We live in the new Gilded Age.
There are ample examples of the extraordinary inequality present in our country today. The Citizens United case was perhaps the slap in the face that the media needed to pay attention to the new predominance of money. Or maybe it was TARP for Wall Street and no mortgage cramdown for Maple Street. Or maybe the evidence just became too much to ignore.
A slow understanding crept into America towards the end of the 19th century that the presence of great wealth in America had a corrosive effect on the very institutions of democracy. The Populist movement, in the words of Mary Ellen Lease, tried to "raise less corn and more hell." They were routinely written off by the Eastern press, and they were equal parts Dirty Fucking Hippie and Tea Party Patriot.
In the election of 1896, the issue of wealth took the forefront in the Presidential campaign. The divisive issue of the day was monetary policy, namely would the currency expand and allow debtors a chance to escape their debts or would it remain contracted and serve existing wealth. William Jennings Bryan and the Democrats ran on free silver and an inflationary currency. William McKinley ran for the restrictive gold based currency favored by the wealth.
McKinley won and it wasn't close. Despite his appeal to the debt ridden farmers, Bryan was too scary for people in the East to welcome into power. Industrial workers were told that if Bryan won on Tuesday, don't bother coming to work on Wednesday. Bryan would continue to run for President and lose, because he was just too radical for the middle class, too associated with the raging Populist farmers.
When McKinley - fresh off his victory over Spain - ran for re-election in 1900, Senator Platt of New York wanted to get rid of his new crusading reformist governor, Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt, having won laurels in Cuba, had been swept into power in Albany and proved to be beyond the control of Platt and the Republican Party bosses. Platt figured the perfect place to hide away this brash reformer was in the office that has been described as a "bucket of warm piss": The Vice Presidency.
Enter, Leon Czolgosz. An anarchist, Czolgosz met McKinley at an Exposition in Buffalo and shot him. Suddenly, hiding Teddy Roosevelt in the Vice Presidency was not that smart a move for power players like Platt.
Roosevelt was such a powerful and charismatic figure, his exploits so much larger than life, that he succeeded where Bryan and the Populists had failed. While his reform were not of the same quality or quantity as either Wilson's or Franklin Roosevelt's, the fact is, Teddy Roosevelt made everything else possible.
He changed the office of the Presidency, making the President an advocate for the people and insuring them a "Square Deal". He also changed the scope of what the government would consider "its business." Grover Cleveland had said, "The people should support the government; the government should not support the people" in response to a drought that cried out for governmental relief. Teddy created the Food and Drug Administration and broke up the occasional trust in his efforts to provide a more even playing field for the American people.
He was so popular that just a few years after his death, he was already being enshrined on Mount Rushmore next to Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington himself.
But we forget that it was all because of Leon Czolgosz, his demented ideas and his pistol.
The party of Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman and LBJ has recently elected Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. They have not been - to this point at least for Obama - transformational Presidents the way that Teddy and Franklin were.
It is pointless at this point to hope that the GOP would ever return to its Rooseveltian roots, so we'll just leave them out of it.
To be a transformational President, you have to transform things, ya know? And to transform things, you have to have the marriage of charisma, ability and boldness that Teddy Roosevelt possessed. Clinton and Obama possess immense charisma and ability, but boldness isn't perhaps their defining attribute. Veteran Hillary people admit that she would have dropped Health Care Reform early in favor of jobs and the economy. She would have muted the losses in 2010, perhaps, but lost the opportunity at fundamentally changing America.
Maybe Obama IS transformational, and I'm simply too close to see the transformation. But I don't think so. I think he's an important pivot point, perhaps. But I worry that being able to win election and being able to transform the nation are mutually exclusive. Teddy became President because of an accident. Wilson became President because Teddy split the vote with Taft. FDR became President because the global economy collapsed. LBJ signed Civil Right legislation by the light of the eternal flame on Kennedy's grave. Reagan needed another economic collapse and an unprecedented hostage crisis (and a near miss assassination) to transform the government.
From where will the circumstances arise that give us someone who can truly change America?
Obama has said he is opposed to extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires. But he will. He will have to in order to keep the ones for the middle class. It's perfectly pragmatic and reasonable to do so. But it will further cement the idea that America has a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy.
And so the rich will continue to thrive while the middle and working class continue to suffer and decline. And we will wait for the day when circumstances finally deliver us from the New Gilded Age.
Update:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/11/07/new-vocabulary-word-plutonomy/
Update II: The Germans Weigh In
You should read the whole thing (there's a link). Here's an excerpt about the Idiocracy, but it also touches on the unsustainablility of the American way of life.
The country is reacting strangely irrationally to the loss of its importance -- it is a reaction characterized primarily by rage. Significant portions of America simply want to return to a supposedly idyllic past. They devote almost no effort to reflection, and they condemn cleverness and intellect as elitist and un-American, as if people who hunt bears could seriously be expected to lead a world power. Demagogues stir up hatred and rage on television stations like Fox News. These parts of America, majorities in many states, ignorant of globalization and the international labor market, can do nothing but shout. They hate everything that is new and foreign to them.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,726447,00.html
No comments:
Post a Comment