FDR Didn't Appoint big Lefties to his cabinet...

[liberalpragmatist]

... his Secretary of the State was Cordell Hull - impeccably establishment.

His first Secretary of the Treasury was a prominent Wall Street Republican. His second, Morgenthau, was a fiscally-conservative Wall Street Democrat.

His Agriculture Secretary, Henry A. Wallace and his Interior Secretary, Harold Ickes (a close associate and author of much of the New Deal), were also Republicans. Both, granted, moved left (especially Wallace).

His cabinet was very establishment. Plenty of people -- Socialists, Anarchists, populists, derided FDR's program as too centrist and his picks as the same people who got Americans into the mess that was the Depression.

If you had read the biographies or political profiles of ANY of FDR's cabinet members (including FDR himself), you would never have guessed anything as radical as the New Deal would have come into being -- all were wealthy, establishment pols who had often championed the laissez-faire policies that lead to the Depression. (Remember, prior to the Depression, Herbert Hoover, who had backed Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 and nearly ran for president as a Democrat in 1920, had been known as a "Progressive".)

The point is that it's the person at the top who shapes policy. And policies are often forged by the times -- most of our major periods of reform throughout history -- the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Great Society -- all came at the hands of establishment pols and figures who had never been seen as particularly radical beforehand.

The current economic crisis and our foreign relations crises will do a lot to shape policy. For all the angry debate over whether Obama's cabinet picks are "progressive" enough, the whole debate is very '90s -- at this point, movement progressives have WON much of the argument on the center-left -- even Larry Summers is pushing for major tax reforms and universal health care to reduce inequality.

Watch the policies -- the people are secondary.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Pointed this out yesterday... but this history thing is a red herring

according to some

Also, to add to your point, he did not run on the New Deal either and was a "safe choice" and a centrist as Governor of New York

[Radical Activist]

25. Oh please

You were using it to duck a point. Proving that FDR was a moderate doesn't prove that Obama is a moderate. You never did back up that claim.

And you're wrong about the history anyway. The New Deal started in the first 90 days. Here's FDR's 1932 nomination speech where he talks about the New Deal and presents himself as a standard bearer for liberalism:
http://newdeal.feri.org/speeches/1932b.htm

"As we enter this new battle, let us keep always present with us some of the ideals of the Party: The fact that the Democratic Party by tradition and by the continuing logic of history, past and present, is the bearer of liberalism and of progress and at the same time of safety to our institutions."

"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. That theory belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776. But it is not and never will be the theory of the Democratic Party."

"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."

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. Oh please.....

whatever....

[Warpy]

2. That's exactly why I'm withholding judgment on Obama's picks

I also know he needs people who are experienced in the wicked ways of government and can get things done and that means people from Clinton's administration. Remember, the only other pool would have been from Carter's administration, and many of them are in nursing homes.

What we have with the incoming administration is a chance things will be improved over time.

We had no chance at all with a McCain/Palin administration.

[Two Americas]

3. that is not relevant

The Left spoke out, dissented, and had power and solidarity and was able to pressure the FDR administration and move it to the Left.

This debate here is not about what Obama does, or is, or said, it is about whether or not it is legitimate or desirable for those on the Left to speak out, or whether they should be dismissed and discounted because they are disloyal or "hurting" the new administration.

In the FDR administration, it was not the "person at the top who who shaped policy" that led to the successes of the administration, it was the people.

Saying that FDR appointed conservatives, and that it is not the people in the administration but rather the polices that matter, is true but is only part of the story. You are leaving out the most important ingredient - the people who dissented and forced the administration to move to the Left and meet the needs of the people by doing things such as questioning the appointment of conservative people to the cabinet.

I agree that we should "give them a chance" - the way we do that, first, is to say that we reject and oppose their previous positions and actions. That way they know what it is we are "giving them a chance" to do.

People can change. Events can transform people. But that is no reason for any of us to remain silent and hope.

It is s a little misleading to say that FDR's appointees were Republicans, and leave it at that. While Wallace, for instance, was a liberal Republican originally, he switched parties and later ran for president on the Progressive ticket on 1948. He championed many progressive causes, including demanding that "labor clauses" be included in trade deals with Latin America that required fair wages and decent working conditions for the workers in those countries.

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. Good points, all.

>>>>People can change. Events can transform people. But that is no reason for any of us to remain silent and hope.

It is s a little misleading to say that FDR's appointees were Republicans, and leave it at that. While Wallace, for instance, was a liberal Republican originally, he switched parties and later ran for president on the Progressive ticket on 1948. He championed many progressive causes, including demanding that "labor clauses" be included in trade deals with Latin America that required fair wages and decent working conditions for the workers in those countries.>>>


>>>>The Left spoke out, dissented, and had power and solidarity and was able to pressure the FDR administration and move it to the Left.>>>>



Off topic , but, the next bio of Wallace should be subtitled.... "Hidden from History" . Apparently you cannot get a copy of *any* Wallace bio from, get this, the NY Public Library. I tried; I failed.

