Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

No comment on the Civilian Conservation Corps? And although you label it a "minor plus" I think we could use a WPA today or something to employ people who need work, people struggling to make it in this country. We ALL have talent and skills, but some aren't recognized by the marketplace, but I think the government can step in and create jobs in which our diverse talents and capabilities are utilized. And I hope you're joking with this "devious sneakiness as a ruthless political intriguer" stuff.

Didn't he also introduce the FHA (or its predecessor) and the 30-year fixed mortgage? And the mortgage interest tax deduction?

Talk about radical changes ... the difference between home owner/rent ratios in 1928 and 1958 are night and day ... wish I had the stats at hand to be specific.

it's educational to read the reasoning Buckley used to sort out segregation then and how he's retroactively cleaned it up and turned it into a constitutional issue.

At the time, blacks were an inferior race and whites couldn't afford to take the chance on letting a numerically superior inferior race take control of anything.

Now, it was a terrible thing, and it was just too darn bad that those insensitive civil rights crusaders used the courts and forced the right to oppose them instead of standing hat in hand like they were supposed to.

Teddy and Franklin were counsins, not uncle/nephew, unless you count by marriage, because Teddy was Franklin's wife's uncle.

I disagree with your listing the Public Utility Holding Company Act as a failure.

Worldwide, utility deregulation has been a failure.

The PUHCA is a success.

Oh yeah, and he was great enough to try everything unconstitutional under the sun under the threat of court stacking, forever rendering the document toilet paper.

"What do you mean constitutional issue? The thing clearly says we can do anything we want to promote the general welfare. Oh, and people have money in their pockets which comes from who knows where. Everything is interstate commerce, too. Or something."

The licence to print as much money as you want is an unmitigated plus?

It always amazes me that some people act shocked when the South is stereotyped as a racist region of the country. This is an area that, among other things, used lynchings and poll taxes not even 100 years ago to prevent blacks from voting. This is an area that protested and threw things at Lady Bird Johnson, an Alabama native, when she toured the South after the passage of civil rights laws in 1965. It's an area that still wants to have the Confederate flag on government property. It's an area where people like Jesse Helms, a man who sent black voters notice that they would be violating federal election laws if they tried to vote and who won a from-behind victory by claiming that black people were taking away jobs from white people, get elected to the Senate.

I'm not saying that all of the people in the South are racists. Nor am I going to say that the people in the North are free from racial problems. I'm merely saying that it's quite fustrating to see some act like a reputation is undeserved or misplace.

"Roosevelt's greatest contribution came in his using all his devious sneakiness as a ruthless political intriguer to put the United States in harm's way in World War II. "

Yup. Nothing so becomes a President as using devious sneaky political intrigue to get his nation in a foreign war.

In fairness, FDR did not "drop" the "really bad ideas" of the NIRA and the AAA; the Supreme Court in the Schechter ("sick chicken") and Butler cases declared them unconstitutional.

From the historical accounts I have read, the WPA was more than just a "minor plus". It did work, and it was only when it was cut back that the country plunged into back into a recession. Also, I was surprised that FDR's other major program, the TVA, was not categorized.

For history of homeownership rate:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/owner.html

Currently it is about 68 percent. So it is more than 20 percentage points higher than it was in the 1920s.

Yeah, Jim, because, after all, Saddam really was Hitler, wasn't he? These are exact parallels you are implying, aren't you? I mean, Iraq really threatened to bring fascism all around the world, didn't it?

The US was not going to enter WWII unless we were attacked. The US people would not have supported it. Japan was well on its way to killing 10 million Chinese and FDR knew it was only a matter of time before they attacked. It would have been problematic if they had only attacked the British or the Dutch because if the US stayed out, then Japan could have beat them first, then come after a much more vulnerable US without allies.

Knowing that Japan wanted to fight a war for oil left the US soldiers and sailors vulnerable. They had to await the enemy to attack on their terms at their chosen time and place. DC intelligence knew that the attack was likely on 12/7/1941 but believed that the Phillipines would be attacked. They forgot to notify Pearl in time. The Phillipines was attacked the next day.

