Culture Wars – Page 23 – The Wrongologist

The Pandering Pant Load

Trump is a thin-skinned Pandering Pant Load© with rabbit ears: He hears everything that is said about him and responds to it all. Say something, and @realDonaldTrump will tweet back something nasty.

We saw two examples of his pandering in the past few days. First, Trump attended “Rolling Thunder” an annual event which brings hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists to DC to raise money for POW-MIA’s of the Vietnam War. On Sunday, He told about 5,000 that illegal migrants in the US are often better cared for than the nation’s military veterans:

Thousands of people are dying waiting in line to see a doctor. That is not going to happen anymore

Although Trump has used this comparison of the treatment of immigrants and veterans before, it isn’t true. Congress and many states have written an assortment of laws and policies designed to restrict government services to people living in the country illegally.

Could Congress do more for vets? Absolutely. Do we do less for them than we do for illegals? NO.

We know that the Pandering Pant Load© claimed to have raised $6 million for veteran’s groups, including $1 million of his own money when he held a fundraiser for veterans’ causes in place of an Iowa debate that he skipped.

But so far, he hasn’t distributed it, or said where it is going. He is expected to hold a news conference today to announce the names of the charities selected to receive the money. We’ll see.

Still, when you tell an interest group that you will do more for them than we do for illegals, you are setting the bar very low.

Second, the Pandering Pant Load© supposedly told House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) he supports cutting Social Security but cannot admit it publicly because it would hurt his election chances, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Trump said of cutting Social Security:

From a moral standpoint, I believe in it…But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’

Bloomberg reported that The Pandering Pant Load© made the above comments during the May 12 meeting with Mr. Ryan aimed at improving ties between them, citing an unnamed source who was in the room.

So the deal was made, and what we have been watching is theater. And from a “moral standpoint”, Trump just lies about what he plans to do, because his audience is against it?

HuffPo reported that Trump’s opposition to cutting Social Security (SS) has been both a hallmark of his campaign and one of his greatest departures from traditional conservative ideology. Now it seems, he is simply pandering. Consider this:

Many conservative House Republicans told The Huffington Post shortly after the May 12 meeting with Ryan that that they were unconcerned about Trump’s public posture on Social Security.
Why? Because Trump policy advisor Sam Clovis had already appeared to reverse course on May 11, indicating that Trump would be willing to consider cuts as president.

The media have their nice, shiny Trump, and they have signed on for the whole ride, so don’t expect to hear much more about his pandering.

The Pant Load will try to dupe people (this week, Vietnam Vets and the middle class) into voting against their interests, because he is sure that they can’t be bothered to pay enough attention to understand that he’s lying.

The truth is that SS faces a funding gap beginning in 2034. Without Congressional action to either raise the program’s revenues or scale back benefits, there will be an across-the-board benefit cut of approximately 20%.

We all know this.

Why is the Pandering Pant Load© being dishonest about it? Maybe the real shock shouldn’t be that Trump is devoid of integrity; if he’s breathing, he’s lying.

It’s that his base doesn’t seem to care that he’ll throw them under the bus without a second thought.

The Pant Load Party

Happy Friday! You are busy, and don’t need a long-form note from Wrongo. But, here are a few items you may have missed that accurately describe the Republican Party today:

First, The GOP didn’t follow its own rules during a vote on Thursday. The subject was a measure to ensure protections for the LGBT community in federal contracts, and it failed to pass after “initially passing” during the time allotted for members to vote. Then, the Republican leadership urged their members to change their votes. The leadership kept the vote open as they pressured members to change sides, allowing lawmakers switch their votes without following the “Regular Order” process of walking to the well at the front of the chamber.

By changing their votes, the House GOP inserted a poison pill that overrides Obama’s executive order banning LGBTQ discrimination in federal defense contracts. From The Hill:

Initially, it appeared Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s (D-NY) amendment had passed, as 217 “yes” votes piled up over 206 “no” votes when the clock ran out. The measure needed 213 votes to pass. But it eventually failed, 212-213, after a number of Republican lawmakers changed their votes from “yes” to “no” after the clock had expired.

The Perfect Rock Albums?

Monday was the 50th anniversary of the release of two of the most important albums in classic rock’s canon, and it shouldn’t slip by unnoticed: Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” and the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.” Today, both are considered among the first (and finest) concept rock albums.

Its difficult to believe they came out on the same day.