But you can doubtless get the memoirs of Harry Truman's wife's chauffeur. Had the bosses not dumped Wallace in '44 in favor of the little man from the Pendergast machine, the whole of the post world war two era would have had a completely different... and probably more palatable flavor.

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. Largely true but not true of Wallace.

>>>>>If you had read the biographies or political profiles of ANY of FDR's cabinet members (including FDR himself), you would never have guessed anything as radical as the New Deal would have come into being -- all were wealthy, establishment pols who had often championed the laissez-faire policies that lead to the Depression.>>>>>

He was a republican but a liberal republican ( there were quite a few of them in those post TR days and they were often to the left of the DEMs) and something of a freethinker. Yes, his old man served under... I think it was Harding.... but Henry was not his old man.

And he had the guru letters to prove it.

[bean fidhleir]

35. "there were quite a few liberal Republicans then, often to the left of the Dems"

Very true, as can be seen in Williams's bio of Huey Long. Huey's starkest right-wing opponent was a Dem (Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas), and a man who tried to carry on Huey's work after he was murdered was a Republican (Wm Langer of ND: "I doubt whether any other man was so conscious of the plight of the underprivileged or knew better the ruthlessness of those in control. And it was because Huey Long knew how to fight, knew how to fight fire with fire, knew how to combat ruthlessness with ruthlessness, force with force, and because he had the courage to battle unceasingly for what he conceived to be right that he became an inspiration for so many in their own fight for a square deal, and the object of such relentless persecution on the part of his enemies.

The fight he waged was such a desperate one that even in death he has not been immune from attack. So we find that five years after his body had been lowered into the grave - that grave which will forever be a shrine for those who love decency, honor, and justice - attempts are still being made to besmirch his character.

This is not fooling the farmer, the worker, the small businessman; it is not fooling the child who can read today because of the free textbooks that Huey Long obtained; it is not fooling the citizen who can vote today because Huey Long abolished poll taxes.

These people know from Huey Long's life that, as they fight for the better things, there will always be the inspiration that fighting with them in spirit will be that fearless, dauntless, unmatchable champion of the common people, Huey P. Long." (1941 speech)).

[KakistocracyHater]

50. what a beautiful speech

we need some like that today. "Warm Springs" with Kenneth Branaugh playing FDR before he was president was a tremendous film for me to watch, it came out I think in 2005.

[Selatius]

5. FDR did run as a centrist and barely won, but that was enough.

FDR had no choice but to start the New Deal. Large segments of the US population were angry, and many were flirting around with the idea of communism or fascism. Several industrialists tried to have FDR overthrown so that the US could emulate Hitler's model in Europe at the time.

[Two Americas]

8. and they were organized

The people were organized and militant. They did not sit back and "give the administration a chance," nor did they discourage dissent by calling people disloyal or destructive if they failed to place all of their trust in the new administration. Those who did counsel that approach were those hoping that the administration would move to the right, and who disguised that by waging an all out fear and smear campaign against the Left to mislead and confuse people. We are seeing the same thing happen today.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. FDR barely won???

Maybe you should take a look at the Red-Blue map for 1932. The Roosevelt-Hoover contest wasn't exactly a squeaker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1932

[Selatius]

20. Wow, nevermind. I was confusing JFK v. Nixon election.

That was a squeaker of an election.

[leftstreet]

7. We don't HAVE any "big Lefties" anymore!

Comparing the 1930s to 2008 in terms of powerful Leftist movements in the US, is just...bizarre.

[w4rma]

9. Yeah, well I'm not taking any chances that Obama is FDR in a center-right's clothing.

I see who his picks are and who he is giving his ear to and I'm not happy with them since they were none of the people who had the foresight to do the right thing when it was hard.

[Radical Activist]

26. So what are you going to do about it?

[MadMaddie]

11. Thanks for pointing this History out.

I don't understand why people don't get it, it really is the leadership that counts. The right leadership with the right people has been proven to be a success.

[Captain Hilts]

13. FDR did have lefties in his cabinet and in govt. agencies. nt

[MadMaddie]

21. Yes he did

It was a mixture of people right?

They made it work that's all I am saying. We have seen a lot of posts that say there should only be left, ultra liberal personel under Obama. Obama see's a bigger picture and it will have to include qualified personel no matter what their stripes.

[Captain Hilts]

12. WRONG! Wallace and Ickes were VERY left. And Perkins and Morgenthau had a serious left tilt....

then there was William O. Douglas, Eleanor, Harry Hopkins, Will Alexander, David Lilienthall, Rex Tugwell.

ALL serious lefties.

