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FDR Takes off for Chicago
The small Ford Trimotor, bucked against the headwinds that blew stiffly against it, causing some of the passengers on their first flight to wonder if they had made the right decision about journeying halfway across the country only five years after Lindbergh had crossed the Atlantic and less than a decade after Lucky Lindy parachuted from his mail plane in the dark only to watch in horror as the dying aircraft went into a death spiral that came uncomfortably close to his chute’s canopy. The man who rented the Trimotor insisted on changing the passenger list when he learned that the original plans called for thirteen to board the plane. Friends urged him not to ride in that new-fangled “flying machine.”
With anticipation that recalled the reports of Lindbergh’s achievement, the entire country followed the course of this historic flight, for it was the first time a Presidential nominee would address a convention. Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew just what he was doing, although somewhere over Ohio, some of his passengers must have wondered about his choice of transportation, especially his son John, who became sick from the plane’s roller coaster ride and emerged looking green in Chicago. The Trimotor was basically a larger version of the tin box Lindbergh flew to France and not much more technologically advanced. Curiously the person who enjoyed the flight the most was Eleanor Roosevelt, who walked from the plane into a friendship with Amelia Earhart.
That flight marked a major line in time, for on one side of it lay an America rapidly receding into the distance and on the other a nation with new ideas and new technologies. On that flight, FDR was closer to Ronald Reagan than William Jennings Bryan, even though the Presidential aspirations of one were fifty years in the past and the other fifty years in the future. If the flight symbolized Roosevelt’s vigor, boldness and willingness to accept new ideas, the speech he gave not long after landing in Chicago redefined the American economy and the relationship between the American people and their government.
As America wrestles with the worst economic crisis since Roosevelt embarked on that Trimotor, it is enlightening to recall both the flight and the speech, for they provide a perspective on the new so-called stimulus package that helps us to better understand the big picture.
Roosevelt’s Acceptance Speech
That FDR was still shuffling drafts in his car on the way from the airport, makes what historians generally regard as one of–if not the greatest–acceptance speeches ever made seem even more miraculous. Although the convention had finished its business and Roosevelt was three hours behind schedule because of the headwinds, that did not deter delegates and those waiting to hear the speech on the radio (another first) from a feverish anticipation, for they knew the nation was ailing and waited to hear what the man who later would earn the nickname Doctor Roosevelt promised in the way of a cure.
FDR’s opening delivered just the message people were waiting to hear–essentially saying it was time to end the BS.
Let it also be symbolic that in so doing I broke traditions. Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions. We will break foolish traditions and leave it to the Republican leadership, far more skilled in that art, to break promises.
Roosevelt then moved on to evoke the ideals of Woodrow Wilson, whose 1912 Inauguration speech contained the ringing lines, “Justice and only justice, shall always be our motto.” With this nod to Wilson, the nominee then took his cue from Wilson’s speech outlining the ideals that would guide his Presidency, by drawing a contrast between the two philosophies that have defined this country’s last century and a half.
There are two ways of viewing the Government’s duty in matters affecting economic and social life. The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man.
Roosevelt could have been talking about the last occupant of the White House, George W. Bush or about William McKinley. In drawing a contrast with this philosophy, Franklin Roosevelt dared to use a word that has fallen in some disrepute over the last few decades.
Yes, the people of this country want a genuine choice this year, not a choice between two names for the same reactionary doctrine. Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.
My program, of which I can only touch on these points, is based upon this simple moral principle: the welfare and the soundness of a Nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.
Throughout the Nation, men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government of the last years look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth.
For those who wonder about parallels between today and 1932 Roosevelt’s description of the crisis sounds eerily familiar.
Men lost their jobs; purchasing power dried up; banks became frightened and started calling loans. Those who had money were afraid to part with it. Credit contracted. Industry stopped. Commerce declined, and unemployment mounted.
Then Roosevelt uses two words we would be well to remember in these times–interrelationship and interdependence.
How, I ask, has the present Administration in Washington treated the interrelationship of these credit groups? The answer is clear: It has not recognized that interrelationship existed at all.
That is why we are going to make the voters understand this year that this Nation is not merely a Nation of independence, but it is, if we are to survive, bound to be a Nation of interdependence–town and city, and North and South, East and West.
People already knew that Roosevelt favored the public works projects that would become the hallmark of the Hew Deal, but in speaking of them in this speech he issued a stern warning about their effectiveness.
I have favored the use of certain types of public works as a further emergency means of stimulating employment and the issuance of bonds to pay for such public works, but I have pointed out that no economic end is served if we merely build without building for a necessary purpose.
