Republican Party than the Warren Harding/Calvin Coolidge/Andrew Mellon pro-business wing that dominated the 1920s and set the stage for the depression.

The laissez-faire right has seized upon this interpretation to explain away an inconvenient truth: the fact that the depression deepened and reached its worst depths during the presidency of a Republican, and then improved under FDR. If the New Deal was so terrible (an article of unquestioned dogma on the right), then how can this be?

The answer is to transform Hoover into the "the founder of the New Deal."

That's only half of the equation, however. By morphing Hoover into FDR, they maintain the illusion that government intervention worsened the depression. But how to prove that laissez-faire ends depressions?

Enter the "forgotten depression" of 1920. The same article quoted above compares Hoover's attack on laissez-faire to the policies of Harding and Mellon in the early 1920s:

In the 1920–1921 depression, ... wage rates were permitted to fall, and government expenditures and taxes were reduced. And this depression was over in one year — in what Dr. Benjamin M. Anderson has called "our last natural recovery to full employment."

Glenn Beck has popularized this view with videos such as this one, in which he makes the explicit case that "bailouts" and "stimulus" are precisely the wrong ways to approach economic downturns--instead, large tax cuts and draconian budget cuts are the solution.

And that, of course, is the faith-based economic policy of the Republicans today.

You could hardly ask for a better example of the influence of the popular perception of history on contemporary politics. Shlaes' book became the economic bible for Republicans in this recession. A concerted effort by libertarian economists over many decades up-ended the conventional historical wisdom.

Their view is now the orthodoxy of a political party with effective veto power over fiscal policy due to its control of the House. They control the debate. They seem poised to use the debt limit to force their view on all of us.

We may be on the verge of testing their theory. And the beauty of it all politically is that if they are wrong, they can still blame President Obama for the worsening economy, and ride the failure of their economic theory to political victory in 2012.