The Nation Always clings toward the Conservative
(1)”I am very sorry for President Harrison, but I cannot see that our interests are going to be affected one way or the other by the cahnge of Administration.” — Henry Clay Frick
“Well, we have nothing to fear, and perhaps it is best. I fear that Homestead did much to elect Cleveland. Very sorry– but no use getting excited.” — Andrew Carneigie
(Homestead refers to this strike, which helped make election a blow-out for Grover Cleveland over Benjamin Harrison. Carneigie Steel being a supposed supporter of Harrison and the Republicans.)
(2) Hoover’s secretary of commerce Roy Chapin, on the election of FDR: “The mood the country was such that […] perhaps we are lucky that we didn’t get a Socialist or a Radical instead of Roosevelt.” (That’d be Norman Thomas or the Communist candidate, Foster.]
I believe you can call the “Gilded Age” of post-Reconstruction America a time when the two parties collided into being about the same entity. Perhaps you can say the same thing for post-World War America, wherein the two parties clamored to both have Eisenhower as the nominee. The 1892 selection of quotes shows the Captains of Industry aware that the party in the White House does not matter. Cleveland made an impassioned State of the Union address (written, mind you) concerning Big Business being out of control in running American’s lives into the ground. But he wasn’t about to do anything about it. The 1932 quote shows the Captains of Industry reconciling themselves to our new era. I believe anyone who has read Howard Zinn’s neo-Marxist History (A People’s History of the United States) knows the quote, I believe quoted from Richard Hofstadter, of Paranoid Style fame, is that every American president has been bound by American land-owners and that has the understanding that they are furthering American Capitalism. But we’re practical in America and just want a working system we can swim under. In the case of that semi-Socialist Capitalist Reform movement of “The New Deal” — it reaches its limit and will have to be reined in sooner or later, or the nation is going to just keep marching toward Centralization. Thus, consider that as soon as the system found a working order under Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, those oh-so-evil “Captians of Industry” will… well, here’s how the British Left put it:
(3) Manchester Guardian, reported in the NYT on July 23:
Both parties show the same trend. The “old guard”, in other words the “bosses” and “machines” of the Republican Party would not stand Wendel Willkie’s liberalism (actually, more importantly, neither would the rank and file Republican voter), so they turned with some reluctance to Mr. Dewey, and with some positive enthusiasm to Mr. Bricker as his running mate. The party ‘bosses’ of the Democrats, the by no means impeccable machines and the conservatives of the South, could not stand Mr. Wallace, who in the popular mind embodies the New Deal and racial equality. So they turned to the colorless Truman who has never upset anyone’s prejudices. […]
The New Deal is dead, whatever lip service may still be paid to it. Labor in the defeat of Mr. Wallace has been pointedly ignored, and those reactionary influences in the South which put a narrow rationalism above broad human rights have been appeased.
I note that “Labor”, was happy with Truman’s selection. And the South was happy to be done with Wallace. The “negroes” on the other hand…
(4) 7-23-1944: The National Negro Council, meanwhile, attacked the nomination of Mr. Truman and the platform adopted by the Democratic Convention as “poison to the Negro Citizen.” Edgar S Brown, national director, in a special statement said Mr. Truman as chairman of the Senate War Investigation Committe “has defeated every honest and insistent effort to secure consideration for Negro war workers.” Mr. Brown also charged that Mr. Truman was silent on anti-lynching and anti-poll tax legislation despite the fact that responsible Negro leaders urged him to protest. Other attacks by Negroes on the racial plank in the Democratic platform were made by [bunch of names I assume few people remember.]
Skip back to the Strom Thurmond posts on the 1948 election to see how things changed in four years amongst these two Democratic constituencies. I note for your consideration that in the year 1944, there was low-level rumouring that if Roosevelt picked Wallace as his running mate, the Southern States would bolt and have a “Jeffersonian Democratic Party”. But this probably didn’t get very far from the head of… Virginia Senator Harry Byrd. Keep in mind that in the Olde South when you elected a Senator, he’s Senator for life. Strom Thurmond, anyone? All of which raises a puzzling question: are we in America moving rightward or leftward? Go from Roosevelt at his New Deal high-point in 1936, on to 1940 with he and Henry Wallace, on to 1944 with Truman, then to Kennedy, theoretically Johnson as viewed in the 1950s– but that was a deception, Carter, and Clinton… and every Democratic Presidential Administration has been a step toward the right. Except that it really hasn’t been… Civil Rights would be advanced by Truman (as a big surprise to anyone watching his career before his presidency), Eisenhower with the help of Majority Leader in the Senate Lyndon Johnson (a surprise of sorts, note he was a segregationist when elected for his first term), and through his presidency (I’ll get to Kennedy on a later post). And back on economic matters, there are sleights of hands going on. For example, for the Manchester Guardian and its belief that the “New Deal” was dead after the dumping of Wallace in favour of Truman — wasn’t the “New Deal” killed in 1938?