The ending of the speech remains in America’s collective memory like the words “a day that will live in infamy” or “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.
FDR and the Stimulus Bill
When you read it in its entirety Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 speech sounds amazingly prescient. If you did not know who gave the speech or when, you could swear the speaker was referring to our own times. That is why it is wise to remember some of its chief messages.
The first are the twin ideas of interrelationships and interdependence. It is remarkable that over three-quarters of a century ago Franklin Roosevelt should emphasize these ideas, for as we shall see later in this series, they are the key to understanding what we face and how to deal with it.
Second comes FDR’s philosophy of public works. Recall his words that we need to build “for a necessary purpose.” By that he meant that spending on public works just to give people temporary relief was not enough, but rather we need to apply those funds to public works that will have a systemic impact. Roosevelt refers to these projects as “self-sustaining.”
The final enlightening portion of Roosevelt’s speech comes in his defining of the two economic philosophies that offered radically different prescriptions for what ailed America. Roosevelt could have been describing the debate that bottled up the stimulus bill in the Senate over the last week.
Economic Armageddon
As the battle for the stimulus bill has waged through the Senate, the media and blogdom all of them seem to have missed the big picture. First, and perhaps most important is the battle between two irreconcilable economic perspectives which I term economic Armageddon because, as Roosevelt teaches us, a conflict that has waged for over a century seems to be coming to head in the present crisis.
Roosevelt outlined them both. First are the laissez faire beliefs that played such a prominent role in the Gilded Age when major wings of both parties fell under its spell. At the heart of this laissez faire lies the belief government should stay out of business and let the markets do their work. In the years since Grover Cleveland and William McKinley laissez faire has undergone revisions at the hands of its adherents that accept a minimal government role in the economy, but that this role is, as Roosevelt stated to insure “prosperity will leak through,” or what has been derisively referred to as “trickle down economics.”
To advance this notion, post-modern laissez faire types have pushed two initiatives. The first, as we know, is tax cuts. By unburdening businesses and individuals of taxes, it frees monies for both investment and consumer spending. The second is balanced budgets. Large deficits pull funds away from investment as well as forcing government and business into competition for capital. The third is an abhorrence of government regulation, which to laissez faire types ties the hands of business and inhibits the functioning of the market.
Arrayed against these idea are those who believe the Great Depression proved two things, first, that when left alone the market inevitably spirals out of control and second, that government can “prime the pump” by sponsoring the likes of FDR’s public works projects and other forms of investment that will stimulate the economy. If government needs to raise taxes or run a deficit to provide such measures that is preferable to the alternative.
The Premature End of Laissez Faire
When Barack Obama entered the White House, many commentators wrote the obituary for laissez faire, believing that in the guise of the Bush Administration it had caused the present crisis. Reducing regulations such as the gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act had allowed Wall Street to run wild. Excessive tax cuts for the wealthy did not stimulate the economy.
Both sides agree the Bush Administration ran up unnecessary deficits by granting tax cuts at the same time it engaged in financing the Iraq War. To laissez faire types, the Bush deficits represented an abandonment of principles they are determined to reinstate, while their opposites believe they took funds away from stimulating the economy.
The fight over the stimulus package shows those who declared the death of laissez faire were premature. Republicans assert the Obama approach spends too much money and will force the administration to raise taxes to pay for it. The old mantra of “tax and spend” is alive and well.
The Big Picture
Once we recognize this conflict it leads to the inescapable conclusion that only one argument can be right while the other is desperately wrong. That is why I term it economic Armageddon, for the fate of the nation hangs in the balance. If we make the wrong choice we could plunge into an economic chaos that will rival the Great Depression, with one major difference. In the 1930s a majority of Americans lived in rural settings; today they live in the suburbs. The Dust Bowl is still a resonant symbol of the Great Depression because farmers and rural America lay at the center of the vortex. Today the symbol is the row of “For Sale” signs that dot too many suburban streets.
In the 1930s, many Americans still had the survival skills that came with rural living. They were their own mechanics, they knew how to live off the land if they had to, and, most important, they knew how to get by with less. In an era where many Americans have even lost the ability to cook and no one knows how to make roadside repairs on computerized automobiles, a crisis like the Great Depression will have a devastating impact.
That is why the stakes are so high. If the psychological pressure of the Great Depression had people jumping off buildings on the one hand and attending farm auctions with shotguns on the other, what would a similar crisis bring out of the woodwork today?
That is what is riding on the stimulus bill and why the debate in the Senate at times became rancorous. In the next installment of this story we will see whether this stimulus bill measures up to the standards proposed by Doctor Roosevelt.
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