Let’s start with “Pet Sounds”: It wasn’t an immediate sensation in the US, making it to #10 on Billboard’s list, significantly below what was then expected of a Beach Boys album. Capitol Records even rushed out a Greatest Hits package to keep the BBs in the forefront of the public’s mind.

Over time, however, Pet Sounds has come to occupy a place in the upper echelons of Rock’s best-of lists.

The album opens with “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and contains “God Only Knows”, “Sloop John B” and “Caroline, No”, all great Beach Boys tunes.

For the album’s closer, 23-year-old Brian Wilson was thinking of his teenage crush on a cheerleader named Carol Mountain. In 1966, Wilson had discovered that Mountain was married and still living in their home town of Hawthorne, CA not far from his home in Hollywood. Though both were married, Wilson began to call Carol Mountain, who had no inkling of his true feelings until decades later.

Though they didn’t meet in person, Wilson grew depressed that the torch he carried for Mountain had begun to dim. He told that to Tony Asher, who penned a chorus in the form of a dialogue between the two: “Oh, Carol, I know.” Wilson misheard this as “Caroline, No,” giving the song its title.

Here is “Caroline, No”:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email you can view the video here.

Next, Bob Dylan’s “Blonde On Blonde” also released on May 16, 1966. Recorded in Nashville, it was the first double LP in rock music, and it is the final piece of a trilogy of albums released in a creative burst over 15 months in 1965 and 1966, beginning with “Bringing It All Back Home”, then followed by “Highway 61 Revisited”.

Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-20 hits in the US: “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “I Want You“. Two additional songs, “Just Like a Woman” and “Visions of Johanna“, have been named as among Dylan’s greatest compositions and are included in Rolling Stone‘s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.

Side two of four is the strongest, with “I Want You”; “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”; “Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat” and “Just like a Woman”. Side Four has one track, an 11 minute “Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands”.

“Blonde on Blonde” is part of Wrongo’s ultimate Dylan playlist, along with “Blood on the Tracks”.

The album’s first Nashville session would produce “Visions of Johanna,” which Dylan first debuted in 1965. At seven minutes+, it set the tone for the longer songs that are all over “Blonde on Blonde”.

Here is “Visions of Johanna”:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

When you think of favorite albums, you must ask: Is it the album you play when you want to hear some Beach Boys or Dylan? When was the last time you played it? When formats shifted from LPs to CDs, was it one of the first dozen or so CDs you went out and got? Did you ever replace the LP with the CD?

Are they albums you started your children’s rock appreciation with?

Your mileage may vary.

Is Trump Our Next Andrew Jackson?

(This is our second column about how the history of a progressive Democratic President has meaning today. You can read the first here)

From Politico:

America has never seen a presidential candidate like this before. Detractors point to his lack of political experience, his poor grasp of policy, his alleged autocratic leanings and his shady past. They believe this man without much of a political platform (but with interesting hair) has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to be president. Yet in defiance of conventional wisdom, he is leading his three main rivals in the race for the White House, and party bigwigs are at a loss how to respond.

No, it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Andrew Jackson, and the year is 1824.

We think of Jackson as the quintessential American populist, a president who took on the banks (well, one bank, the Second National Bank, yesteryear’s Fed). Jackson was a general in the Army, the guy who won the Battle of New Orleans against the British. He was a lawyer, elected into the House of Representatives, and a Senator from Tennessee, all before he was a two-term President.

So, not quite the same resume as the Short-Fingered Vulgarian.

Jackson was born in the backwoods of the South, his father died before he was born, and his mother raised him with the collective support of her family. He was the first member of his family to be born in the New World. He lost one brother in combat during the Revolution; another died as a POW. His mother died while nursing American prisoners. Jackson was, by today’s standards, a child soldier.

He was also the greatest war hero of his generation. And he once took a musket ball in the chest before killing a rival in a duel.

Can you picture Mr. Foul-Mouthed Comb-Over participating in a duel?

Jackson ran for president three times, winning a least a plurality of the popular vote each time. But in his first try in 1824, the election was decided in the House of Representatives, and the presidency went to John Quincy Adams.

Jackson was a fabulous campaigner. Tens of thousands flocked to see this charismatic outsider who positioned himself as a steadfast defender of the Republic. Jackson’s rallies dwarfed those of his rivals, yet he had plenty of baggage.

Jackson was, his rivals believed, more of a celebrity than a serious candidate. They learned a tough lesson, as are Trump’s Republican rivals today.

