The Trump Conning Tower

   

         Trump is a consummate con man. But is that so bad?     

            We were amazed that so many American voters couldn’t see through Donald Trump’s bluster. We likened him to the Hans Christian Anderson story, The Emperor’s New Clothes. He was called P.T.Barnum. Some even went so far as to compare his ranting tweets to hysterical speeches by Musolini or even Hitler.

            These analogies were apt. He was and is an authoritarian populist. He is megalomaniacal, egotistical. He is a carnival barker who plays the media to hype his celebrity image as brilliant deal-making billionaire entrepreneur and builder. Exposure of the truth of the myth behind the hype, which was belatedly dragged out by the media that created him, did little to change the minds of those who had already bought the product.

            They bought his pitch—he was a breath of fresh air in politics, who would shake things up by being a strong leader, who says what he believes. No amount of proof that the emperor was naked, or that his products were bogus, would cause the customers to spurn this product.

            We were shocked each time he made a claim against his opponent that actually applied to him. They were lying, picking on him; they had short fuses, had poor temperament; they were unqualified; they were criminals, sexists, racists. He had gall to accuse others of his own defects. Like Hitler claiming the Jews were the threat to world peace.

            His claimed prowess in business was contradicted by his bankruptcies, and the lawsuits by contractors. His claim to create American jobs was disproved by his outsourcing of products that bear his name. His refusal to show his tax returns undermined his claim to be charitable, a good citizen, even his claim of great wealth. (Need I mention his chutzpah in claiming to respect women?)

            None of that mattered to the voters who were anxious to swallow his bluster whole. Maybe the reason was that the other candidate / salespeople offered even more unattractive products, but the fact is that his advertising campaign hit the gullible customers in their angry, frightened hearts, if not their minds. He pandered to the worst in us, and his gamble paid off.

            Yes, he was a brilliant confidence man, who carried off the greatest swindle in American history. He took power, trampling the founding fathers’ claim of a democracy guided by an informed and educated electorate. He laughed all the way to the White House and to immortality.

            Those of us who were standing on the edges of the parade shouting vainly that the emperor was naked are terrified about what the inevitable comeuppance will do to the future of the nation. We are sure that if he carries through with the wrongheaded ideas he espoused in his ranting campaign, it will result in eventual ruin. 

            He cannot bring high paying manufacturing jobs back to the rust belt states that gave him his win: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We are certain that his policy against Mexican and Muslim immigrants will be ruinous. We dread the changes his party will make to the Supreme Court and reverse progress in individual rights, including the right to health care and education.  We think we are right and he is wrong. We think given enough time, the American public will come to its senses and through the rascal out, along with the others in his party who kowtowed to him in to further their own ambitions.  

            But what if we are wrong? 

There have been other swindlers who sweet talked their way to power. We have three huge examples in my lifetime. In 1933, FDR was elected in the depths of the Great Depression, when the country was on the verge of revolution because of bank failures, 30%+ unemployment. 

There were calls for a military coup, dictatorship, a communist uprising. So, FDR, the crippled son of privilege, who was considered a second rate intellect and superficial glad-hander by professors and columnists, made his first speech on the Capitol steps. What is remembered from the speech is the phrase, “We have nothing to fear . . . but fear itself.” Huh?

            At the same time in Germany, things were even worse. The nation had been crushed twenty years earlier, losing millions of lives in a disastrous war, and then humiliated into signing a treaty that stripped its resources, put it into debt, placed all the blame for the world war on their shoulders. The Great Depression struck Germany even more harshly than here. Inflation was rampant, unemployment unstoppable.

            And Adolph Hitler is chosen to lead, by claiming that he—and only he—could bring his country back to its previous greatness. He presented himself as a savior, a powerful leader whose vision and faith was strong enough to carry the nation’s burdens. There was nothing in his past to support this except in his words, and the power of his rhetoric and self-belief. These had gathered an army of sycophants to adore him. 

