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January 7, 2004
FDR vs. Democratic Leadership Council
The Stop Dean movement in the Democratic Party has launched some fascinating torpedoes against Howard Dean lately. Senator Joe Lieberman has been spitting and frothing because Howard Dean criticized the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and Bill Clinton. Lieberman says Dean is a polarizer and "in politics you win by uniting." And his fellow DLC senator and presidential candidate John Edwards blasted Dean for not behaving like Franklin Roosevelt. Meanwhile, DLC director Al From modestly said of his intention to defeat Dean, "The DLC has saved the Democratic Party once and we're bound to do it again." Most of this got a lot of news coverage, which must have puzzled ordinary folks who have never heard of the DLC. The DLC, once known as the "White Boys Caucus" and now as "George Bush Lite," was formed in 1985 to try to push the Democratic Party to the right. It lionizes Bill Clinton and his economic policies, which widened the gap between rich and poor. The DLC has turned entrenchment in Washington into a political philosophy, helping fulfill President Harry Truman's contention that if the public is given a choice of two conservatives it will always go for the real thing. Since the DLC became a force, the only presidential wins by the Democratic Party have been pluralities instead of majorities. Senator Edwards made a speech in San Francisco in which he compared Dean unfavorably with Franklin Roosevelt, who ran against President Herbert Hoover in 1932 during the Great Depression. Edwards spoke at the Commonwealth Club, where Roosevelt spoke on September 23, 1932. Edwards said Roosevelt "didn't scare people or feed their fears. He didn't tell his fellow Democrats that Hoover's errors were all their fault, and that the Depression could have been avoided if they had just gotten in Hoover's face ... He inspired hope, and his optimism defined our party and our country." Edwards' speech misrepresents both Dean and FDR in his effort to find a basis for attacking Dean. He apparently did not read Roosevelt's Commonwealth Club speech or his other 1932 statements, which reveal the polarizing FDR campaign style. Edwards seems to consider criticism of entrenchment, such as FDR and Dean engaged in, to be incompatible with offering hope, when in fact it might be the same thing. In fact, Roosevelt DID fault his fellow Democrats, saying, "I warn those nominal Democrats who squint at the future with their faces turned toward the past and who feel no responsibility to the demands of the new time, that they are out of step with their party ... Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good for the greatest number of our citizens." Edwards' comment about FDR getting in Hoover's face misrepresents Dean's approach to Bush. Dean says Democrats should stand up to George Bush instead of cowering before him as the DLC does. That's good strategy, not bad manners. But more to the point, Roosevelt DID get in Hoover's face. In Columbus, Ohio on August 20, 1932 Roosevelt called Hoover a liar, saying the president had misled the country about the depth of its economic troubles. He said Hoover should have worked to give "the safety of savings to men and women rather than safety of exploitation to the exploiter, safety of manipulation to the financial manipulators, safety of unlicensed power to those who would speculate to the bitter end with the welfare and property of other people." Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation was pouring corporate welfare into the treasuries of banks and corporations, and in some ways the economy rebounded. Like today's economic "recovery," the national economy in 1932 saw an upturn that benefited those at the top but was scarcely felt by the rest of the country. Roosevelt said the people at the bottom "seem to be beyond the concern of a national administration which can think in terms only of the top of the social and economic structure." Like today's Stop-Dean effort by the DLC and its allies, a Stop-Roosevelt movement formed. Like Dean, commentators saw FDR as a loser. The renowned Walter Lippman wrote that Roosevelt "has not a good enough grasp of issues nor the power of quick and firm decision to withstand the withering fire which the Republicans would subject him to." Like Dean, Roosevelt was also characterized by party insiders as a loser. New Jersey Democratic leader Frank Hague said Roosevelt would lose every state east of the Mississippi and most of those in the far west. Like Dean, FDR faced reactionaries in the Democratic Party who said he would go down to defeat because of his supposedly inflammatory rhetoric. Al Smith, who would later switch to the Republicans, accused Roosevelt of making a "demagogic appeal to the masses of the working people of this country to destroy themselves by setting class against class and rich against poor." The DLC, like Al Smith, is harshly critical of "class war" on behalf of those at the bottom, and its view has prevailed in the Democratic Party all through the Clinton years and into the Bush administration, leaving the public defenseless against Bush and the GOP, which have had no such qualms about waging class war on behalf of those at the top. At the Commonwealth Club, Roosevelt said the closing of the physical frontier of the U.S. and the glut of industrial development required government regulation of business to protect small business from corporate oligarchs: "Recently a careful study was made of the concentration of business ... It showed that our economic life was dominated by some 600-odd corporations that controlled two thirds of American industry. Ten million small businessmen controlled the other third - If the process goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations and run by perhaps 100 men. The day of the great promoter or the financial titan, to whom we granted anything if he would only build, is over ... we know, now, that these economic units cannot exist unless prosperity is uniform, that is, unless purchasing power is well distributed throughout every group in the nation." In 2004, with 28 years to go until the centennial of Roosevelt's prediction, the DLC-supported concentration of the economy is right on schedule. It is always hazardous to say that what happened in one set of circumstances applies to a different set of circumstances. But if Edwards and other DLCers were going to give us history lessons, it would be useful for them to get the history right. Myers is a veteran state capital reporter. |