The dominant political party in 1824 were the Democratic-Republicans. It was the party of Thomas Jefferson. Founded in the 1790s, it believed in an agrarian-based, decentralized, democratic government. The party opposed the Federalists who had authored and ratified the US Constitution. By 1830, the Democratic-Republican Party had been split in two. Adams, in league with Henry Clay, favored modernization, banks, and federal spending for roads, which the Andrew Jackson faction (the Democrats) opposed.

We see a similar party split looming on both sides today. And there are other parallels. The 1820’s were a time of discontent, financial panics, threats of rebellion, and outbursts of violence. Both the agrarian and new industrial classes felt that the central government was either hostile, or indifferent to their needs. They felt that equal rights for all had been replaced by a plutocratic class who kept most of the benefits to itself.

Today, Jackson is less likely to be portrayed as the champion of the working class than as a big-time slaveholder and Indian fighter. His infamous policy of Indian Removal supported the confiscation of Native American lands and their eviction west of the Mississippi. This led to the “Trail of Tears” the forced removal of nearly 125,000 Native Americans from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida.

There is a similarity between Jackson’s Indian Relocation act and Trump’s proposed “deport all illegal Hispanics” policy. A big difference between Trump and Jackson is that Jackson was pro-immigrant; he enjoyed political support in the cities of the North, particularly among the Irish immigrants who had recently arrived in the US.

Jackson started out with very limited resources, whereas Trump has inherited wealth. Jackson took on the greatest army in the world at the time, and won. Trump led pranks at his military high school.

Jackson worked his way up the political ladder and had considerable experience in government at local, state and national levels, while Trump ran one losing campaign, and is now embarked on a second.

Jackson was opposed to big banks, whereas Trump owes his success to the big banks.

2016 shapes up as a change election, like 1932, 1860 or Jackson’s in 1828. As in 1828, the Establishment Republicans may finally see what 40 years of promising their base one thing, and then doing exactly the opposite reaps.

That same threat is facing the Democrats.

We’ve Had Threats To Our Constitutional Rights Before

“The Past Is Never Dead, It Is Not Even Past” – Faulkner

Does this sound familiar?

They called for imprisonment of Americans who came from a foreign country. They called for shutting down immigration from certain countries and deporting the immigrants already here. They were for stifling dissent against a looming foreign war by calling the anti-war protestors traitors. They passed laws that curtailed several rights granted in the Bill of Rights.

An administration worked hard to “sell” a war to the American people.

This is not America in the post-9/11 period, it was during World War I, not during Iraq, or our current battle against ISIS.

And it occurred while a progressive Democrat was in the White House.

On April 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson delivered his war message to Congress. The US, Wilson said, was to embark upon a crusade to “make the world safe for democracy“. Unfortunately, Wilson’s administration gave rise to the greatest attack upon civil liberties (up to that time) since the passage of the Sedition Act in 1798.

Wilson had two problems. First, the citizenry had to be mobilized behind a war effort that did not involve a direct attack on the US. Second, he felt a need to guarantee our internal security against both real and imagined enemies. To solve the first problem, in April, 1917, Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI), under the leadership of George Creel, a respected progressive. The Committee’s job was to convince citizens that the war was righteous, and to educate all Americans about American war goals.

Writers turned out “true” stories concerning what the Germans planned to do to America; speakers toured the nation delivering anti-German talks. Movie audiences thrilled to “Pershing’s Crusaders” and came by the thousands to hate the enemy by watching dramas such as “The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin.”

Congress also enacted laws that curtailed our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and press. Shortly after Wilson’s war message, in June, 1917, the Espionage Act was passed. This made it a crime to make false reports which would aid the enemy, incite rebellion among the armed forces, or obstruct recruiting or the draft. In practice, it was used to stifle dissent and radical criticism.

In October, 1917, another law required foreign language newspapers to submit translations of all war-related stories or editorials before distribution to local readers.

In May, 1918, the Sedition Act bolstered the Espionage Act. It provided penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment for the willful writing, uttering, or publication of material abusing the government, showing contempt for the Constitution, or inciting others to resist the government. Under this Act, it was unnecessary to prove that the language in question had affected anyone or had produced injurious consequences. In addition, the Postmaster General was empowered to deny use of the mails to anyone who, in his opinion, used them to violate the Act.

In October 1918, Congress passed the Alien Act, by which any alien who, at any time after entering the US was found to have been a member of any anarchist organization, could be deported.

Volunteer organizations sprung up, dedicated to discovering alleged traitors, saboteurs, and slackers. The volunteer groups were hyper-patriotic, and were often responsible for violations of civil liberties, although the government made no real attempt to discourage or limit their activities.

