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Obama Should Borrow A Page From FDR This Labor Day
President Obama will speak in Milwaukee this Labor Day, his second Wisconsin appearance in as many months.
The president's attentiveness to the state is notable, if perhaps somewhat less than altruistic.
This is, after all, an election year. And Wisconsin is the swingingest of swing states -- a state where a governorship that has been in Democratic hands could be lost, and where a Senate seat and at least one U.S. House seat are vulnerable.
So, this Labor Day, Obama wants to reconnect with voters in a state that gave him overwhelming support in his 2008 campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination and the presidency.
Unfortunately, polls suggest that Wisconsinites -- like residents of other Midwestern swing states -- are not quite so impressed with Obama as they were two years ago. It is not that the people of the state have given up on the guy. But they are looking for something more than managerial pronouncements about the economic shambles that he inherited from George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Midwesterners are not naive and nostalgic. They know that Bush and Cheney did not "get it."
What they're not so sure about is whether Obama "gets" it.
To answer the question, the president would do well to borrow a page from the wisest of his predecessors.
Seventy-six years ago this summer, Franklin Roosevelt came to another Wisconsin city, Green Bay, at a similar point in his presidency.
Like Obama, FDR had been elected on a promise of "hope" and "change."
Like Obama, FDR had tried with mixed success to deliver on that promise.
In Green Bay, in the summer of 1934, the 32nd president needed to explain to a crowd that was sympathetic but worried that the economic wrangling in which he and his administration was engaged had to be seen in perspective - not just the perspective of the presidency of the man he replaced, Herbert Hoover, but the perspective of the long American struggle between a privileged few that engaged in the "private means of exploitation" and the great many that had "waged a long and bitter fight for (their) rights."
Roosevelt did this with a history lesson, of a sort, in which he traced back to the founding of the republic in to recount the long fight "against those forces which disregard human cooperation and human rights in seeking that kind of individual profit which is gained at the expense of his fellows."
That fight between patriotic proponents of economic justice and the Tory defenders of an old economic royalism had, Roosevelt argued, come to a head with the arrival of the Great Depression.
Recalling the 1932 election that swept Democrats to power and ushered in the New Deal era, the president argued, "In the great national movement that culminated over a year ago, people joined with enthusiasm. They lent hand and voice to the common cause, irrespective of many older political traditions. They saw the dawn of a new day. They were on the march; they were coming back into the possession of their own home land."
"As the humble instruments of their vision and their power, those of us who were chosen to serve them in 1932 turned to the great task," Roosevelt continued. "In one year and five months, the people of the United States have received at least a partial answer to their demands for action; and neither the demand nor the action has reached the end of the road."
The primary barrier to action, the president explained, was erected by those who still entertained the fantasy who argued that FDR could restore confidence only by "(telling) tell the people of the United States that all supervision by all forms of Government, Federal and State, over all forms of human activity called business should be forthwith abolished."
So, like Obama, Roosevelt faced an opposition that claimed government was the problem.
Unlike Obama, however, Roosevelt refused to even entertain - let alone embrace - the absurd constructs of the private-sector fabulists who "would repeal all laws, State or national, which regulate business-that a utility could henceforth charge any rate, unreasonable or otherwise; that the railroads could go back to rebates and other secret agreements; that the processors of food stuffs could disregard all rules of health and of good faith; that the unregulated wild-cat banking of a century ago could be restored; that fraudulent securities and watered stock could be palmed off on the public; that stock manipulation which caused panics and enriched insiders could go unchecked."
"In fact," the president continued, "if we were to listen to (the anti-government crowd), the old law of the tooth and the claw would reign in our Nation once more."
"The people of the United States will not restore that ancient order," thundered Roosevelt. "There is no lack of confidence on the part of those business men, farmers and workers who clearly read the signs of the times. Sound economic improvement comes from the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof."
With those words, Roosevelt took a side.