Now the rest of the nation would yield to him. Opponents pointed out that he was a failed artist, architect; a rabble rousing race baiting lunatic, who wasn’t even German. None of that meant anything to those who were willing and anxious to believe his promises, even though to a rational mind, they seemed far fetched.

            By the summer of 1940, Hitler’s army had conquered Poland and France, and threatened to invade England. The smart money bet on victory within a few months. American public opinion bet that way, as did the American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, and America’s hero flyer, Charles Lindbergh.

            So, England turned to a failed politician, whose ego and bluster had been rejected long before. Winston Churchill had been thrown out of the cabinet in 1915 after the Gallipoli fiasco. Since then, he had been an outsider who cared about preserving Empire and Crown, opposing communism and fascism. He wrote books, made speeches; he was an entertaining speaker and writer, and was ignored in parliament.

            By that summer, they gave him the reins of a government that most people expected to be forced to surrender; many thought Hitler would offer generous peace terms. (He had allowed a French government to govern over the southern half of that country, keeping his military forces in the occupied north.)

            Churchill would have none of this. His broadcast speech included eloquent words of defiance:

“. . .Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old

                        Many saw this intransigence as foolhardy as well as illogical. “The Empire beyond the seas” he referred to consisted of colonies such as India that would have welcomed the defeat of their Imperial masters. As for the “New World,” meaning the USA and Canada, his hope was more a pipe dream than a real likelihood.

            It is true that great leaders in times of crisis often show the traits of swindlers: resolve in the face of reason, an aura of self-assurance that calms shaking nerves. They are master bullshit artists, salesmen of exceptional skill and courage. The 20^th Century was a high point in the production of such figures. The advent of mass media allowed for The Big Lie to be pervasive. A power could control all major sources of information: news and opinion for the use of propaganda leading to a new concept: “totalitarian rule.”

            The tools of advertising and marketing that sold commodities translated well to politics. Democracies are particularly vulnerable to manipulation of the marketplace by clever minds. Polling, surveys, focus groups, testing, psychological profiling, all are useful in persuading large numbers of people to buy something they don’t need. 

They can go further—creating images that make bad people seem good, and dumb ideas seem brilliant. People can be made to buy things that aren’t good for them. They can be led to enthusiastically support policies that are, in fact, contrary to their own best interests.

            Celebrities have always existed in every culture: royalty, religious prophets, warriors, athletes, beautiful women, talented artists of all kinds. With the invention of pervasive media, promoters have been able to create the illusion of celebrity that makes it really happen. Barnum did it with his attractions; Ziegfeld did it with his discoveries just as the century began. For instance, he posed the singer, Anna Held, in a bath filled with milk and called in the photographers, scandalizing society but intriguing the public, who had to pay to see her perform.

            In the 21^st Century, we have come further, first creating celebrities who are famous merely for being famous, and making millionaires out of them. With the worldwide scope of social media, international celebrities emerge overnight from obscurity to marketability for no greater talent than performing a stunt on a bicycle or getting hit in the face with a bag of feces.

            With all of this background, we should not have been surprised by Trump’s election as president of the United States, following in the footsteps of Washington (whose mythmakers had tossing coins over the Potomac, admitting to his father that he cut down a cherry tree), Lincoln (the simple frontier woodsman who was actually a wealthy corporate lawyer), FDR (who convinced the press to never mention the fact that he was physically helpless), JFK (who winked at the press so they wouldn’t reveal his many mistresses), or Bill Clinton (who swore that he never had “sexual relations with that woman,” because her mouth on his prick was didn’t fit his idea of “relations.”)

            Linclon supposedly said, “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” To which another wit might add, But if you work it right, fooling some all the time and all some of the time can make you a hero, a star, wealthy, . . . and / or a president.

Giving America The Business

President Obama recently noted:

"Gov. Romney's main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He's not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He's saying, 'I'm a business guy. I know how to fix it.' And this is his business.

