America’s next great president: Why Obama’s departure paves the way for the next FDR

[DonViejo]

History explains the real differences between Obama and our liberal icons. Who will be the 21st century version?

MICHAEL LIND

Why can’t Barack Obama be more like Lyndon Johnson? The fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, commemorated by living presidents at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin, Texas, last week, has renewed interest in comparisons between the two presidents. Critics of Obama complain that he might have been a more effective president had he been less aloof and more willing to bewitch, bully and bribe members of Congress as Johnson did. Defenders of Obama compare the Affordable Care Act to Johnson’s Medicare and Medicaid, and point out that Obama after 2010 had to face a divided Congress, unlike Johnson, with his Democratic supermajorities.

The discussion is superficial, reflecting a focus on personalities and short-term electoral considerations. It’s worth viewing the differences between Johnson and Obama in a broader historical context.

In the 1930s, as a young member of Congress from Texas, Lyndon Johnson became a favorite protégé of President Franklin Roosevelt. On becoming president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Johnson saw his task in domestic politics as completing the New Deal (even as, in foreign policy, he sought, with disastrous results in Vietnam, to carry out the liberal Cold War containment policy inherited from Harry Truman). From the perspective of 2014, we can view Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society as a single era of reform, interrupted by the “conservative coalition” of right-wing Southern Democrats and northern Republicans that dominated Congress in the 1950s. From civil rights to universal health care, most of the programs that Johnson managed to get enacted in the 1960s had been proposed in the 1930s or 1940s, if not earlier. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to the New Deal-Great Society combination as “the New Deal.”

The New Deal was the American version of the social reforms that transformed other advanced industrial democracies in the twentieth century. All of the other English-speaking countries as well as the democracies of Western Europe at some point adopted worker-protective legislation, social safety nets and — following World War II and the horrors of Nazi racism — the outlawing of white supremacy. In this wave of twentieth-century reform, the U.S. was mostly a laggard, not a leader. In the late nineteenth century, Imperial Germany pioneered workers’ compensation and Social Security, and before World War I Britain adopted many reforms that were delayed in the U.S. until the 1930s.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/12/america%E2%80%99s_next_great_president_why_obama%E2%80%99s_departure_paves_the_way_for_the_next_fdr/

[frazzled]

1. That's weird

Because the president Obama has been most compared to so far is precisely Lyndon Baines Johnson. At least from the circle of presidential historians I saw a while back talking on Charlie Rose. I think Doris Kearns Goodwin was most on that track, and the opinion was that for moving social policy in this country -- civil rights and health care put Obama in the Lyndon Johnson league.

As for the palm greasing and bullying: that's pretty irrelevant. Not only did Johnson have huge Democratic majorities, but those were the days in which you could actually bargain with reasonable Republicans. There was some comity. Obama could offer them the moon plus the Keystone pipeline and invading Iran and they'd still refuse to vote for any of his jobs legislation or anything else.

Waiting for the next FDR is a fool's errand. You'd have to get another World War in there to make it happen.

[JoePhilly]

2. +1

[HooptieWagon]

3. Obama compares himaelf to Reagan....

...which is a LONG way from FDR and LBJ. And if the ACA was a single-payer, then it might be compared to SS. As it is, it is mandating the purchase of insurance from private suppliers... which bears no comparison to SS.

Its going to take an economic collapse and subsequent revolution to get another FDR. IOW, things have to get much worse before they can get better.

[Whisp]

4. He said Reagan was a Transitional President.

And that he was - one shouldn't take that in a positive way.

Obama is also transitional, he is making great changes in how America is viewed by the world, he shows how diplomacy is a much better solution than knee jerk jerking, how the ACA could make inroads for full and proper health care.

Obama transits to the left and the needs of the many, Reagan transited to make the rich richer and the poor suffer more.

[Denzil_DC]

5. Obama actually said Reagan was a "transformational" president, not transitional,

but as you say, one shouldn't take that in a positive way, though some have chosen to try to portray it as such. This was how it looked to one commentator back in 2009:

But historian Douglas Brinkley said he believes Obama's election marked the conclusion of an era that will forever link him to Reagan.

"The age of Reagan went from 1980 to 2008," said Brinkley, a prolific biographer of presidents. "We are in the age of Obama now."

"There is a new progressivism. Even in Bill Clinton's eight years, he was hostage to Republican policies," Brinkley said. &quot Clinton) was still a part of the era of Reagan. This is a new era, the most progressive era in politics since 1964 with Lyndon Johnson."

Despite running as a centrist, Obama has advanced liberal policies for the most part, re-inserting government as the solution three decades after Reagan characterized government as the problem. Obama's foreign policy of arms control, engagement, humility, even apology, is 180 degrees from George W. Bush's willingness to go it alone and project military power foremost in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/raasch/2009-04-16-raasch-column-04162009_N.htm

[Whisp]

6. Yes, thank you. Now where did I put are my keys?

[Denzil_DC]

7. LOL!

They're probably underneath wherever I left my lack of pedantry.

[RBInMaine]

9. FDR imprisoned the Japanese Americans & collaborated with Stalin. LBJ gave us Vietnam and gladly

used the N-word in his everyday vernacular. Obama doesn't say Reagan did everything right, not by a long shot. He just talks about how Reagan had ideas and was an effective President in his terms, like it or not. (And believe me, I'm the first to criticize many of the horrid things that happened under Reagan.)

None of these people are perfect. NONE.

[HooptieWagon]

10. And Jefferson and Washington owned slaves.

Who said any of them were perfect? I judge them by the body of work in the context of their time.

[RBInMaine]

11. You are criticizing Obama for talking invoking Reagan. Obama has only said the man had ideas and

did some big things, which he did. He never said he agreed with everything Reagan did. In fact, he said he didn't. Obama made his comments about Reagan in his effort to try to be objective and reach out across the landscape. That was his only intention. He wasn't saying he agreed with Reagan on all his policies. Comparing certain objective qualities doesn't mean agreeing with that person's policies.

You criticize Obama and praise LBJ and FDR. They too had their personal faults and policy faults. FDR had affairs. LBJ used the N-word routinely. And more. Both did many great things. Both did some horrid things. No president, politician of any kind, or human being is perfect. And I'm glad you agree with that.

[NYC Liberal]

8. Obama is our most liberal, progressive president in decades.

NO president should attempt to "be another FDR". Obama didn't and we are better for it. Obama is Obama. The greatest presidents are the ones who made their own mark and didn't try to be someone else.

Obama is exactly the president we need at this time. We needed a calm-headed, rational, LIBERAL in the White House and we got one.

[mikekohr]

12. Great Post. nt