He did not imagine that it was possible to compromise with those who wanted to return to the "tooth and claw" past.
No, he would stand against the Tories and for the new order where it was understood that the purpose of government was to achieve "the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof."
Were Obama to take a similar stand this Labor Day, were he to echo Roosevelt's call for economic justice, the energy of this election year would shift - in Wisconsin and nationally - because voters would know, finally, which side their president was on.
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124 Comments so far
Show AllDoes that come with dental?
This is the last John Nichols article I will ever read.
Why do I keep torturing myself?
I guess I had hope he might grow, expand, ripen.
Not gonna happen. And why should it, those cruises where the passengers congratulate the Nation big-wigs on their "insights" are undoubtedly satisfying.
And I'm beginning to wonder if these people are actually reimbursed for affecting the false impression of political opposition. Do they get cold cash for impersonating leftists? They should, they've been a real impediment to progress.
Basta! Fascists are either at the door or already inside. The earth is at the brink of irreversible collapse. Thousands perish daily, sacrificed at the altar of corporate profit, and the war machine grows more obscenely obese by the minute.
We no longer have the luxury to suffer this nonsense. Inaction = madness = death.
Time to engage creative solutions/strategy for survival. We need information and tools that will enable us to engage in active struggle. The fight has been on for some time now, despite the fact that the Nation's enablers will deny it.
No more crap from the Nation, please.
No, get at the root cause. As the only thing we really need is for people to stop being born gullible, for common horse sense, either you have it or you don’t.
nicely posted, fellow pinko...:)
yeah, nichols has clearly opted for career over honesty at pretty much every turn.
Strangely enough, I had this conversation with two young cousins of mine at a family barbecue yesterday. Their 20-something impression of Obama was that he was doing the best he can with what he was given...after all, how well and how far can anyone expect captain to sail a sinking ship?
I did not argue that point: I presented the example of a captain that took the shirts of the crew (and some crew members had far more shirts than they needed)to gather the winds and get that ship to shore before it sunk. He made no pretense that the voyage would be smooth, nor the crew comfortable, shirtless and so vulnerable; this ship will be shored with everybody on it, or this ship will sink with everybody on it.
Obama is very likely doing the best he can with what he was given; however, what he was given is nothing to work with. He is trying to cooperate with the crew (the corporate class) that hold sledgehammers, the crew (the Congress) that hold grudges, and the crew (the citizenry) that only know and so do what they are told.
This is nothing to work with, not if a captain insists on respecting them for their "singular contributions and efforts." What these respective levels of the crew contribute is detrimental and their efforts are destructive; what is needed is the shirts and the strengths off their backs.
FDR came to a point when he just stopped trying to pander to political parties, placate the magnates, and pamper the American people: he simply pointed to the common ground they were all standing on, and told everybody to strip down and bear up. That's what you do on a sinking ship: casting bets and taking sides never saved anyone from hitting the bottom.
Perhaps this is the spirit the writer is referring to...
Obama is very likely doing the best he can with what he was given; however, what he was given is nothing to work with. "
I call Bullshit - obama was handed the largest majority of legislatures a president ahs seeni ndecades and then frittered it away w/ backroom deals to the drug companies etc......
obama is pathetic - and give the guy credit - ha might actually be doing EXACTLY what he wants - you can't argue Obama is SO SMART and then say he can only do so much because of the big bad rethugs....
That's right - this "doing the best he can" garbage is sickening.
Obama and the Democrats were given a mandate to stop this catastrophe of theft and war. It was the first time in my lifetime that an election was decided before 9 PM on election day. Obama was given an even bigger mandate than the Democrats were given in 2004 and they squandered it again.
Most Americans think the cause of our problems are government corruption, waste and fraud; and neither of the corporate controlled corrupt political parties will do a thing about it.