Having to await attack known to be eminent caused the US to lose several of its best battleships at the start of the war. Fortunately, carriers turned out to be far more important than battleships.

With Japan and Hitler in alliance, the US could not remain neutral in Europe, either. Atlantic US shipping was still subject to German sub attacks. FDR manipulated Hitler into declaring war against the US. Basically, this allowed FDR to provide arms to the Soviets and the British. The Soviets provided most of the troops in Europe. This kept Hitler tied down and unable to support the Japanese. It also prevented the Germans from getting atomic weapons before the US.

Yes, FDR finessed the German declaration of war. The Japanese were going to attack the US in the Philippines anyway no matter what FDR did. It is true that FDR tried to place US forces in position that they would be attacked if the Japanese only attacked the British. However, we are only dealing with what ifs. The Japanese did attack the US. First at Pearl where we did not anticipate it, then in the Philippines where we did.

While some have speculated that FDR pushed the Japanese into war, the record is very clear that FDR knew the US was not prepared for a war with Japan and did everything in his power to delay a possible attack. Yes there was some diplomatic bumbling, but until the attack, the Japanese disguised their intentions.

BTW- The FDR memorial is beautiful and inspirational. The statuary is interactive. The FDR quotes are so starkly different from those of our current president as to be jarring. There is none of the Jersey barriers and fencing that is such an eyesore on the rest of the Capitol Mall. No wonder the French are pissed. L'Enfant must roll in his grave. In contrast to the FDR memorial, the new WWII monstrocity is best viewed from a distance. What were they thinking?

Do you mean to imply that Cousin Teddy was not an enormously impressive and accomplished man? I trust I'm misreading you.

This is so OT, but, bakho, I visited the WWII memorial yesterday. I was not immediately impressed with, either. However, as I watched the old warriors walking around the memorial, I realized that for many, this is a place of remembrance; a time to relive the Glory Days. The memorial, structurally, seems a little overdone, but probably in line with that era's way of doing things. I wept for a moment because you can see that it is an emotion-provoking place for these people. There were older people all around as they studied every part of the memorial, searching for the aspects that were applicable to them. As my family and I walked back to the Metro station, we met many more seniors making their pilgramage to the memorial.

While at the memorial, I decided to try to engage in conversation with one or two of the visitors, in hopes of giving them an outlet to speak of their memories. One gentleman I talked with had spent 4 years in the war as a staff sergeant. He served at the Battle of the Bulge, returned home, and then headed for the Pacific to help occupy Japan. I talked with another fellow who did not serve in WWII, but in the Korean War. Both of these gentleman seemed to enjoy talking about their war days.

FDR manipulated Hitler into declaring war against the US.

He helped by starting the shooting war against german subs earlier that year.

Basically, this allowed FDR to provide arms to the Soviets and the British

We were already providing arms to the british on cash & carry terms. The 1940 destroyers for bases deal helped a little, and in 1941 lend-lease was started, giving the british generous credit terms for the duration (they were running down their foreign exchange and gold reserves if you can trust Churchill's account).

As for the Japanese, the diplomacy appears somewhat ham-handed, as the final modus vivendi talks turned frigid upon US's insistence that Japan remove itself from Indochina *and* China, freezing all Japanese funds, preventing US-owned tankers from delivering Indonesian oil to Japan.

Basically FDR told the Japanese that we weren't going to sell them any more oil if they didn't stop murdering and looting and burning and raping the Chinese. This forced Japan to choose between war with the US so they could grab Indonesian oil, or not murdering, looting, burning, and raping the Chinese. They chose war.
Funny thing is, ten years later the Chinese sent a million men to fight us in Korea. Yet the Shiite Iraqis proving similarly ungratefull came as a complete surprise to our government.

The gernans couldn't even make a nuclear reactor, read the account of what was found. I believe Teddy and Franklin were cousins. At least he kept his sex life alittle normal unlike another Dem president. The one that had to be cured of various sexual diseases, all thru' his presidency,

“Charles Pickering moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party in the early 1960s for no reason other than that the Democrats were too aggressive on civil rights for him.”

