Posted on 08/26/2009 4:58:32 PM PDT by SJackson
Seventy-five years ago this month, Franklin Roosevelt arrived in Green Bay to link his New Deal project and his political future with Wisconsin's progressive movement.
It was a critical choice, which saw the 32nd president go left rather than right.
The lesson could not be more profound for Barack Obama, who assumed the presidency amid much hope that he would initiate a "new New Deal."
Just as Roosevelt stumbled in the early stages of his first term and then achieved the focus necessary to become the 20th century's most successful and influential president, so Obama has hit a rough patch -- not because he tried to do too much but because his programs and policies (especially with regard to health care reform) have been so compromised and ill-defined.
Like Obama today, Roosevelt took office in 1933 after a long period of conservative misrule, which had created an economic catastrophe. Elected in a landslide even greater than Obama's dramatic margin of 2008, Roosevelt also had the benefit of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
Unfortunately, not all of the Democrats in Congress were friendly to Roosevelt or the New Deal. To an even greater extent than is the case today, the Democratic Party of the 1930s was an oil-and-water "mix." There were, to be sure, Democratic liberals such as New York's Robert Wagner and Washington's Homer Bone. But party caucuses were, as well, populated by Southern segregationists and the mandarins of big-city machines.
Roosevelt needed sounder allies, who shared his New Deal vision. And he found them among the progressive Republicans from the Upper Midwest and the West. Chief among the new president's allies was Wisconsin Sen. Robert M. La Follette Jr., who like his father before him sat as a maverick Republican. Regarded as one of the era's savviest legislators, "Young Bob" was a sincere supporter of the New Deal's labor and social policies.
Unfortunately, La Follette's tenure in the Senate faced a threat.
Reactionary Republicans, who had long battled La Follette progressives for control of the Wisconsin GOP, were in the ascendency. Farmers, workers and small-business owners -- the backbone of the progressive movement -- had been soured on the Republican brand by Herbert Hoover and were beginning to vote in Democratic primaries. That meant that reactionaries were becoming increasingly dominant in the state's Republican primaries.
In 1932, right-wingers beat two key progressives, Gov. Phil La Follette and Sen. John Blaine, in Wisconsin GOP primaries. In the fall, Wisconsin Democrats won the governorship and a Senate seat for the first time in the 20th century. As the 1934 election approached, the La Follettes left the Republican fold and aligned with the Milwaukee Socialists to form an independent Progressive Party.
Suddenly, Wisconsin had three-party politics. Roosevelt, whose popular appeal was near its peak, could have weighed in on behalf of the state's uninspired Democrats, who, as historian Jonathan Kasparek notes, "remained conservative and distrustful of the president." But that might have cost La Follette his Senate seat -- and the president would have lost an able congressional ally.
Roosevelt opted for ideology over partisanship, choosing to build out the left-wing coalition that would ultimately make the New Deal a muscular force and prepare the United States to defeat the fascists in World War II.
The president came to Green Bay in August 1934 to take his stand.
Wisconsin Democrats were hoping to get a ringing endorsement from their popular party leader.
Instead, before a crowd of 100,000 that had gathered to celebrate the northeastern Wisconsin city's 300th anniversary, Roosevelt hailed the state's progressive pioneers: "They set up institutions to enforce law and order, to care for the unfortunate, to promote the arts of industry and agriculture. They built a university and school system as enlightened as any that the world affords. They set up against all selfish private interests the organized authority of the people themselves through the state. They transformed utilities into public servants instead of private means of exploitation."
Noting that he had packed his White House with academic and political champions of "the Wisconsin idea," the president said, "I am glad to be in a state from which I have greatly drawn in setting up the permanent and temporary agencies of the national administration."
And then he hailed both the state's Democratic senator, F. Ryan Duffy, and the senator who until a few months earlier had sat as a Republican, La Follette, as "old friends of mine" who had "worked with me in maintaining excellent cooperation, the kind I have been talking about, between the executive and legislative."
At the mention of La Follette's name, the crowd that sprawled out from Green Bay's Bay Beach Pavilion roared its approval. They also noticed that no mention was made of La Follette's Democratic challenger that year (John Callahan), let alone the Republican (John Chapple). Three months later, "Young Bob" was re-elected with 48 percent of the vote to 24 for Callahan and 23 percent for Chapple.
Roosevelt made sure that, though La Follette never sat as a Democrat, he had key committee assignments in the Senate; the Progressive senator, in turn, skillfully used what came to be known as the "La Follette Committee on Civil Liberties" to advance the commitment he and the Democratic president shared to worker rights and social and economic justice.
By choosing ideology over partisanship, Roosevelt had marginalized the right-wingers not just in the Republican Party but also in his own Democratic Party. He did so because he actually believed in something greater than party. As he explained to the cheering crowd in Green Bay 75 years ago, Roosevelt sought to banish an old order of greed and fear and replace it with a New Deal that "recognizes that man is indeed his brother's keeper, insists that the laborer is worthy of his hire, demands that justice shall rule the mighty as well as the weak."
Roosevelt succeeded, for a time. Now the demand must be renewed.
Obama can do just that. But he won't succeed by compromising with conservative Democrats. He will prevail by following the lead of Roosevelt and advancing a muscular and progressive ideological agenda that promises a "new New Deal."
The author has not been watching Glenn Beck.
Barf alert.
What a crock of idiocy!
Worth noting that he's now spent more money than all the "white" Presidents in history.
That certainly provides any kharmic balance sought by disgruntled minorities eh!
Turn left? When you are going in circles you can not turn left.
It’s official. All these progressives are fools.
Just HOW could Obama turn more left?
“Roosevelt succeeded, for a time. Now the demand must be renewed.
Obama can do just that. But he won’t succeed by compromising with conservative Democrats. He will prevail by following the lead of Roosevelt and advancing a muscular and progressive ideological agenda that promises a “new New Deal.””
But that would mean bringing the rest of the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Where are those ‘Progressive’ voices, now?
Roosevelt could depend on a very left wing Catholic vote, Obama can’t say with certainty that he will not lose the Catholic vote in 2012 or at least not do as well with Catholic voters if he moves even further left.
If Zero turns any further to the left, he’s going to lap himself.
My favorite author from the Communist, er I mean, Capital Times.
he's busy trying to lap his Czars
Hard to believe, but has he? If so he's moving fast.
NASCAR!
Uhhh...U turn? Seriously, they could be and will be fare more Marxist. Wait until the illegal aliens are voting.
He’ll need another dimension to get more left.
For one example, take this 4-word example:
Obama's dramatic margin of 2008
Dramatic margin of victory? 52.9% of the popular vote is suddenly a "dramatic margin of victory"?
What would this idiot call the margins of victories by GHW Bush (53.9%)? Ronald Reagan (58.8%)? Nixon (60.7)? Eisenhower (57.4%)?
Oh wait, they're all Republicans. They squeaked in, under suspicious ballot counting.
This article is so bad, you can pick out any string of six or more words in a row and easily prove them erroneous. This entire article is written for idiots by an idiot.
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