[liberalpragmatist]

15. Morgenthau was a very strong fiscal conservative

Who pushed FDR to cut spending and raise taxes in 1937 -- which was a big cause of the '37-'38 recession.

He had VERY good relations with Wall Street.

And I acknowledged that both Ickes and Wallace (Wallace, esp.) moved sharply left.

Moreover, very few of FDR's picks -- with some exceptions, like Perkins -- were considered big lefties in the '20s. Most of them were radicalized by the '30s and came to embrace far-reaching policies they never would have supported earlier on.

My point is not that FDR and his people didn't come to embrace liberal policies -- in fact many, esp. Tugwell and Wallace, were influence by the (apparent) success of the Soviet Union in industrialization and equity -- rather, they were NOT people who would have been seen as likely to impose anything like the New Deal some years before the Depression.

[Captain Hilts]

16. They acted pretty radically when he was Gov of NYS. nt

[liberalpragmatist]

17. Not really

Roosevelt got a reputation as a relatively progressive governor, but the actions he took as president were far more radical than anything he did as governor.

As it was, he ran for president as a centrist and attacked Hoover's spending and tax hikes.

[w4rma]

39. So what you're saying is that if FDR's history is any guide, then Obama will muddle around for years

with right-wing policies as we sink deeper into a depression before his cabinet picks finally figure out that a New Progressive Deal is what would have fixed the problems to start with?

[hfojvt]

19. thanks for mentioning Perkins

as I found out a few months ago

"FDR's biography, part 2 is on PBS at 8:00 central.

They mentioned his secretary of labor and said 'she'. Which kinda blew my mind. A woman in the cabinet way back in 1932!

She was the first woman in the cabinet and served longer than anybody else, for twelve years. Wiki says:

"s Secretary of Labor, Perkins played a key role writing New Deal legislation, including minimum-wage laws. However, her most important contribution came in 1934 as chairwoman of the President's Committee on Economic Security. In this post, she was involved in all aspects of the reports and hearings that ultimately resulted in the Social Security Act of 1935."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Perkins "

According to that account "Perkins played a key role"

[Captain Hilts]

14. Here's a 1933 photograph that refutes this statement...

Ickes, Tugwell, Wallace, FDR...

[Odin2005]

18. This is pretty much what I've been trying to explain to the Obama-bashers.

Though to be somewhat fair to them, FDR was actually forced to turn hard-left out of fear of a Huey Long dictatorship, he was by preference quite centrist, leading to the stupid spending cuts in 1937 that caused the economy to slip back into recession.

[Two Americas]

24. the "Obama bashers"

FDR moved to the Left because there were strong Left win organizations forcing him to move to the Left. It is self-contradictory to say that therefore critics from the Left today are just "Obama bashers" and are to be ignored and dismissed. The opposite is true, if we go by the FDR example.

You think Obama is being "bashed?" It is very mild and tame compared to the pressure on FDR from the Left.

[Odin2005]

27. My use of the turm "bashers" is because of my concern about Naderite trolls over anything else.

[Two Americas]

29. are there any?

Are there any "Naderite trolls?" I think Nader has worthwhile things to say, and I think we should consider what he has to say. I would never vote for him, but I do not think he has hurt anything. I think if people want to post things about him, they should. Does that make me a "Naderite" or "a troll?"

You say you are concerned. What is the danger you see from this? what is the worry?

[Odin2005]

30. Well, I get suspicious when I hear the "there is no difference between the 2 parties" lie.

And yes, it is a lie. I though 8 years of * would of killed that meme, but it hasn't obviously. Then these people constantly bring up the Political Compass's placement of politicians, which I consider extremely flawed.

[Two Americas]

31. let's look at this

Can you not see that from a certain perspective, the statement that "there is no difference between the 2 parties" is not a lie? I am not asking you to agree with that statement, but rather to accept that it as a legitimate point of view.

It means this: "In terms of practical effect, for most of the people, in the long run and in every way that matters, there is so little difference between the two parties that we may as well say there is no significant difference." I am confident that I can make that case, to anyone with an open mind about it.

In any case, what is the great danger here? What is threatened by that statement?

[bean fidhleir]

37. As TA says, if you look at the parties in terms of what they offer to working people

compared to what working people need and deserve, there's no difference that's big enough to matter.

It's like statistical vs real-world significance. An academic is satisfied with publication, even if the results are meaningless out in the street. Not so the clinician - to the clinician, any effect too small to matter is "no difference".

[Two Americas]

40. the dirty secret

The dirty little secret of modern liberalism is that is about promoting the interests and desires of the few. A different few then the right wingers fight for, yes. For the few, there is an enormous difference between the two parties, because each party supports and protects a different small group of "winners." Modern liberalism and the Democratic party are dominated by a gentrified and aristocratic minority, very conservative on economic issues and very authoritarian, and that is why people in the general public reject liberalism and the Democratic party, and why they are so vulnerable to the fake populist appeal of the Republican party. Other than that, the general public is far to the Left of the domineering ones who control the activist community.