I hope people won't be fooled by voting for them again. (But HOPE is a graveyard)_
fdr had the new deal policies in place on state-wide level in ny as governor BEFORE he became president - he didn't just one day wake up and say " hey i've got an idea"
that's an inaccurate analysis of history....
The spirit of FDR wouldn't cross the street to piss on Obama if he were on fire.
But if Obama were disguised as a fire hydrant . . .
Good luck. Fire hydrants are useful in emergencies...;)
BCOTD. (Best Comment Of The Day. :)
Yes, that was a very witty ripost.
Hagiography (pronounced /ˌhæɡiˈɒɡrəfi/) is the study of saints. A hagiography, from the Greek (h)ağios (ἅγιος, "holy" or "saint") and graphē (γραφή, "writing"), refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of ecclesiastical and secular leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common. (This, in fact, follows original Greek practice, where ἁγιογραφία refers to visual images of the saints, while their written lives (βίοι or vitæ) or the study thereof are known as ἁγιολογία.)
Christian hagiographies focus on the lives, and notably the miracles of men and women canonized by the Roman Catholic church, the Anglican Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church . Other religions such as Buddhism and Islam also create and maintain hagiographical texts concerning saints and other individuals believed to be imbued with the sacred.
The term "hagiographic" has also been used as a pejorative reference to the works of biographers and historians perceived to be uncritical or "reverential" to their subject.
Somehow I would find a way to include apotheosis in your discussion.
I would ask Nichols to use class analysis. FDR came from the ruling class but denounced it saying, "I welcome their contempt." Barrack was raised in Kansas by his grandmother, a bank supervisor. He was middle class aspiring to be a part of the ruling class. He made it. So did his wife. Can you imagine that he would give that status up or say anything like FDR did. See him as attempting to be a ruling class broker who is trying to work a deal, "You the elites make a few concessions, and you the middle class accept what they are prepared to give." Barrack sees himself as uniquely qualified to make a deal but to do that he first has to assert his identity and loyalty to that ruling elite--hence the bending over to Republicans. To us, a class lower he tells us we should be glad he is in there because he is the only one who could broker any agreement at all. He is sadly wrong on both counts. The rich have not really accepted him--the Republican rebuff and we in the middle and lower classes feel betrayed by him. Ditto for Nancy Pelosi and most of the Democratic leadership. When push comes to shove we know whose side they are on. Expect a shellacking in November.
it's called the classic yuppie syndrome - which is why you see obama hanging w/ the ultra-rich while spouting garbage like "i know these guys - they are just savvy businessmen" about the ceo's who in large part caused the economic debacle we face.......
FDR won 4 elections as president because people thought he was on their side...... and we know thru his actions that obama is on the side of the rich over the interests of the poor....
FDR's electoral record is formidable--the only election he "lost" was as the VP running mate to Cox in 1920.
I don't give a damn what Obama says -- I don't even listen to it any more because he lies. His words are worthless. He now has the power to actually do things, but what he does is not what he says. Actions speak far louder than words; actions are what matters. Obama is like just another TV commercial or piece of junk mail that promises wonderful things but when you get the product home it's just more garbage.
Recalling the 1932 election that swept Democrats to power and ushered in the New Deal era, the president argued, "In the great national movement that culminated over a year ago, people joined with enthusiasm. They lent hand and voice to the common cause, irrespective of many older political traditions. They saw the dawn of a new day. They were on the march; they were coming back into the possession of their own home land."
Greasy bilge like this is typical of Obama. You can hear the preacher's voice and see the phony body language. Only now that so many people are on to him, he couldn't win a public speaking contest at Podunk High School.
Excellent analogy!!
"Obama is like just another TV commercial or piece of junk mail that promises wonderful things but when you get the product home it's just more garbage."
In Obama's list of acronyms, FDR means Filthy Damn Rich. And he's been summoning that spirit even before he took office.