And when you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is simply not to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.  If your main argument for how to grow the economy is 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about."

I have been reading "Freedom From Fear", historian David M. Kennedy' volume about the era between 1929 and 1945. He begins with the almost tragic figure of Herbert Hoover, who by his résumé as miner, engineer, millionaire, philanthropist, administrator of post WW I relief that was credited with saving many thousands of Europeans from starvation, as well as respected tenure as Secretary of Commerce, should have been a lock to deal with the economic crisis that eventually cost him his reelection in 1932. Hoover's failure was due in no small measure to his stubborn faith that the "free market" would self-correct. Businessmen knew best. As his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge, confidently said, the business of America is business. But by November, 1932 the country was nearly out of business. And so was the Republican party. 

For the next eight years, FDR fought to reignite the economy, reduce the disastrous unemployment which ran higher than 25% at the beginning and remained high despite the increasing optimism that caused his sturdy popularity. 

In 1940, FDR sought an unprecedented third term. He was thought to be politically vulnerable, not just for arrogantly challenging George Washington's two term limit precedent, but also because the New Deal had lost much of its glamour. The unemployment rate, though almost cut in half from its disastrous high in March, 1933, was still a horrible 14.5% having risen again midway through FDR's second term during the double dip known as the Roosevelt Recession. 

In foreign affairs, things were, if possible, even worse for FDR's prospects. Public opinion was still solidly isolationist, most Americans  reacting to the rise of Fascist Dictators in Europe with studied indifference. (Polls showed apathy or actual opposition to proposals to allow increased immigration from Europe - especially German Jews who were in grave danger from the Nazis). 

For years as Germany became overtly aggressive, FDR had made feeble attempts to educate the public to the threat, but had failed miserably. The issue tore apart his famous coalition that had carried him to his great wins. Progressives had turned so far inward after the disillusionment of WW I that they allied with the nationalistic Right to tie FDR's hands and prevent any attempts to join with other democracies to challenge Germany or Italy. A series of Neutrality Acts prevented the Government or private businesses from selling arms to any warring party.

But by the summer of 1940, The public was shifting. Poland had fallen, blitzkrieg in the west had lost Norway, Holland, Belgium, then France, and it looked like Britain would be next. The Atlantic suddenly didn't look wide enough after all. And the Pacific, too, was shrinking. Japan controlled most of China, and the newsreels vividly showed "the rape of Nanking" which was not a metaphor, but literally, reports of widespread vicious rapes and slaughter of civilians by Japanese troops. 

The leading Republican candidates, Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, were rigid isolationists. The powerful king makers of the party, who in those days were mostly eastern establishment types, worried that the times had passed them by. Sensing a real chance to finally get rid of FDR and to halt the New Deal, they turned to Wendell Willkie. 

Willkie, educated as a corporate lawyer, had been president of Commonwealth & Southern, a holding company that controlled electric power utilities around the country. He had fought the TVA, the government power project that directly affected his investors, arguing strenuously, and to many, convincingly that private enterprise was preferable to government involvement. He was pushed by powerful publishers, including Henry Luce, whose Time magazine was influential. In those days, the national and local media was definitely not "liberal". Hearst, McCormick, and other media moguls (they owned radio stations too) were ardent anti-New Dealers, isolationist, Republican in editorials and biased reporting. The movie moguls, led by the most powerful, Louis B. Meyer of MGM, were also conservative Republicans. 

Willkie had his own problems that may sound familiar in 2012. In his past he had supported many New Deal programs, had been a vocal "internationalist" and was therefore viewed skeptically by the right wing of his party. 

In the campaign, Willkie moved to the right, accepting an isolationist stance forced by radicals of his party  FDR also denied any desire for involvement in the European war, promising never to send American boys overseas (neglecting to add the reasonable condition: "unless we are attacked"). Willkie did not oppose the conscription law that instituted a draft, for "preparedness". 