[bean fidhleir]

42. That's a good insight - that each party serves a different group of "winners"

AKA elites and elite-wannabes. But not the working people whose labor makes possible or outright creates all the wealth the elite owner class expropriates for pennies in the dollar.

[Two Americas]

43. yes

We have those who climb to the top of the heap through business, versus those who do so through academia or the professions, or once in a while through "counter cultural" business activities. But in both cases, they are aristocratic and anti-democratic.

We have those who think the poor should be managed with fear and discipline and those who think they should be managed with love and kindness. But both groups see poor people exactly the way they see pets.

We have those who see the poor as "lazy" and those who see the poor as "stupid." But both groups have deep contempt for the common people.

We have those who think resources should trickle down in the free market, and those who think resources should be metered out through a bureaucracy. But neither want the people to have any power or control over their own lives.

We have those who want to force people to work and "make the right choices" and those who want to encourage them to. But both want to be making decisions for others.

There are those who think everyone should fight for their place in this world, and those who think everyone should be assigned their place.

[bean fidhleir]

45. I have an acquaintance my age (near 70) who's a nearly perfect example of the Ochsian Liberal

She and her spouse haven't the money or the connections to really be members of the elite, but she's a committed reader of the elitist-oriented New Yorker and similar magazines, firmly believes in the bootstrap myth, can't quite hide her disdain of anyone who's poor, is dismissive of socialism, is (ear-reddeningly) proud of ethnic-minority people who're educated and "mainstream", supported Clark, Dean, and Edwards, dismisses Kucinich as a left-wing kook, and is rapturous about Obama.

She's also a very tireless activist for (safe, clean) liberal causes, for which I admire her a lot. And apart from her politics, I like her as a person. She's a decent, conventional, tough woman who stands up for what she believes. It's just a pity that what she believes is that everything's fine.

[CreekDog]

47. preserving Social Security versus privatizing means no difference?

Democrats working for universal or near universal healthcare and expanding it to more and more kids in the meantime?

no difference?

give me a break. :banghead:

[bean fidhleir]

48. Work on it awhile, why don't you. Look past the smoke and mirrors.

See what really gets delivered.

[CreekDog]

49. so you are backtracking that there is no difference?

you made the assertion, i countered it, you gave a non answer in response.

[bean fidhleir]

52. You're claiming differences that are rhetorical.

Social Security has been "the third rail of politics" ever since implemented. The GOP weren't going to touch it any more than they were going to mess with Choice, because there are just plain too damned many people who support both of them. Choice is a moneymaker for both wings of the Money Party, and touching SS is a political death sentence. And both parties know it.

So yes, no difference.

[brentspeak]

22. Did any of FDR's appointments help bring the economy down to its knees?

Like Summers has?

I didn't think so.

[bean fidhleir]

23. And anyone who reads serious scholarship rather than the hagiographic myths that have arisen sees

that many of the good things he gets credit for were either smoke and mirrors or things he was forced into doing to save capitalism, while the people he brought into government - the "business-oriented centrists" - created the military-industrial complex, shifted taxation down onto our shoulders from the shoulders of the wealthy, and created the consumerist economy that's killing us all. He also signed off on putting the ethnic-Japanese into concentration camps, and suppressed the free speech of political opponents.

Even looking at the timeline tells a lot.

[Captain Hilts]

28. No. nt

[bean fidhleir]

32. It's very hard to respond to something like that.

[Two Americas]

36. I will - it's easy

"Yes"

lol

[Two Americas]

33. indeed

I cite FDR, not for the purposes of lionizing him, but rather as an illustration of how far to the right the party has moved.

We look too much to leaders, to the powerful few, and not enough to the people. We trust too much in leaders, and not enough in ourselves and each other.

[bean fidhleir]

34. "We trust too much in leaders, and not enough in ourselves and each other."

Too true, that.

[LWolf]

38. Okay.

Of course, I've been "watching the policies" since Obama announced his entry into the primaries, and his policies have always been clearly centrist and center/right.

His policies fit the establishment that he is appointing. Nothing here is a surprise; he's acting true to his centrist agenda.

The only surprise is that there are still people who think that there is something liberal somewhere in his policies.

[Two Americas]

44. the critics are not "surprised"

The critics and dissidents are not "surprised" that Obama is a centrist, and are not saying anything different than they have been saying all along.

It is some of the sycophants who are surprised, though they are denying that, and they are arguing positions that are 180 degrees from what they argued before the election. To resolve the resultant internal conflict, they are projecting the way they felt before the election onto the critics, and using that as an excuse for a renewed assault on the Left.

[LWolf]

46. I've seen some of that. nt

[leftofthedial]

41. in a less partisan day,

when the spectrum was not shifted so radically to the right