With the quiet consent of the Department of Justice, the American Protective League’s 250,000 civilian members—many of whom wore official-looking badges reading “Secret Service”—undertook vigilante actions against supposedly disloyal socialists, pacifists, and immigrants; they engaged in domestic surveillance operations; and raided businesses, meeting halls, and private homes in an effort to uncover pro-German sympathizers. As a result, force became the order of the day.

Somewhere during the fight to make the world safe for democracy, Americans lost their tolerance, compassion and mercy, and much of their democratic ideals.

Does this sound familiar?

The various Acts of 1917 and 1918 helped destroy what remained of the left wing in America. Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to Congress, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for hindering the war effort. Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for making an anti-war speech.

On November 11, 1918, the Allies and Germany signed an armistice: the war was over.

The American public had shown a willingness to tolerate and even to participate in censorship, mugging, imprisoning, harassment, and forced deportation of Americans who didn’t agree with them.

Given where we are today, it could easily happen again.

Don’t bet against it.

“The Oven is Preheating, But Your Goose is Not Yet Cooked.”

The quote above is from “City on Fire” (Knopf, 2015) a novel by Garth Risk Hallberg that describes NYC in the 1970s when it was both dangerous and in decay. And it aptly describes the current phase of American politics. What we are seeing with Trump, and to a lesser extent with Sanders, is that angry white working class people have decided to overturn our election process.

Maybe not in 2016, but certainly by 2020.

It shouldn’t be difficult to understand, since wages for working class white males peaked in 1968, 48 years ago. For their entire working lives, conditions for working class males have been getting worse. Here is a chart from the WSJ:

White Men in Labor Force

For white working-class men in their 30s and 40s, in what should be the prime decades for working and raising a family, participation in the labor force dropped from 96% in 1968 to 79% in 2015. Over that same period, the portion of these men who were married dropped from 86% to 52%. (The numbers for nonwhite working-class males show declines as well, though not as steep, and not as continuous.)

What Will The Anger in Today’s Politics Create?

From part one of the WaPo’s four-part article, The Great Unsettling:

So much anger out there in America.

Anger at Wall Street. Anger at Muslims. Anger at trade deals. Anger at Washington. Anger at police shootings of young black men. Anger at President Obama. Anger at Republican obstructionists. Anger about political correctness. Anger about the role of big money in campaigns. Anger about the poisoned water of Flint, Mich. Anger about deportations. Anger about undocumented immigrants. Anger about a career that didn’t go as expected. Anger about a lost way of life. Mob anger at groups of protesters in their midst. Specific anger and undefined anger and even anger about anger.

And more:

In this season of discontent, there were still as many expressions of hope as of fear. On a larger level, there were as many communities enjoying a sense of revival as there were fighting against deterioration and despair.

We do not really know which party will pay the piper in November; the results are not even close to being knowable. Right now, the middle ground between the two parties has become more permeable than ever before in living memory, in large part due to failed expectations by both parties.

The Democratic Party has a deep fault line between its FDR-inspired branch, and its corporatist branch, represented these days by Hillary Clinton, which uses a surface fealty to social issues to differentiate it from the Republicans.

The country lucked out with FDR. He was a pragmatist, with no love of theory, and a willingness to entertain any idea on the basis of whether it would “work” or not. He was better than most other pols because, more than any other president after Lincoln, he was willing to look objectively at the ideas proposed by the left. Here is FDR on October 31, 1936, reflecting on his first term:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.

FDR was also willing to look at right wing ideas. In fact, he campaigned in 1932 on the promise of balancing the budget, an idea that could have been catastrophic. He revived the idea in his second term, almost sinking the New Deal, but the better ideas won out.

By contrast, the Republican Party is a collection of “high-minded” people, each with an obsession from which she/he cannot be dissuaded; like believing that tax cuts create massive GNP growth, or as Donald Trump believes, America can have tax cuts, undertake a huge military buildup and balance the budget without any cuts in benefits to Americans over 55.

Republicans continue to think the US is a “Christian” nation, they think only English should be spoken, and that all immigrants should be deported, and some believe that the 16th Amendment (allowing the federal government to levy taxes) should be repealed.

By contrast, the Democratic Party is a coalition of broad-minded people, trying always to stitch together interest groups and their needs with a leader of consequence to deliver change.

There are two schools of political thought when it comes to elections:

Vote for the person, not the party
Vote for the party, not the person

Democrats believe in #1, while Republicans believe in #2. This is why R’s will accept Trump as a presidential candidate, and it is why Dems think that is a crazy idea.