Both candidates suffered from an enthusiasm gap from traditional supporters. FDR pulled out the victory, but by a much smaller margin  than his wins in '32 and '36.  Political observers ascribed the vote to Willkie's weakness as a candidate and the tendency of voters to stick with the experienced avuncular leader with a probable world war looming. 

In his third term, FDR was able to persuade the country to prepare for the war, to provide aid to the allies, to activate American industry.  It was the federal government that financed and regulated the greatest economy the world had ever seen, won the war, secured the peace with the Marshall Plan, and produced the longest period of sustained prosperity ever. 

This year the Republican Party wants to reverse history, to bring us back into the Dark Ages.

Principled Centrist Revisited

Last year I published a post based on an essay I originally wrote in the 1990's. I updated it to apply the ideas stated to Obama. I tried to fit him into the traditional mold of the "principled centrist," a tradition which included the best presidents in our history: notably Washington, Lincoln, F.D.R. It also encompassed some failures.

Bill Clinton's presidency showed how difficult it is for a centrist to govern in this era. With the pervasive sniping of 24/7 media critics, ideological and cultural polarization that approaches the sectional suspicions preceding the Civil War, and the absence of public consensus about any particular crisis, the ability of even the most charismatic president to lead is doubtful.

I am re-printing the essay again because it seems that its points are still pertinent to the political climate today.

Like many of my peers in the late 1960's, I entered a law career with a radicalized illusion that I could shake up The Establishment from within. But early in my career as a public defender, I became persuaded that idealists made lousy lawyers.

Viewing a case as "a cause" led to ineffective advocacy for the individuals who were our clients. Railing against "the system" was a losing strategy; tweaking it to make it work led to some success. To work from within demanded adherence to core principles - like those expressed in the Bill of Rights, but also a rational sense of moderation. Seeing the flaws of radical ideologies of Left and Right, I came to think of myself as a principled centrist.

The flaw of this philosophy is that it can easily lead to indecision, timidity, and a loss of confidence. Weak compromises are tempting when the risks are great. Uncertainty leads to failure and depression.

Barack Obama, by education and inclination, is a principled centrist. His legal education, which suited his innate propensities, prepared him well for effective advocacy. The first attribute of the lawyerly approach is the ability to see all sides of a question. The second is the exercise of judgments based on reason and evidence rather than faith and ideology.

The term itself is an oxymoron in presidential politics. The centrist is wedded to no firm ideology that huge numbers of people can identify with. It is historically rare to satisfy enough of the people enough of the time from the middle of the road.The centrist is not an ideologue, except to moderation. Idealogues have a rigid vision, a religious faith in their righteousness. Moderation and consensus are lukewarm ideals. Neither notion stirs passion.

Ronald Reagan’s simple ideology allowed him to be certain and clear about every issue: lower taxes, secure defense, less government, American domination of foreign affairs, strict Christian morality and adherence to normative lifestyles.

A centrist cannot be sure about any of these things, is sometimes for some of them, against some at some other times. He is a relativist - his motto must be "It depends." His survival depends on compromise.

A principled centrist in American politics is, by definition, in trouble. First, he states his principles, then is forced to compromise them.

Bill Clinton’s adventure with the health care issue in the 1990's is a cautionary tale. He stated a principle: universal coverage. Eventually, he had to temporize, and was seen as weak, the inevitable risk of centrists. The result: his leadership coinage dissipated. He could not fall back on the moral leverage of ideology, had no constant constituency on left or right.