"The Nation on the Detroit march for “Jobs, Justice and Peace”: Deceit and self-delusion
By David Walsh
6 September 2010
“On August 28, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Bob King and a host of other union leaders and Democratic Party politicians addressed a crowd of several thousand people in Detroit. The march and rally were held in the name of “Jobs, Justice and Peace.”
More than 40 organizations—which on paper still have hundreds of thousands of members and supporters—sponsored the rally, but it was largely boycotted by the population. The participants, for the most part, were lower-ranking union officials, officials of the Michigan Democratic Party (which was holding its convention in Detroit), and representatives of the local African-American elite.
In the most impoverished city in America, with a real jobless rate of about 50 percent, the fact that only a few thousand turned out to hear Jackson and King, despite a major buildup for the event by the local media, testifies to the lack of significant popular support for or belief in the two figures and the organizations they represent.
And for good reason. Why should anyone have the slightest confidence in millionaire charlatans such as Jackson, with a record of defending the profit system that goes back decades, or union officials like King, who has helped preside over the destruction of tens of thousands of auto jobs and the halving of auto workers’ pay?”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/nich-s06.shtml
ENOUGH of the obama - FDR comparisons -
it's SICKENING!
obama hires the likes of 25+ goldman sachs employees to run the economy along w/ the vampires summers and rubin.....
While FDR hired harry hopkins and francis perkins - people who were involved in the progressive movement for DECADES before going to work for FDR......
People who say FDR and Obama in the same sentence are IDIOTS who lack an understanding of history......
Enough already!
Don't forget the Dollar a Day people recruited from business. The New Deal coalition was very diverse class-wise.
What page would that be? The genocidal bombing of innocent civilians or the concentration camps?
If Obomba evoked the spirit of FDR, he would become a spirit!
" Because voters would know, finally, which side their President is on ". Mr. Nichols, with all due respect Sir: if you do not know by now, after almost two years in office, you will never know!
Do, Please, take a moment to email you comment to Nichols.
Obama should do a lot of things. Problem is, if he was ever going to do them, they would have been done by now. Obama hearts Reagan, not FDR.
Funny, both the short answer and the long answer is, "no"
I suggest to anyone who hasn't, watch the Vandana Shiva video on the next column over.
Even if you only want to hear the first few minutes. Lawrence Summers, when he was with the World Bank in 1992. Then read this headline and laugh heartily to keep from crying.
CD....Getting ready for 2012 election and waiting for that change you believe in?
CD might want to know, What is your plan... how are you getting ready?
"CD....Getting ready for 2012 election and waiting for that change you believe in?"
I have heard that one before but why would CD be doing it now? I've been reading this site since 2007 and they always had a mix of authors. Some of the articles would be lame apologia but I'm still not sure why you would think that it's turning itself into a 2012 campaign site. Part of the problem could be that there are more comments on the political apologist articles than there are on the articles dealing straight with the issue. As I looked at the articles this weekend each day, the politically stupid ones got the most comments while the ones dealing with labor itself got fewer unless there was a flame war. Maybe it's not CD that's the problem but failure of progressives to be ready to discuss on articles that deal straight with the issues and ignore the political ones. I acknowledge that as my weakness too. If we could figure out our responses to those articles and ignore these political theater articles, RichM's excellent suggestions would be easily picked up by CD.
Obama has borrowed enough pages from FDR's playbook and then used them to spin for the corporate hucksters. Obama's no FDR. He ain't even Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon who despite their anti-union ways weren't this shitty against the working class ! Were Obama to be anything remotely resembling FDR, he would have gone the way of Perot and Nader a long time ago. The public fell for false hope and we're paying for it. This article is a lame attempt to link Obama to FDR !
With all due respect, Reagan WAS this shitty against the working class. He's the guy that tore the lid off the Pandora, Inc., box and spawned everything that has come since.
