SmartRemarks

There’s been a lot of interesting political commentary going on this past week (just check out the industrious writers on my blogroll), but I admit that I haven’t felt inspired to chime in on it. Sometimes the weight of public affairs just seems overwhelming, and it helps to step back and focus on personal matters. However, there is one political meme that keeps recurring lately, in the public discourse and thus, also, in the back of my mind. It’s ubiquitous in the establishment press and on the internet; it came up repeatedly last week in Obama’s second press conference, and again today on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. And it’s certainly prominent in Congress.

Here’s the meme:  that Obama’s budget is too ambitious, since it dramatically increases the national debt (by what the CBO projects to be $9.3 trillion over ten years, as has been widely reported). That we’re all “fiscal conservatives” who naturally agree that deficit spending is A Bad Thing, and therefore that Congress clearly needs to scale spending back from what Obama has proposed.

There’s a simple question going unasked here:  why? Nothing about this meme is as self-evident as those who echo it seem to assume. 

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Tags: conservatism, Depression, economy, FDR, federal budget, financial crisis, Galbraith, history, Obama

I’ve already alluded to the right wing’s attempts to spread misinformation about the New Deal and the Great Depression. The mass media echo chamber has been full of them lately, and I’ve linked to a couple of items that have been rowing against the tide. I have perhaps been too casual about assuming that everyone is familiar with the real story, however. A careful look at some empirical truth is called for here, if we are to learn the correct lessons applicable to our current situation.

So let’s revisit those two links in greater detail. A few diligent scholars and journalists have done their homework so you and I don’t have to.

First, from economist Charles McMillion’s essay entitled “The ‘FDR Failed’ Myth” (emph. mine):

[I]t is imperative to expose a dangerous popular myth regarding the efficacy of President Roosevelt’s actions: that it was not the programs of the New Deal, but only the placing of the nation on a wartime footing years later, that restored the health of the nation’s economy.

This belief, though widely held, cannot stand up to even the most basic economic analysis. Yet the mainstream corporate media, which abound with anti-government ideology, seek to reinforce this myth. Just this past Sunday, The Washington Post featured on Page One of its Outlook section an article by Amity Shlaes headlined “FDR Was a Great Leader, But His Economic Plan Isn’t One to Follow.” …

The basic economic facts from the 1930s—according to the Department of Commerce, the Federal Reserve, and other official sources—are fundamentally different from the unsupported claims put forward by Shlaes and prominent in popular myth. The monthly data for industrial production show a near three-year collapse under President Hoover, ending when FDR came to office in March 1933. Production rocketed by 44 percent in the first three months of the New Deal and, by December 1936, had completely recovered to surpass its 1929 peak.

GDP, only available as annual averages, plunged 25.6 percent from 1929-1932, including by 13.0 percent in 1932. It stabilized in 1933, and then soared by 10.8 percent, 8.9 percent and 12.0 percent, respectively, in 1934, 1935 and 1936. Real GDP surpassed its 1929 peak in 1936 and never again fell below it. After-tax personal income, consumer spending, real private investment and jobs all reached or surpassed their 1929 peaks by late 1936.

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Tags: Depression, economy, FDR, history

A completely subjective list, of course. But what the hell… aren’t they all?

Going in to 2008, one could hardly open a magazine or flip a channel without hitting a media comparison to 1968. It was 40 years ago (a nice, round number), and it was a paradigm-shifting political year that looked familiar, with an open competition for the presidential nomination in both parties, all while a war was on overseas.

As it turned out, 2008 was a momentous year in its own right, arguably the most significant year in decades, and without question one we will all remember vividly. But it was not assassinations and riots that made its mark in the history books, unlike in 1968; it brought distinctive events all its own.

There’s not really a lot of room for debate over the two most significant news events of the year, and the annual AP survey of news editors corresponds with what almost all of us would surely conclude on our own, a point-counterpoint of encouraging and discouraging developments:

1) The presidential election of Barack Obama

I’ve already written quite a bit about this one, of course… but suffice it to say that it’s historic for the fact that he’ll be the first African-American president; it’s historic for the fact that he won with a (generally) upbeat, honorable, serious campaign; and it’s historic in that it marks a realignment back toward progressive politics after a generation of destructive radical conservatism, and after eight years of arguably the single worst president in American history. How Obama really performs in office of course remains to be seen, but what he’s accomplished so far this year stands on its own.

2) The worst economic meltdown in our lifetimes

Written more than a little about this, too, of course. It seems almost quaint now to recall that when I started this blog, back in mid-September—although we now know that we were already nine months into a recession—it was still possible to ask “how bad is the economy?” and wonder if it would still get worse. Within days, everything started to go to hell in a handbasket… in a way that seems to have created a destructive feedback loop, where every new development just exacerbates what came before. Homes foreclosing, jobs disappearing, businesses (and entire industries) collapsing, credit freezing, investments evaporating… we’ll remember this for a long time, no matter how much we might prefer to forget it.