At first, it seemed that Obama had advantages Clinton never had. Times had changed. In 1993, Clinton’s "mandate for change" was tenuous at best. G.H.W. Bush had alienated a chunk of the Reagan coalition - the middle right - with higher taxes and a weak economy. Because Clinton was a "new" Democrat, based on a sensible, more conservative model, who shied from liberal doctrine, he was positioned as non-threatening. On the left, he was pictured as youthful, a JFK disciple, compassionate, with a feminist wife - a guy of the sixties, who had matured to moderate progressivism. Many "boomers" could identify with that beause they had moved that way as well.The two-faced picture was enough to gain him a slim plurality in a three way race. Perot's candidacy made it clear that the only consensus in the public mind was that government was distrusted, and that the majority of voters were slightly to the right of center.

But that is where the consensus ended. There was no singleness of mind in the public for where it wanted a president to go. There was no mandate for any particular change.

Clinton thought it was there for health care reform, fooled by the fact that he spoke about it in his speeches and he was elected. But the public was never fully committed to it, and was easily swayed by fears of expense and bureaucratic incompetence.

In this as in every other issue the people wanted reform, but didn’t want to pay for it: crime, the economy, services, campaign reform. The public was schizophrenic: apathetic and impatient at the same time.

When the Republicans reclaimed the Congress in 1994 with a severe ideological conservative agenda, it forced Clinton the centrist to waffle to the right. The lesson was clear: a centrist may only succeed as a progressive leader if the public is ready to be led and only then by a leader who is perceived as a hero without baggage.

The commentators of the time blamed Clinton for a lack of leadership. The great leader defines the issues and unifies the people behind him. That Clinton failed to do.

What he was forced to do is what a centrist does best: react to the extremes of left and right. He must be the captain of a sailing ship, tacking left and right but steering the middle. Clinton’s political acumen was such that he was able to survive well enough to be re-elected and, despite his tragic personal flaws, his presidency is now remembered as a time of peace and prosperity.

At the beginning of his term, Obama’s seemed to have an advantage: the crises caused by the failure of G.W. Bush’s failure, which is ascribed rightly to the flaw of rigid ideological governance, had forced public opinion to coalesce into a coherent consensus for change - not necessarily "radical" change, but at least, meaningful reform.

The last time that happened was in 1964, when L.B.J. took advantage of his opponent’s extreme conservatism, to form a strong coalition for social change. He succeeded in passing meaningful civil rights reform and programs that began a "war on poverty", only to self-immolate over Viet-Nam.

F.D.R. is probably the better model for Obama. F.D.R. was (and still is) perceived as a decisive leader because his motto was "do anything, but do something." He was able to take chances because the public of the time was willing to be led - almost anywhere. The times were that bad. His one principle was that government had to put people back to work.

Everything he proposed, supported, persuaded, was directed toward that goal. He had many detractors from the left and right, but he had such a convincing presence to a people desperate for charismatic leadership that he prevailed and is revered as a great leader.

Bear in mind that in F.D.R.'s era, "charismatic leadership" in the form of dictatorships were preferred by mainstream political theorists to democracy, which seemed in the period between the World Wars, to have failed. Today, there is an echo of that era --- extreme fear caused by economic collapse and democratic institutions unable to ameliorate the crises --- China seen as a paragon of successful governance ---as many had perceived Italy of the 1920's and Germany of the 1930's.

FDR revived the democratic system because he was able to form a consensus from huge chunks of the public: union members -- in a time of solidly unified, active and powerful unions, Southern poor, the unemployed --- 25% unemployment in the depths of the depression ---and the educated un-rich.

At the start, the Obama constituency seemed to be similarly broad: the educated and hopeful young, aspiring Hispanics and proud African-Americans, depressed boomers. Those who voted for him, adding to his landslide and coattails, were also a significant number who were not committed to any "change" except that which threw the rascals out.

Like F.D.R., Obama benefitted from a bankrupt and disillusioned opposition party. The fatal flaw of ideological and faith based governance is that when exposed as false by incontrovertible evidence it collapses.

The strength of principled centrism is that its flexibility and foundation of moderation and reliance on evidence permit fine-tuning alterations without conceding defeat.