Did he confess this as his reason? If not, how can you be so sure without being privy to the man’s inner thoughts? Your statement seems like an attempt at character assassination. I say “attempt” because some Dixiecrats opposed civil rights legislation because they believed it a blueprint for future reverse discrimination. Hubert Humphrey responded to the contrary when he said: “This law means an end to all discrimination! I will eat it page by page if it proves that we have introduced a new kind of discrimination – i.e., racial quotas – to replace the old "separate but equal.” But those Dixiecrats were exactly right, that’s what we got—reverse discrimination. Now you might think it perfectly proper to reverse discriminate, but most of us don’t like any kind of discrimination. In this the Dixiecrats were prescient.

"I say “attempt” because some Dixiecrats opposed civil rights legislation because they believed it a blueprint for future reverse discrimination."

Zarkov, your conjecture is far more implausible than DeLong's. The pious "reverse discrimination / colorblind" joke hadn't even been invented at that time. It was states' rights they talked about.

"George W. Bush chose Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday weekend to give Charles Pickering a recess appointment."

Dr. Justin Frank cites this as an example of Bush's sadism.

As beneficial as many of the New Deal programs were, there is an important, and often forgotten, motivation for FDR's program.

The early 30s saw a marked increase in the following of Norman Thomas, Eugene Debs, Robert LaFollette and other socialist or "ultra-progressive" organizers as a backlash against the excesses and abuses of big business. Fearing for the future of American capitalism, the patrician Roosevelt thought it essential to construct a basic social safety net, put people to work, and regulate business, lest the populace become so disgusted with the avarice of large private enterprises that they begin to vote en masse for socialist or pseudo-communist politicians.

It's for this reason that some historians believe that FDR saved US capitalism.

And big ups for the Wagner Act & both Security Acts even beyond creation of the SEC (though they could use some updating)

In the run-up to the Iraq war in late 2002 and early 2003, I found myself thinking a lot about its parallels, or lack thereof, to the situation FDR faced during the two plus years from the summer of 1939 to 12/7/41. Roosevelt had the strategic vision to see that the direction in which the world situation was evolving was profoundly inimical to US national interests, but also had the political savvy to realize that the majority of the people didn’t realize it, largely because they didn’t yet fully appreciate how advancing technology was shrinking the size of the globe. During those two and a half years he played increasingly fast and loose with the Constitutional limitations on presidential power both to minimize the damage to our interests by, for example, supporting Great Britain’s military efforts, and to educate the American people to the fact that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were no longer the impenetrable moats they once were. He arguably crossed Constitutional lines a few times (perhaps more than a few), but in retrospect not many people contend that his actions during that period were unjustified based on what we know now.

I had read Kenneth Pollack’s 2001 book , in which he argued that Iraq probably had a clandestine nuclear weapons program that within five or ten years would be far enough along to destabilize the Middle East. He further contended that the West may have to play the war card some time before that to nip the problem in the bud, but also contended that it should be done with a broad coalition and that there was no urgency to do it immediately. A little research on Pollack’s background convinced me that he was essentially fact and logic based in his approach, and not a political or ideological axe grinder. From what I’ve heard him say since the war revealed his analysis to be wrong has reaffirmed that assessment; I believe he had reached his assessments based on what he knew at the time.

I had very mixed feelings as it became increasingly clear during 2002 that Bush was determined to invade Iraq. On the one hand I was inclined to give the administration the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they had information that the Iraqi nuclear threat was more immediate than Pollack thought. The image of FDR gradually bringing the country around to accept what had to be done came to mind. On the other hand, I was disturbed about the way the administration was conflating the supposed threat of Iraq with that of al Qaeda terrorism. The latter had become a personal issue for me. My daughter worked at 1 World Trade Center, but thankfully had been late leaving for work on the morning of 9/11 and was still on the bus about a mile away on East Broadway when American Airlines Flight 11 hit her building. A few minutes later she was on her cell phone with us, watching from the sidewalk as we were watching our TV, when the United plane hit the south tower. I had studied up on al Qaeda enough to know that to suggest that their religiously driven movement would cooperate deeply with the aggressively secular Baath regime just didn’t compute. Furthermore careful reading of the administration’s PR campaign to meld the two in the public’s mind showed that they perhaps didn’t believe it either. So, the question was, was the administration behaving responsibly like Roosevelt did in the face of the most serious threat the USA faced in the 20th century? Or were they abusing the public trust like Lyndon Johnson did with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution by pushing us toward a war that was, at best, based on a misapprehension of the strategic situation or, at worst, driven by partisan political concerns or unresolved psychological issues between the president’s ears?

