Learning From The Secret Of Fdrs Success - Road to the Middle Class

THE CONVENTIONAL line on the New Deal is that FDR captured a generation with his New Deal programs. Sure, they didn’t all work, but they gave people hope.

Not exactly, writes Michael Barone. What put FDR into the pantheon of national heroes was World War II.

In 1938 the Democrats suffered a meltdown.

In the 1938 off-year elections, Democrats lost 81 House seats, 51 of them in the industrial belt from Pennsylvania and Upstate New York west to the Upper Midwest. The Democratic governors of Michigan and Ohio were defeated for re-election. The congressional district that included Flint, Mich., site of the first sit-in strike, went from Democratic to Republican; so did most congressional districts in Ohio.

The 1938 elections didn’t return the Congress to Republican control but the 81 seats that changed hands almost wiped out the 92 seats that had gone Democratic in the 1932 election.

So the Republicans were looking good for 1940. But then along came World War II and Americans decided to stick with FDR. A whole generation went to war, and found that government could get things done. Then they went home and got an education on the GI Bill. Hey, government really worked for those people, so they went to work and voted Democratic. After all, they had benefitted from government programs. They owed the generations coming after them and wanted to give them a helping hand.

So what? What does that have to do with today?

I think that the Democrats are completely misreading the American people if they think that it’s time for a New New Deal. And they are kidding themselves if they think that the American people are going to swallow the stimulus package. Today’s Americans—outside the political looter class—don’t think that government works. They don’t think that Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are noble public servants. And they will soon start to think that President Obama is just the President of the United States and not a hope-and-change phenomenon.

The Democrats have been playing a high-stakes game with the American people. They insisted that President Bush was uniquely stupid and that Republicans were corrupt and dominated by the right. They, the Democrats, were the friends of the middle class.

That’s all fine and good. Everyone gilds the lily when running for office. But when you actually get elected you really ought to at least go through the motions of pretending that you meant all that stuff.

But no. The Democrats arrived in Washington last month thinking that they were at First and Goal rather than First Down on their own 20 yard line. So they nominated a bunch of lobbyists and tax cheats to the cabinet. So they passed a “stimulus” bill that shovels money at people already in receipt of staggering amounts of government spending. So they shoved through a partial repeal of welfare reform.

Here’s a fearless prediction. I’ll bet that very few centrist Obama voters thought they were voting for a repeal of welfare reform. They are really going to get a shock when Republicans tell them that their Democratic congressmen voted to turn back the clock on welfare.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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