But Republicans didn’t count on Donald Trump, or his hostile takeover of their Party.

The question for the rest of 2016 is whether all of the manifest anger expressed by Americans will be put to good use, or if it will be used to give voice to thuggery and racism (Trump) or religious extremism (Cruz).

Public service is a duty and the calling doesn’t come quickly or easily. And that high-mindedness is absent in those that go into politics to gain personal wealth and power, like The Donald, or most of those in Congress.

Super Tuesday Part Trois

A little music to get you to (or through) today’s primary election, particularly if you are in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio or North Carolina.

We’ll see if it is still a race in both parties @11:00pm.

Here is “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who. It was released as a 3+ minute single in June 1971, reaching the top 10 in the UK. But the full 8 1/2 minute version appeared as the final track on the band’s 1971 album Who’s Next, released that August.

In 2011, the song was ranked number 134 on Rolling Stone’s The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

When will we not be fooled? When we learn the facts. Knowledge is the first step to resisting the BS. When you know the facts, politicians can’t fool you.

Here is “Won’t Get Fooled Again”:

Here are the lyrics:
We’ll be fighting in the streets with our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again

The change, it had to come, we knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same and history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they are flown in the last war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again, no no

I’ll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
Though I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?

There’s nothing in the streets, looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

Yeah
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Has The Progressive Moment Returned?

(This is the second and final column on the Progressive Movement)

Few issues in the history of 20th and 21st century America have inspired more disagreement than the value of the Progressive movement to our society. Our high school texts taught that it was a movement by the people to curb the power of the special interests in our government:

COW Bosses

The Bosses of the Senate by Joseph Keppler, 1889

The 1890s Progressive Movement was a response to dislocations in American life. There had been rapid industrialization of the economy, but there had been no corresponding changes in social and political institutions. Economic power had moved to ever larger private businesses, while social and political life remained centered primarily in local communities, even within rapidly growing cities, with great variability in quality of life.

But early Progressives believed that the problems society faced (poverty, violence, greed, racism, class warfare) could best be addressed by providing good education, better working conditions and an efficient workplace. The desire to regulate big business was mostly focused on creating a fair(er) deal for small businesses and workers. Others encouraged Americans to register to vote, fight political corruption, and let the voting public decide how issues should best be addressed (via direct election of senators, the initiative, and the referendum).

Essentially the struggle was a clash between the “public interest” and “corporate privilege.”

Daniel Rodgers’s Atlantic Crossings (1998), shows how European reforms at the time influenced American progressives, suggesting that the movement was not just an American phenomenon, but had roots in a European process of change. He describes the international roots of social reforms such as city planning, workplace regulation, rural cooperatives, municipal transportation, and public housing that traveled across the ocean to our shores.

This is something we see today. Populist movements from the left and the right are roiling Europe, just as they are in America.

In the mid-1930s, the New Deal allowed the country to return to a pent-up agenda of its Progressive past. Once again, we had an economic crisis, once again, the power of business was outsized versus the power of the worker.

Another Roosevelt reformer stepped into the role of Progressive-in-Chief. But where Teddy was a Republican, FDR was a Democrat. Regardless, change again ensued.

We hear Progressivism referred to as synonymous with the American welfare state. But, the original Progressives did not believe that a ‘welfare state’ was an end goal. In fact, the term ‘welfare state’ did not come into currency until the end of the 1940s, as a new label in the Republican Party’s attack on Social Security and other programs of the New Deal.

As we wrote in the review of One Nation Under God (2015) by Kevin Kruse, James Fifield, a minister who worked to bring Corporate America and Christians together said in 1935:

Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal…

Overall, Kruse’s book is an excellent analysis of how Christian fundamentalism and capitalism were conflated in the 1950s to erode the divide between church and state, re-casting Progressive political philosophy as both “un-American”, and “anti-Christian” at the same time.

Progressives were called Reds or socialists. It was a charge that would follow Progressives throughout the 20th Century, whenever Progressives returned to the cause of economic equality.

In American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2012), Michael Kazin shows that the US is unique among Western nations in that we never developed a viable, left-wing political movement. Unlike Europe, a progressive party has never succeeded in establishing more than a temporary foothold in American politics, despite the hysterical rhetoric of conservatives. We have had a Congressional Progressive Caucus only since 1991. It is comprised of one Senator and 75 Congress people, all Democrats.