Subsequent events and revelations have demonstrated beyond doubt that the Iraq war comes out of a combination of the latter. The neo-cons in control of the national security organs grossly misread the strategic situation of the United States in relation to the rest of the world, but the president’s insecurities, intellectual inadequacies and moral bankruptcy most assuredly were in the mix as well. This nation has on occasion been profoundly lucky in the quality of the presidents we have chosen at some crucial points in our history, 186o through 1865, and 1932-1945 among them. I guess we can’t always be that fortunate.

Re the Roosevelt family tree, Eleanor was indeed the daughter of TR’s wastrel brother Elliot. Wikipedia confirms my recollection that she and FDR were very distant, 5th cousins. Thus, the link between TR and FDR was farily distant as well.

To expand on Bakho’s summary of the events leading up to the US entry in to WWII, my recollection is that while Japan’s attack on the Philippines was not a strategic surprise, it definitely was at the tactical level in spite of the Pearl Harbor attack of the previous day. Most of MacArthur’s planes, including his brand new B-17s, were caught lined up on the tarmac like ducks in a row, and the general himself was so stunned by it that he was virtually immobilized for several days thereafter. His reaction was similar to Stalin’s after the German launch of Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941.

Yglesias is just trying to get a slot as the farm team Mickey Kaus. The faux-strikeout is the telling touch, it's so cute. This is the guy whose opinion on the Endagered Species Act is "Who cares? Species die, shit happens, get over it."

A. Zarkov, the idea that the Dixiecrats were prescient (putting aside the merits of whether we have "reverse discrimination," which i think you would have an extremely hard time demonstrating), as Zizka has already noted, is complete and total crap. You really must not know much about the South, about politics in the South, and about the complex history of racial relations in the South.

Roughly 100 years had elapsed from the end of slavery until the passage of the first significant national civil rights legislation During this time, any state in the south that had any interest whatsoever in ending de facto segregation had the complete ability to do so. None - not one, not one stinking one, not one single isolated frickin' county - decided that separate but equal was a joke.

Not one.

And suddenly, you would have us believe that one day, people who had benefited from discrimination, who were happy to deny people who weren't white the right to vote, or drink from water fountains, or attend the same schools, one day these very people woke up and said, well, really, i want equality for all, and if we follow this dangerous democratic path, reverse discrimination is assuredly going to come into existence, so instead i'll join the republican party, which i know will side with me against some future threat of reverse discrimination even though today's problem of discrimination, if this party has its way, will remain?

ridiculous, just ridiculous.

er, brain fatigue, that would be "de jure" segregation, not "de facto."

Bob--

>Dr. Justin Frank cites this as an example of Bush's sadism.

One could also see it as an attempt to emulate St. Reagan. Probably both.

http://tinyurl.com/4d3vd (or click my name for full article):
"Reagan lost the nomination to Ford in 1976. But when the former California governor ran for the presidency again in 1980, he began his campaign with a controversial appearance in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been brutally killed. It was at that sore spot on the racial map that Reagan revived talk about states' rights and curbing the power of the federal government."

howard: “the idea that the Dixiecrats were prescient (putting aside the merits of whether we have "reverse discrimination," which i think you would have an extremely hard time demonstrating), ... “