Yes true but it wasn't as noticeable back then and Reagan hasn't been in office for 22 years so the Democrats had plenty of time to undo his 8 years of policies against the working class. Instead, they enhanced his policies for the worse in those years so while I regret my vote for Reagan not to mention Nixon who actually opened the door to the Reagan agenda, Reagan is becoming irrelevant. 20 years ago, Nixon would have looked like a hardcore rightwinger. Today, he looks like a bleeding liberal and 20 years from now, Reagan will look like a liberal the way this is heading. Weird isn't it?
Imagine a basketball team which refuses to play defense, make baskets, and, generally, play hard to win. Imagine further that the players have been bribed heavily to lose their games. Imagine an onlooker who urges the team to play defense, shoot well, and, generally, play hard to win, *while knowing the team has been bribed*. John Nichols, in this article, is like that onlooker.
Obama and the rest of the corporate Democrats are bravely being loyal to those who bribed them to throw the democracy game, and as such, are complicit in the corporate coup of this nation by the plutocrats.
Only a deep sense of morality in this context would motivate a president to help the nation's citizens, and side against the plutocrats. But he is a moral coward, thus far. Maybe he'll fall off some kind of horse and wake up. But I'd say it would be best to find a primary challenger to Obama now.
"It is not that the people of the state have given up on the guy. But they are looking for something more than managerial pronouncements about the economic shambles that he inherited from George Bush and Dick Cheney."
So, Nichols thinks he can speak for everyone in Wisconsin? That's where I am, and I "gave up on the guy" about 15 minutes after he was inaugurated. Not that I ever expected anything from him but what he's delivered thus far. Wisconsinites who are as loyal to the Democratic Party as Nichols may be "looking for something more than managerial pronouncements about the economic shambles that he inherited from George Bush and Dick Cheney," but those of us who were perceptive enough to see through the thin veneer of Obama's phony progressivism three years ago aren't wasting our energy scrutinizing the clown any further. We know what he is, and it's as far from FDR as Bush was from Thomas Jefferson.
Nichols will forever be hoping and praying that Obama turns into FDR, no matter how conclusively he proves he's only yearning to be as much like Hoover, Coolidge, Nixon, Ford, Bush 1 & 2, and his favorite president of all time, Reagan. Nichols simply cannot fathom how Obama won't surprise us all and begin to turn this economy around with a new New Deal, defund the grotesquely obscene Pentagon budget and channel that money toward rebuilding this broken country, maybe even work toward REAL health care (single-payer)and financial reform that doesn't reward the very criminals who've wrecked those institutions for their personal gain, at our everlasting expense. And surely Obama will get us the hell out of Iraq, Afghanistan and stop meddling in every last coner of the earth where US corporate "interests" override every other concern. All we have to do is wish and hope hard enough.
Obviously, Nichols feels more comfortable remaining totally clueless.
I suspect Nichols writes this crap for the same reasons many others in the Professional Left Media do: To get paid. After all, its a paycheck. To tell the truth would inflict serious economic damage to his lifestyle. He would be blacklisted and would find himself in some darkened corner...blogging – for free. A few like KVH however, are true believers.
I have never taken the CIA's Kenyan Candidate seriously. I was slightly undecided until at the height of the controversy over him not wearing a flag pin he showed his true colors by appearing for an AIPAC grovel with crossed American/Israeli flags on his lapel.
The illusion that the elite give us a choice of leaders is getting more and more like American Idol with each new "election." Actually it is more like that animated program of fantasy celebrity punchouts (Tanya Hardin vs. Pamela Anderson, etc)
Obomba was picked as a one termer and he has known it from the git go. It's a four year, take the money and run gig. If he dared to think about crossing them at all it would mean a lone (Iranian) assassin's bullet and no platinum parachute. I don't know if he will have to face the humiliation of getting his ass kicked by Momma Moose or not. They may let him resign (an unexpected health problem) so that we get to witness the girl fight of the century.
COMING SOON to a tube in your living room, the Dragon Lady vs. the MLF - Horrible Hillary in a winner take all struggle with ("You Betcha") Perky Sarah Palin. I can hardly wait. Maya never ceases to entertain.