Parenthetically: in the view of many historians, FDR’s policies failed to end the Depression because they were not radical enough. His centrism was a flaw, led to inconsistent contradictory policies. He wavered from his initial policy of governmental activism, caving to budget balancing contraction of spending, overly fearful of the political consequences of huge deficits. He was saved by the war which reinvigorated the broad consensus and commitment to action.

Now, Obama, faced with apparent dissatisfaction by a vocal minority to his policies, has to decide whether to reclaim the centrist ground by accepting compromise, or to retreat to the right by abandoning any progressive agenda, or to try to forge a new coalition on the left to push through an aggressive program.

Obama, the principled centrist, walks the dangerous tightrope, his only net is his legal background, which, I hope, will permit him to find his way through analysis of facts, collection of evidence pro and con, and submitting all potential policies to thorough logic based argument before moving.

Adventures of a Principled Centrist

Like many of my peers in the late 1960's, I entered a law career with a radicalized illusion that I could shake up The Establishment from within. But early in my career as a public defender, I became persuaded that idealists made lousy lawyers. Viewing a case as "a cause" led to ineffective advocacy for the individuals who were our clients. Railing against "the system" was a losing strategy; tweaking it to make it work led to some success. To work from within demanded adherence to core principles - like those expressed in the Bill of Rights, but also a rational sense of moderation. Seeing the flaws of radical ideologies of Left and Right, I came to think of myself as a principled centrist.

The flaw of this philosophy is that it can easily lead to indecision, timidity, and a loss of confidence. Weak compromises are tempting when the risks are great. Uncertainty leads to failure and depression.

Barack Obama, by education and inclination, is a principled centrist. His legal education, which suited his innate propensities, prepared him well for effective advocacy. The first attribute of the lawyerly approach is the ability to see all sides of a question. The second is the exercise of judgments based on reason and evidence rather than faith and ideology.
The term itself is an oxymoron in presidential politics. The centrist is wedded to no firm ideology that huge numbers of people can identify with. It is historically rare to satisfy enough of the people enough of the time from the middle of the road.

The centrist is not an ideologue, except to moderation. Idealogues have a rigid vision, a religious faith in their righteousness. Moderation and consensus are lukewarm ideals. Neither notion stirs passion.

Ronald Reagan’s simple ideology allowed him to be certain and clear about every issue: lower taxes, secure defense, less government, American domination of foreign affairs, strict Christian morality and adherence to normative lifestyles. A centrist cannot be sure about any of these things, is sometimes for some of them, against some at some other times. He is a relativist - his motto must be "It depends." His survival depends on compromise.

A principled centrist in American politics is, by definition, in trouble. First, he states his principles, then is forced to compromise them. Bill Clinton’s adventure with the health care issue in the 1990's is a cautionary tale. He stated a principle: universal coverage. Eventually, he had to temporize, and was seen as weak, the inevitable risk of centrists. The result: his leadership coinage dissipated. He could not fall back on the moral leverage of ideology, had no constant constituency on left or right.

Obama has advantages Clinton never had. Times have changed. In 1993, Clinton’s "mandate for change" was tenuous at best. G.H.W. Bush had alienated a chunk of the Reagan coalition - the middle right - with higher taxes and a weak economy. Because Clinton was a "new" Democrat, based on a sensible, more conservative model, who shied from liberal doctrine, he was positioned as non-threatening. On the left, he was pictured as youthful, a JFK disciple, compassionate, with a feminist wife - a guy of the sixties, who had matured to moderate progressivism. Many "boomers" could identify with that beause they had moved that way as well.

The two-faced picture was enough to gain him a slim plurality in a three way race. Perot's candidacy made it clear that the only consensus in the public mind was that government was distrusted, and that the majority of voters were slightly to the right of center. But that is where the consensus ended.