Examples of “reverse discrimination” are both numerous and widespread. What do you call minority “set asides?” How about affirmative action admissions to college? For example the University of Michigan (a state school) had a point system for admission. Being Black was worth 20 points, but having a perfect SAT score was worth a mere 12 points. Then we have race-based systems in hiring, promotion and layoffs. If we don’t have reverse discrimination, then why did the civil rights lobby campaign so hard against California proposition 54? One can easily come up with hundreds of examples. You might believe that reverse discrimination is both necessary and proper, but you should not deny that it exists, and that judicial approval of reverse discrimination rests on 1960s civil rights legislation. Moreover I never said or implied that fear of reverse discrimination was the sole reason southerners opposed civil rights legislation. But they did make that objection, which is why Hubert Humphrey (sponsor of the legislation) responded so dramatically in his denial. Finally the issue here is Charles Pickering, not the whole of the south or its apartheid history. Perhaps he did feel the Democrats were creating something that would ultimately become a racial spoils system. I don’t know. But until the evidence goes beyond mere speculation as to inner motives, I remain neutral. What I object to is this constant character assassination by the partisans of the left and right.

While the WPA and CCC may classify as minior plusses from a purely economic standpoint, growing up in a Chicago working class neighborhood with parents, neighbors and relative who remember the depression, I would argue that the WPA had considerable impact at the street level (often literally). The CCC provided employment for several Uncles and a revenue stram for the family. On top of that the WPA was regarded as not only providng work for craftsmen, writers and artists, but was highly regarded due since it gave then honest respectable work in their selected vocation .
From my early childhood to the present day, my parents took every opprotunity to point out WPA buildings and public works (particularly sidewalks ). The building are beatifully ornamented by true craftsmen and spectacularly well built, outlasting comparable buildings from the '50s onward. In particular, my parents point out WPA built sidewalks which survive to this day, and how they outlast sidewalks poured several years ago. I've got a comprehensive collection of the reprinted travel guides put out by the WPA. They are not only remarkably well written but surprisingly useful to this day.

This form of stimulus, which gave people respectable work which they could be proud of, and produced tangible and (very) enduring results, always got a good response in my neighborhood.

I've picked up the habit of pointing out WPA works myself, along with the lament/prediction that it's coming back one of these days.

Zarkov, where is the place that you object to character assassination from the right. Not here, certainly.

A. Zarkov, this isn't the forum to investigate the troubled and, in my estimation, intellectually dishonest history of the "reverse discrimination" claim (do we, for instance, really have to trot out all the special points that the u of mich provided for all kinds of purposes?), so, for the moment, let me simply stipulate that i find such claims entirely unpersuasive and without merit, and we'll spare the detailed discussion for another time and place.

But more broadly, methinks you doth protest too much. Your final sentence cited "the Dixiecrats," and not the previously unnamed "some." I, for one, would like to see your evidence of just who these unknown "some" or "all" Democrats were who did what you claim: not only come up with an argument against civil rights legislation (hell, there were plenty of southerners who chose to argue that really, they were all for equal rights, but state's rights had to take precedence, and i don't believe them for one second based on the remainder of their biographies), but, based on that specific argument - god forbid that we embark upon a path towards "reverse discrimination" - and only on that specific argument changed parties.

I've studied this history in some detail, and i'm unfamiliar with any examples that fit your criterion, although that doesn't mean some don't exist. It does mean trust but verify.

And part of why i don't believe is for the very reason i spelled out above: so where were the actions on the state or local level that demonstrate the good-faith bona fides of these dixiecrats towards ending de jure segregation? Without such supporting evidence, perhaps you'll imagine my skepticism.

And that goes for Pickering, too....

howard: On the matter of reverse discrimination, you can deny the obvious if you like. As to Pickering, what evidence do we have that that he disingenuously opposed the civil rights act? But let’s say he did purely for the sake of argument. That was about 40 years ago. What makes him unfit to serve on an appellate court today? After all Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was once an actual member of the clan, yet we generally accept him as a good Justice. Of course in reality Pickering vigorously opposed the clan according Charles Evers (brother of Medgar Evers). I see no evidence that Pickering is unfit. Where’s the beef?

A. Zarkov, on the matter of reverse discrimination, i am not "denying the obvious;" i have examined the matter and found the case wanting, but as i say, that's for another time and place.