After that, the choices grow more arguable. My assessment:

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Tags: Blagojevich, Chicago, climate, Congress, economy, Election 2008, financial crisis, FISA, history, Illinois, international, iPhone, journalism, Madoff, media, Obama, Top 10 lists

As the Obama administration and the new Congress set about choosing priorities and strategies for policymaking, an important consideration will be the political attitudes of the electorate. That, however, is often as much a matter of perception as reality.

It therefore comes as no surprise that even before Election Day (and with increased fervency once the results were in), status-quo-oriented opinion makers were spreading the meme that “America is a center-right country”:

Jon Meacham in Newsweek:
“America remains a center-right nation… [Obama] will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal—a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril.”

Joe Scarborough on MSNBC:
“This country is more conservative than it was when we took over in 1994 after two years of calamitous Democratic rule. It is a center-right country.”

Karl Rove in the WSJ:
“It is a tribute to his skills that Mr. Obama, the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, won in a country that remains center-right.”

John Boehner in the WaPo:
“America is still a center-right country. This election was neither a referendum in favor of the left’s approach to key issues nor a mandate for big government. Obama campaigned by masking liberal policies with moderate rhetoric to make his agenda more palatable to voters.”

Rich Lowry at NRO:
Republicans are consoling themselves by telling anyone who will listen that we still live in a ‘center-right country.’ They’re right.”

And there are countless others. As David Sirota has documented, media usage of the term spiked dramatically right after the election, and is still going strong.

The problem here is, it’s just not true.

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Tags: Congress, conservatism, history, media, Obama, Pelosi, polling, Reid, Republicans

On October 16th, I picked up a new book by Bob Kuttner (longtime political journalist and co-founder of The American Prospect), titled Obama’s Challenge. I seldom buy brand-new books at retail—I like to wait until I can get them discounted or used—but this one seemed very much of the moment.

Indeed, I concluded with amazement that Kuttner must have finished writing it and had it rushed through production within the preceding three weeks or so:  he wrote in detail about the ongoing economic collapse that began in mid-September, and moreover wrote with the assurance that Obama would win the election and be the next president. In the last few weeks there has been no end of commentary, analysis, and speculation about what Obama can and should do, policywise, not just after his inauguration but right now… but Kuttner beat everyone out of the gate.

I’m going toss a few ingredients of my own into that bubbling brew of public discourse, in a linked series of posts starting with this one, today. My thoughts and expectations are evolving, and they may as well do so in print. And for a starting point, one could certainly do worse than to consider Kuttner’s book, and the distinctive historical perspective he brings to the topic.

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Tags: books, history, Kuttner, Obama

For a long time now, the words “Grant Park” had only negative political associations. They evoked 1968, police attacking protesters, civil society crumbling before our eyes.

After 40 years, Tuesday’s election finally relegated that to the back burner. Grant Park in 2008 was about the culmination of a political process that brought people together, and the beginning of an effort to rebuild our tattered social compact.

I’m sure you’ve all seen plenty of photos by now, but (after the first couple, at least) these are mine. It was remarkable to be there, and I wanted to share.

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Tags: Election 2008, Grant Park, history, Obama

Historian David McCullough, biographer of Harry Truman and John Adams, multiple Pulitzer winner, world traveler and distinguished television host, spoke this morning as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

He lamented the resurgent anti-intellectual strain in recent American culture. He spoke at length and eloquently about the importance of history not only as a scholarly discipline but as context for life and its challenges. He reminded us that no one has ever lived in “the past,” only in their own present… that when living through one of history’s periods of transformation, as we are today, no one has the benefit of knowing in advance how it’s going to turn out.

And when asked during the Q-and-A to offer some historical context for the current election, he said with conviction and with no trace of hyperbole…

“This is one of the most important elections in our nation’s history… a turning point for the country and the world.”

The seldom-discomposed McCullough visibly choked up when discussing what Barack Obama has already achieved, in his own life and in American politics, using words like “inspiring” and “thrilling.”

And he capped off his response with the confident prediction, received to raucous applause, “I think it’s gonna be a landslide.”

—

McCullough expressed regret that he wouldn’t still be in Chicago for Obama’s victory rally Tuesday night in Grant Park. I’m happy to say that I will. It’s a chance to be on hand for a moment that makes history… hopefully only the first of many to come.

Tags: David McCullough, Election 2008, history, Humanities Festival, Obama