As Jesse Ventura says "American politics is exactly like professional wrestling."
I think Jesse Venturas analogy says it all! The Pistol Packin Mama from Alaska vs. Horrible Hillary in 2012.
i don't believe that the powers that be would allow palin to be president - she doesn't seem to take orders very well -
and if obama was really picked to be a one term president then jeb bush would be primed to jump into the race -
you know jeb - the smart one w/ the latina wife and fluent in spanish - ready to drive a nail into the democratic control of the hispanic vote.....
the bushes aren't just going to go away.....
and DO NOT tell me that the USA won't vote for another bush - we already have voted for the bushes 3 times!
Yeah, and under every Bush they have always found dirt!
RichM. Nice post. I would only add one thing: the whole Democratic party, in my view, is nothing but a fake, liberal, opposition party.
Yes -- and that raises a question: since there is no FDR now to save capitalism, then what are we looking forward to: revolution and socialism, or utter despotism? It's clear what the oligarchy wants. It seems clear they no longer think they need an FDR and half-way measures -- it's all doubled down.
"It seems clear they no longer think they need an FDR and half-way measures -- it's all doubled down."
You make an important observation about the paucity of moderates on the Republican side and the many Democrats proud to be known as regressive Blue Dogs. Indeed, those moderates within the Democrat Party don't want any connection made between them and Obama. The Propaganda System will never provide any publicity to a real Left politician running for election, but at the local level that's not an impediment. But, the effort needs to be made as you can't win without trying unless you're a corporatist like Obama.
But your point is very valid as there's no LEFT to counter the pseudo-left politicos like Kucinich, Boxer and Feingold, who essentially enable the whole game and lend it legitimacy when illegitimacy is really the case. Who will confront the rioters and calm them down when no national politico has their ear? The only defense the elite have will be the police, military and their own mercenaries since political compromise isn't their game, as you note.
I look for the riots (from both left and right) to start in response to more stolen elections this Fall; and if the Winter starts off mild, they will continue into the new year.
“Midwesterners are not naive and nostalgic. They know that Bush and Cheney did not ‘get it.’”
“What they're not so sure about is whether Obama ‘gets’ it.”
“Were Obama to take a similar stand this Labor Day, were he to echo Roosevelt's call for economic justice, the energy of this election year would shift - in Wisconsin and nationally - because voters would know, finally, which side their president was on.”
Wait a sec. Midwesterners are not naive? If what they want is economic justice, why do they keep voting for crooks in both primary and general elections?
Bush, Cheney, and Obama all “get it.” They know that winning elections in America is all about who can extort the most money from rich contributors to brainwash the electorate into voting for them.
The ones who don’t get it are a majority of American voters, among them, apparently, clueless readers of The Nation magazine.
Which side is he on?
Are you so sure he's on our side, as FDR was?
Wow!
It's my own fault. I saw the headline and byline, but dallied elsewhere. It isn't even lunchtime on the West Coast, and this Nichols turkey has already been picked to gleaming bone.
During the 2008 campaign season, friends from the DC area came to visit during a family weekend at the shore; they arrived after dark. C., who's well over six feet tall, stepped out of the dark entrance hall wearing a cardboard Obama mask he'd picked up somewhere. This was a more or less life-size Obama-face with eyeholes cut out.
It was actually scary as hell for a split-second! Then when we processed what we were looking at, it was just silly. During the visit, once in a while C. or someone else would put the Obama mask on when no one was paying attention; the effect was no longer scary, but was actually a bit creepy.
This throwaway joke quickly reached a point of diminishing returns, and no one bothered with the mask after a while.
I'm reminded of this goofy, trivial happenstance because of John Nichols' tired attempt to push Obama out of the dark wearing an FDR mask. It's as incongruous as my huge, bearlike friend C. lurching in with that Obama mask, and about as believable.