As for Pickering, i think his track record is mixed, and i think there is nothing about his record that recommends him for a higher position, but actually, i don't much care about him. He isn't the worst or most egregious potential Bush appointment.

I got into this discussion with you because you made what i consider to be an unsupported (and, i suspect, unsupportable) assertion, namely, that really, the Dixiecrat transtion to Republicanism was in fact a highly principled response to the future threat of reverse discrimination. I regard Pickering as merely an example of a broader tendency. I again ask you: can you please provide demonstration that, in fact, any Democrat (Pickering or other) who transitioned to Republicanism as a response to civil rights legislation did so because of a fear of future reverse discrimination.

And I again ask you, if these people were so committed to equal rights, why did they do nothing on the state or local level to achieve equal rights? Particularly once the Supreme Court had ruled that "separate but equal" was, in fact, unequal, thereby removing the fig leaf of consitutionality?

howard: I never wrote or intended to write anything like: “[The] Dixiecrat transtion to Republicanism was in fact a highly principled response to the future threat of reverse discrimination.” I merely called their objections to the civil rights act “prescient.” In fact the political realignment of southern politicians has much more to do with the withering away of the lingering effects of the Reconstruction period after the Civil War than it has to do with racial issues. The Dixiecrats were more aligned with the ideology of the Republicans on matters of national defense, foreign policy, labor, taxes, government regulation, environmental law, and abortion to name but a few of many policy differences. And yes those differences also include race relations. However, the realignment was inevitable with the passage of time and the economic progress of the South.

In summary, I take issue with Brad’s (and your) assertion that Pickering became a Republican because he felt the Democrats were “too aggressive” on race. The burden of proof rests on those make this accusation because (as I said) realignment happened for a variety of reasons. Moreover, I never said that the Dixiecrats (as a whole) were committed to “equal rights.” However we have at least prima facie evidence that Pickering is an exception, else how do explain all those Black supporters? But his opponents are simply playing politics (as far as I can tell) and trying to play the race card again-- a kind of McCarthyism of the left.

A. Zarkov, not that this hasn't been fun, but it's time to wind this particular discussion down (at least from my perspective); life does have to move on without scrolling down this many Brad posts!

It seems to me that you have changed your tune quite a bit from your earliest posting on this matter, and in so doing, muddled a few issues together, but in the spirit of good manners, let me start by agreeing with you on something: i do think that, over time, it was inevitable for a variety of reasons that there would be a movement from democrat to republican in the south. After all, the Dixiecrats never made ideological sense within the New Deal; they were part of FDR's (and LBJ's) coalition because of the lingering hatred of the GOP for freeing the slaves and (in at least some quarters) attempting to make reconstruction mean something. So your point about the broader basis for the transition is valid.

But that validity is undercut with the specifics of the timing we are talking about here. while it's clear in retrospect that the modern conservative republicans were going to rout the dominant moderate northeastern republicans, this wasn't a gimmie in 1964: Jackie Robinson, for instance, was still a republican, as was Ed Brooke. That the long term trendlines would have made dixiecrats republicans isn't the same as saying that the civil rights act and voting rights act and federal enforcement of desegregation of the schools weren't the precipitating factors for a large number of dixiecrats in the early-mid '60s.

And your initial proposition - which you have now watered down - that "prescient" dixiecrats recognized the coming of "reverse discrimination" and abandoned the dems forthwith, still lacks any degree of supporting evidence, especially real-time contemporary evidence. The real-time contemporary evidence is that race led to the change, clear and simple.

So actually, i don't feel especially obligated to "prove" that Pickering was part of this movement; what i believe is that someone who is defending Pickering should produce evidence that his change was a principled movement and not a race-based movement. This would have made him, as far as i can tell, unique at the time and i don't see Pickering as unique.

Finally, Charles Evers isn't the last word, and support for the KKK isn't the only way in which segregationist manifested their beliefs....

howard: Yes it’s time to stop. I think we simply have a disagreement on who has the burden of proof about Pickering. Just because he is a southerner does not make him a segregationist, at least in my mind. Note that my original comment was aimed at Brad’s “for no reason other than ... “ which I feel is unwarranted and unjustified.

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