(5)11-9-1938: As the final returns are counted, the New Deal has been halted; the Republican party is large enough for effective opposition; the moderate Democrats in Congress can guide legislation; the third term movement has been strongly checked; Federal relief money in elections has ben overcome by voters in several states; the White House Circle, which invented the Supreme Court bill and the “purge”, has been discredited; a barrier against New Deal extension program and candidates has been set at the gate of the 1940 Democratic Convention; the sit-down strike and the Democratic – CIO alliance have been emphatically rebuked; the Farm Belt has revolted; the country is back on a two-party system; the McNutt Presidential boom in Indiana has collapsed with the McNutt State ticket; and legislative authority has been restored to Congress.
Cross out some things and replace them with more contemporary items and perhaps we can have Bush’s sixth term blues. Though with Roosevelt, his two presidential elections and his first mid-term elections were massive; Bush has made the most of narrow victories. But consider the “McNutt Presidential boom has collapsed”, and I’m having trouble envisioning a President McNutt. After the first Tuesday of November in 2006, we will almost certainly see the Presidential ambitions of Santorum dead, we may end up seeing the Presidential ambitions of current-co-frontrunner George Allen dead, and toss in a curtailed Mitt Romney if his Republican successor cannot win the Massachusetts governorship.
In consideration of the “revolt of the Farm Belt”, Roosevelt justified his selection of Henry Wallace, agricultur as his vice presidential pick for 1940 as “helping him win the Farm Belt”, to which his advisor said something to the effect of “Wallace is the reason you’re losing the Farm Belt.” If you want to consider the panoply of voices affecting administrative policies, he would be the “far left” element in the party. Roosevelt claimed that if Wallace were not nominated as his running mate, he would decline the Presidential nomination. And some Southern Democrats (Harry Byrd of Virginia, for instance) would rumble four years later that if Wallace were nominated as vice-president, they would bolt and form a “Jeffersonian Democratic Party”. I suspect Roosevelt demanded that Henry Wallace be his running mate to thumb his nose at the Conservative Wing of his party for their insubordination in his “Court Packing” scheme and their victories over his hand-picked batch of candidates four years earlier. I do have to wonder whether Roosevelt wanted to dump Wallace in 1944 or whether he was acqueiscing to the “Conservative Influences” in the Democratic Party… whom we can thank for stopping Roosevelt’s overstep in the Court Packing Scheme, and we can thank for dumping Henry Wallace. Though we can blame for retarding civil rights. An even split? Who knows?
The “What If” Scenarios of a Henry Wallace Presidency. I believe that the US Military, and Corporate Interests, would have overthrown Wallace in a coup. Part of my thinking here is because Roosevelt was aimed at for a coup. Now, in FDR’s case the would-be-leader of our nation would have been Respected Military General Smedly Butler. Let’s assume Wallace comes to power after Roosevelt’s death at the end of World War II. Who would be put in charge of the Nation? I give you two options of Respected Military Generals: Douglas MacArthur — perhaps a bit too polarizing for the nation to accept. Option two is a bit more likely, as he’s so congenial everybody will love him forever. Dwight D Eisenhower. Try to guess how firmly my cheeck is in my mouth here.
(6)3-6-1960 “Society for the Exposure of Political Nonsense, supposed electronic truth detector “Uniquack” on some political contrarianism that looks pretty prescient today:
Almost every political idea widely accepted in America today as true is either largely untrue or palpably false. […] For example, the general impression is that the civil rights debate in the South is a hopeless mess. As a matter of fact, it will probably do more in the end to enfranchise the colored people in the South than anything since the Emancipation Proclamation. […]
Kennedy, who has a reputation as a glamour boy, is developing into the toughest operator in the field. Or at least his father was. Nixon, who’s supposed to be a conservative, is nearer to a Dewey liberal than anything else. Today, some will point to him with irony as our “Last Liberal President”, some bits of rightism — his Supreme Court picks, for instance — notwithstanding. Johnson, who is tagged as a conservative, has done more for liberal causes than most of his liberal detractors. Indeed.
And the beat goes on…