People regularly search the past for parallels to the present. Well before the first primary votes were cast, I began a series of essays looking at the parallels between the elections of 1932 and 2008 (here, here, here and here.) Now, two months in to an administration facing challenges greater than any since Roosevelt's, people are again looking for parallels, now between Roosevelt's first 100 days and the start of this administration, or their respective first terms, or the New Deal and whatever mix of policy initiatives and innovations Obama will employ to address our current problems and prepare our nation and the world to deal with climate change and a transformation in our sources and uses of energy.
Yesterday Daily Kos executive editor SusanG reviewed historian Anthony J. Badger's FDR: The First 100 Days. The obvious difference, she makes clear, is that in 1933 there were no FDR-like models for FDR to follow. But what else is different from the challenges FDR faced and those Obama is now confronting? What's similar and what's different between the worlds political environments of 1933 and 2009?
The Crises of 1933 and 2009
In 1933 one quarter of Americans workers were unemployed. The banking system had collapsed, and in this era before the FDIC, when a bank collapsed, the depositors lost everything. There was no safety net. Most of the developed world had succumbed to fascism or was governed by feckless appeasers, but in the aftermath of WWI and Wilson's failure to secure US participation of the League of Nations, the US had retreated from international affairs and was deep in the period of isolationism. Much of the country—especially the South and West—had no electricity, physical infrastructure or industry. Vast numbers of Americans were struggling to feed themselves and keep their families under a roof. And the crises had grown worse for years, as Herbert Hoover had no effective response to the Wall St crash of 1929.
Today we face a horrific economy, and unlike in 1933, we're still probably in economic freefall, rather than amidst a prolonged depression. But the successes of the New Deal and the advances of technology, economic development and the (truncated) American welfare state keep most Americans from hunger, homelessness and abject poverty. Our banking system is severely damaged—we still don't know the breadth of the destruction caused by the casinoization of the American financial industry—but the destruction isn't as complete as it was in 1933. Older Americans have lost much or even all of their savings, and many will probably still find an entire lifetime of wealth wiped away. But all but a few still have income, even if only in the form of Social Security.
However, we're in a much more integrated world today than was Roosevelt. Obama came in to office presiding over a loose empire, with two major wars and an American military presence across the globe. The US, despite our current distress, is the world's greatest power financially, economically, culturally and militarily. But because of globalization, our distress creates problems elsewhere, while at the same time we will need economic growth in other key regions to facilitate our recovery.
Finally, Roosevelt didn't have to deal with an impending apocalypse from the combination of global climate change and the necessary transition from fossil fuels to renewable and clean energy. Roosevelt's challenges were great, and at times could seem to be overwhelming. But if Obama's administration is to be deemed by future generations to be a success, he'll have to lay the policy groundwork that will do no less than ensure the continued existence of human life on Earth.
Political Climate
In 1933 the public had rejected the Republicans to an even greater degree than in 2008, and the transition from Republican to Democratic dominance was far more abrupt. Two elections prior to Obama's win, the Democrat—Al Gore—had won the popular vote. Two elections prior to FDR's first win, the Democrat—John Davis—had garnered less than 29% of the vote. In both eras, the preceding elections had been dominated by social and cultural issues; in 1928, Democrat Al Smith's Catholicism and his support for repealing prohibition were the main targets of attack.
In 2006 and 2008 Democrats went from 202 seats in the House and 45 (including Jeffords) in the Senate to 257 in the House and 59 (including Franken, Sanders and, ahem, Lieberman) in the Senate; it's been an impressive run. However, it's modest compared to the shift from 1928—163 Dems in the House, 39 (out of a total of 96) in the Senate—to 1932, when the totals went to 313 in the House and 59 (out of 96) in the Senate.
It's hard to make good comparisons of public opinion between 1933--just prior to the development of modern public opinion polling--and today. Nonetheless, we can make a few observations. First, in 1933, the country was beaten down. In the beginning, the public acquiesced to just about whatever Roosevelt wanted. After 3 ½ increasingly desperate years, most people were more interested in keeping themselves fed and out of penury. And like today, when polls show Americans understanding the Obama has inherited a mess and express patience for him and the Congress to turn things around, the American people didn't expect any quick fixes.
Unlike Obama, FDR won by defeating an incumbent president. Hoover had so exasperated the country that even many Republicans were disgusted with him. Several Republican senators, including major figures as Wisconsin's Robert La Follette and California's Hiram Johnson, even endorsed Roosevelt over their fellow Republican. When he took office, Roosevelt was given strong support by a large number of Republicans.
But just as Obama has FDR to look to, so to the Republicans have their party's forebears to look at. They could, one might suppose, look to them as models for how to put the country before partisanship. But we know that instead they are looking at patriotism over partisanship as a cautionary tale, and view any success during the presidency of Barack Obama as one that could relegate them to minority party status for a generation. Thus, the current crop of Republicans, like their 1933 ancestors, are bereft of new ideas, but unlike their 1933 ancestors, committed to opposing everything Obama does.
The parties are more cohesive and intellectually and ideologically coherent today than in 1933. Roosevelt's coalition included the most progressive and some of the most reactionary elements in America, from liberal Northeastern intellectuals to Bourbon supporters of the South's Jim Crow system of racial segregation and domination. But Roosevelt was operating under a much more variegated, with Democrats in some places competing with Socialists and even communists for Congressional seats, while at the same time overseas the reactionary right was leading fascist governments.
Today there aren't major ideological divides like in 1932; the intellectual assault on capitalism was ascendant in the 1920's and 1930's, whereas the battles against Marxian doctrine—intellectual and through more lethal and state-organized means—seemed until maybe the last year nothing more than quaint relics of an era brought to an end with the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1933, the Democrats, led by Roosevelt, presented a "third way" between socialism and unfettered capitalism. The current ideological battlefield is smaller and more constrained.
[In part two, the ideological climate and the institutions of politics and governance]