Yet, Progressives still have had great success in shaping American society. During presidencies from LBJ to GW Bush, there was far more radical dissent in the US than at any time in the 1950s. Millions of Americans, perhaps a majority, came to reject racial and sexual discrimination, to question the need for and morality of military intervention abroad, and to worry that industrial growth might be destroying the climate.

Since Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party in 1912, Progressives have had little historic influence on electoral politics. In the earliest days of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, it was thought that his role was not to win the election, but to slip a few liberal planks into Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. But on the campaign trail, Sanders started drawing crowds of thousands, his ratings surged, and his became a Progressive moment in electoral politics.

Today, Progressivism is a cause in search of a candidate.

Many have called our time a new Gilded Age.

If so, the question then becomes whether Progressivism can once again move back into the halls of government, and be a positive force for change.

1890s Progressivism: When the Movement Worked

Last week, Wrongo read “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism” by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon and Schuster, 2013). The book covers the birth of the Progressive Era, a period of social activism and political reform across the US, from the 1890s to 1920.

For context about the times, does any of this sound familiar?

The gap between rich and poor has never been wider…legislative stalemate paralyzes the country…corporations resist federal regulations…spectacular mergers produce giant companies…the influence of money in politics deepens…bombs explode in crowded streets…small wars proliferate far from our shores…a dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life.

That was the political landscape in the 1890s. This was the time of the Gilded Age, a time of income and wealth inequality. From 1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third of the nation’s wealth, while the top 10% owned roughly three-fourths of it. The bottom 40% had no wealth at all.

“The Bully Pulpit” tries to do three things simultaneously: It is a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and a biography of William Howard Taft; third, it introduces us to McClure’s magazine and the rise of Muckraking journalism. The muckrakers were investigative reporters who exposed corrupt politicians and business leaders at all levels. Goodwin includes mini-bios of Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker and William A. White, all of whom were titans of investigative journalism at the time. A key finding by Goodwin is how TR encouraged the Muckrakers. He offered them access and friendship, and received information about the problems they were investigating, a synergy that enabled both to influence policy and politics for 30 years.

Consider the times: Corporations were ascendant. Politicians were reluctant to involve the federal government too heavily in the private sector. In general, they accepted the concept of laissez-faire, opposing government interference in the economy except to maintain law and order. This attitude started to change during the depression of the 1890s when small businesses, farmers, and labor movements began asking the government to intercede on their behalf.

By the start of the 20th century, the middle class was leery of the emerging corporate giants called “Trusts”. The Trusts consolidated businesses, using horizontal (controlling competitors) or vertical integration (controlling supply and distribution), and thus, created monopolies. For example, John D. Rockefeller drove other oil companies out of business and created a giant oil company, Standard Oil.

The Progressives argued the need for government regulation of business practices to ensure competition and free enterprise. Under President Benjamin Harrison, Congress regulated railroads in 1887 (the Interstate Commerce Act), and in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prevented large firms from controlling a single industry. But, these laws were not rigorously enforced until Teddy Roosevelt, vice president under McKinley, became president after McKinley’s assassination in 1901.

Roosevelt and William Howard Taft became close friends when both were part of the Harrison administration in 1888. Taft became a key member of President Roosevelt’s cabinet, and later his handpicked successor, in the election of 1908. While TR thought Taft a “genuine Progressive”, Taft was not the politician that TR was, and he was by temperament, more conservative. In 1910, TR broke bitterly with Taft on a series of issues and when in the 1912 nomination process, Roosevelt failed to block Taft’s re-nomination, he launched the Bull Moose Party. This ultimately led to them both losing in 1912 to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who also ran as a Progressive.

This wave of reforms was continued by Wilson. The legacy of the Progressive Era includes the Pure Food and Drug act, the progressive income tax, direct election of senators and the women’s vote.

All of this makes “Bully Pulpit” a very long book at 928 pages. But, it is a very worthwhile read, particularly since many of the same issues we face today were in full flower back then. And it is remarkable how similar the political and ideological arguments of the time are nearly identical to the arguments today.

The book gives us some hope that, at one time, divided government could morph into a movement that won by embracing progressive values. That happened because interest groups, including farmers, small businesses and unions joined together with local governments, journalists like the Muckrakers, and sympathetic politicians of both parties to energize a movement that was directed at solving specific problems – the consequences of the Gilded Age.

Can it happen again? Can investigative journalism return, or is it dead?

Tomorrow, we will take a look at why Progressivism died and was then reborn under another Roosevelt.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Culture Wars