There was no singleness of mind in the public for where it wanted a president to go. There was no mandate for any particular change. Clinton thought it was there for health care reform, fooled by the fact that he spoke about it in his speeches and he was elected. But the public was never fully committed to it, and was easily swayed by fears of expense and bureaucratic incompetence. In this as in every other issue the people wanted reform, but didn’t want to pay for it: crime, the economy, services, campaign reform. The public was schizophrenic: apathetic and impatient at the same time.

When the Republicans reclaimed the Congress in 1994 with a severe ideological conservative agenda, it forced Clinton the centrist to waffle to the right. The lesson was clear: a centrist may only succeed as a progressive leader if the public is ready to be led and only then by a leader who is perceived as a hero without baggage.

The commentators of the time blamed Clinton for a lack of leadership. The great leader defines the issues and unifies the people behind him. That Clinton failed to do. What he was forced to do is what a centrist does best: react to the extremes of left and right. He must be the captain of a sailing ship, tacking left and right but steering the middle. Clinton’s political acumen was such that he was able to survive well enough to be re-elected and, despite his tragic personal flaws, his presidency is now remembered as a time of peace and prosperity.

Obama’s advantage is that the crises caused by the failure of G.W. Bush’s failure, which is ascribed rightly to the flaw of rigid ideological governance, have forced public opinion to coalesce into a coherent consensus for change - not necessarily "radical" change, but at least, meaningful reform.

The last time that happened was in 1964, when L.B.J. took advantage of his opponent’s extreme conservatism, to form a strong coalition for social change. He succeeded in passing meaningful civil rights reform and programs that began a "war on poverty", only to self-immolate over Viet-Nam.

F.D.R. is probably the better model for Obama. F.D.R. was (and still is) perceived as a decisive leader because his motto was "do anything, but do something". He was able to take chances because the public of the time was willing to be led - almost anywhere. The times were that bad. His one principle was that government had to put people back to work. Everything he proposed, supported, persuaded, was directed toward that goal. He had many detractors from the left and right, but he had such a convincing presence to a people desperate for charismatic leadership that he prevailed and is revered as a great leader. He formed his consensus from huge chunks of the public: union members (in a time of solidly unified, active and powerful unions), Southern poor, the unemployed (25% unemployment in the depths of the depression) and the educated un-rich.

The Obama constituency is similarly broad: the educated and hopeful young, aspiring Hispanics and proud African-Americans, depressed boomers. Like F.D.R., he benefits from a bankrupt and disillusioned opposition party.

The fatal flaw of ideological and faith based governance is that when exposed as false by incontrovertible evidence it collapses. The strength of principled centrism is that its flexibility and foundation of moderation and reliance on evidence permit fine-tuning alterations without conceding defeat.

In the view of many historians, FDR’s policies failed to end the Depression because they were not radical enough. His centrism was a flaw, led to inconsistent contradictory policies. He wavered from his initial policy of governmental activism, caving to budget balancing contraction of spending, overly fearful of the political consequences of huge deficits. He was saved by the war which reinvigorated the broad consensus and commitment to action.

Obama, the principled centrist, walks the dangerous tightrope, his only net is his legal background.

The Great Deception

Part of the argument over the current economic crisis is a revival of the debate about F.D.R.’s policies combating The Great Depression of the 1930's.

Rhetoric from the Right has become the popular revisionist view: that the New Deal’s radical programs and huge federal government involvement in the economy not only failed to end the Depression, but actually lengthened it. It did not end until World War II impelled full production and employment.

That view, however, is an oversimplification, that is not supported by the historical facts and fails to answer two questions. (1) If it was a failure, why was FDR re-elected overwhelmingly in 1936, and again in 1940? (2) Wasn’t World War II the biggest government project of all? Apart from ignoring these inconvenient questions, the conventional wisdom is contrary to the evidence.

Political historian James MacGregor Burns in his book, “Roosevelt: The Lion And The Fox”, points out that Roosevelt’s first term (1933 - 1936) was successful in stopping the slide and turning the disastrous economy around. Roosevelt was re-elected by an enormous margin, winning all but two states. FDR’s legendary skill at inspiring confidence was not an illusory trick. There were good reasons for the public’s overwhelming support. The New Deal had worked.

“By almost any test the economic surge since 1932 had been remarkable. Unemployment had dropped by almost 4 million since the low point early in 1933; at least 6 million jobs had been created. Payrolls in manufacturing industries had doubled since 1932; stock prices had more than doubled. Commercial and industrial failures in 1936 were one-third what they had been four years before. Total cash income of farmers had fallen to four billion in 1932 and recovered to almost seven billion in 1935. Capital issues had shot up sixfold sice 1933. The physical volume of industrial production had almost doubled.”

However, in 1937, the economy turned sharply downward again, wiping out many of the gains of the last four years. The period of 1937-1938 came to be known as “The Roosevelt Recession.”

Burns ascribes the downturn to several causes. After his stunning re-election, an overconfident FDR frittered his political capital on his wrong-headed effort to pack the Supreme Court. The conservative Court had overturned as unconstitutional several of the New Deal’s more radical programs, notably the NRA, infuriating FDR. His solution was to propose increasing the number of justices, a notion that the more traditional members of FDR’s famous coalition (particularly Southern Democrats) could not abide. The press and eventually the public was outraged.

More seriously, it exposed a basic flaw in FDR’s political nature. He had never followed a coherent or consistent economic theory, filling his brain trust of advisors with contradictory advice that he never committed to with any enthusiasm. When he first ran, in the fall of 1932, he had promised to balance the federal budget. By the time he was inaugurated, the emergency had deepened so much that he had abandoned that idea in favor of the deficit spending that marked the New Deal. In the beginning, he acted boldly.

Burns observes: “In three years, federal and other relief agencies had poured over 5 billion dollars into work projects and related relief activities. Another 4 billion had gone into public works: roads, dams, sewage systems, public buildings, and the like.” Agricultural programs (AAA) had succeeded in establishing price supports and federal lending through the RFC had been increased. Social Security began collecting payroll taxes in 1936, and while initially it was a drag on the economy, eventually it would provide the safety net for unemployment and old age. The Home Owners Loan Corporation reduced foreclosures for millions. “The WPA put to work not only blue collar workers but artists, writers, actors, teachers - and in jobs that salvaged their self respect. The National Youth Administration helped thousands of hard-pressed high school and college students to continue their education.” The S.E.C. and F.D.I.C. stabilized investment and banking.

The New Deal’s support for unionization was another critical factor that had controversial effects on the economy. Conservatives violently opposed the movement, citing the drag on business from the pressure to raise wages and working conditions and attendant strikes that fought for these changes. Proponents of unions argued that higher wages and job security were necessary to increase the buying power of workers, to stimulate growth of the middle class.

In 1937, after the court packing debacle, FDR lost his political footing, wavering in his usual forceful confidence in his programs. Congressional conservatives abandoned him and forced a change in direction. The administration sharply reduced spending, submitted a balanced budget. When the economic downturn became evident that year, FDR waffled, unwilling to increase federal spending which would devastate the budget. It was not until the next year, 1938, when the federal budget once again increased, that the recession subsided.

Almost all economists agree that high tariffs imposed by many nations, including the U.S., for the populist cause of protectionism was short-sighted and counterproductive to recovery.

Burns concludes that the inability to end the Depression was not caused by a failure of the theory of government activism. Rather, it was the timidity of Roosevelt’s continued commitment to decisive action after the initial surge of his first term.

In later years, economic theorists have continuously debated the point. Although FDR’s economics was not strictly “Keynesian,” neo-classical economists led by Milton Friedman argued that the New Deal big government solutions failed because it tampered with free markets. Friedman became the leading guru of the Reagan Era, impelling de-regulation and reduction of governmental oversight of the economy, which seems to have laid the foundation for the crisis today.