Heidi Li's Potpourri

Hillary Rodham Clinton: a progressive and somebody who certainly saw the current fiscal crisis coming

In the postcript to an earlier entry, I wrote that if Senator Clinton does join Senator Obama's cabinet (she has not been officially offered nor officially accepted the position of Secretary of State as I write now), she will be the most progressive member of an Obama cabinet.

The reason I consider Senator Clinton an exemplar of genuine progressivism is that she has consistently believed in government's ability and responsibility maintain equality of economic opportunity - a constant shared baseline chance for all to achieve economic gains during their lifetimes. Thus, it made sense that as soon as Senator Clinton noticed the subprime mortgage problem brewing, she started expecting the government to get involved to protect individuals from a systemic disaster.

To review this aspect of Senator Clinton's economic progressivism from March 2007 until now, go here for her views on subprime mortgage lending.  See here for Senator Clinton's call on President Bush, which she issued in March 2008, to name a foreclosure working group to focus on the housing crisis. Or here, for her discussion, in Nevada in January 2008 of the stimulus package she was talking about implementing, were she elected President.

The reason I would like to see her as Senate Majority Leader is because I believe she could marshall votes to pass progressive proposals focused on maintaining the baseline equaliy of economic opportunity President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal originally envisioned: a New Deal for laborers was Roosevelt's promise in 1932. It is not clear to me that equality of opportunity for the working or middle class is a priority for the new executive administration or the current Democratic Party leadership. This is a signature issue for Senator Clinton and having her available to take the lead on it in the Senate might restore, at least to some measure, Americans' deeply diminished confidence in the U.S. Congress.

At this point, it would take nothing less than Senator Harry Reid renouncing his the Majority Leadership specifically in favor of her becoming Senate Majority Leader for her to assume the role I think she could play in reviving a Congress that Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid have led to record lows in approval rating. I do not anticipate this happening. But I take this opportunity to open the door to a discussion of what makes an American politician progressive (as opposed to right or left; Democrat or Republican): that fundamental commitment to government's ability and responsibility to maintain equality of economic opportunity for all of the governed.

True American progressives include, off the top of my head, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follete, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Mario Cuomo, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Civil wars and women's political power: How come I've never heard Senator Obama say "women's rights are human rights"?

This is not the first time in American history that a political party has held out the carrot of a true commitment to women's political power only to turn on women and beat them off with sticks as soon as women expected that party to make good on its on promise. The first time occurred when the civil war in question was between different parts of the country: the Civil War, a war that yielded the abolition of the evil slavery and extended the franchise to ... more men. Women played key roles in abolitionism and in supporting the political party that championed a more perfect union, the then-newly-formed Republican Party. But the Republican Party, which for decades kept the allegiance of black voters for being known as the Party of Lincoln, did not return the support women extended to it by backing women's suffrage.

The Democratic Party, before and for decades after the Civil War, opposed civil rights for blacks and its politicians characterized Republicans as troubling effeminate and under the the thumb of women.

With regard to racial allegiances, the black civil rights struggles of the 1940s through the early 1970s brought about a major realignment, with the later twentieth century Democratic Party being seen as more sympathetic to black civil rights than the later twentieth century Republican Party.

Neither Party has ever taken up women's empowerment with the same enthusiasm the nineteenth century Republican Party showed for enfranchising black men or the later twentieth century Democratic Party showed for affording African Americans meaningful equality of opportunity. Both Parties have plenty of enthusiasm for using women's time, money, and voices to win elections, and yes, I do understand that the Republican Party does not champion women's empowerment.

But I am a Democrat. That means I hold my Party's Presidential candidate to a higher standard than I hold the Republican Party. The fact the Republican Party's presidential nominee is not leading a charge on women's empowerment bothers me but it does shock and distress me. What shocks and distresses me is the absence of a forceful voice from Senator Obama urging the full empowerment of women.  Despite the much touted unity euphoria, this year is a year of true civil war in the Democratic Party. Yes, a civil war - not between men and women but between Clinton Democrats and Obama Democrats, with both wings including both men and women, but with Clinton Democrats calling for strong leadership on the question of women's empowerment (there are other substantive differences between the wings of the party too: for examples, whether universal health care is to be truly and effectively universal, how closely the federal government should be entwined with religious organizations, whether economic relief starts first with individuals or first with large financial institutions.) 

Civil wars call for great leaders.  I am told that many people are swayed by Senator Obama's stirring oratory and regard it as indicating his merits as a leader worthy of the Presidency. Please, then, Senator Obama, give a gender speech just like you decided to give a race speech. Just like  American blacks do not have a monopoly on or greater responsibility than other Americans for speaking up loudly and clearly for the elimination of racial animus and bigotry, American women do not have a monopoly on or a greater responsibility than other Americans for speaking up loudly and clearly for empowering women as women. Not women as mothers and caregivers, which is the major way the Democratic Party Platform casts its discussion of the Party's support for women's rights.¹ Empowerment for women as women. Not for women's rights but for women's power: economic, social, and political. The election is almost upon us. My Party's designated presidential candidate has not publicly and prominently championed full empowerment for women.

If not now, Mr. Obama, when? How long do you expect women to expend their time, their energy, and their money on supporting your political career and the Democratic Party's aspiration to win the White House when you will not speak out unequivocally on an issue that millions of American voters have made it clear is essential to them. If you will not speak out, why not?

If you, like me, are not expecting to hear this sort of speech from Senator Obama before November 4, here are some organizations you might want to check out:
WomenCount
The New Agenda

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1 See the 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PLATFORM, Table of Contents:

Table of Contents
Renewing America’s Promise
Preamble
Introduction
I. Jumpstart the Economy and Provide Middle Class Americans Immediate Relief
Empowering Families for a New Era
· Affordable, Quality Health Care Coverage for All Americans
· Retirement
· Good Jobs with Good Pay
· Work and Family
· Poverty
· Opportunity for Women
II. Investing in American Competitiveness
· New American Energy
· A World Class Education for Every Child
o Early Childhood
o K-12
· Higher Education
· Science, Technology, and Innovation
· Invest in Manufacturing and Our Manufacturing Communities
· Creating New Jobs by Rebuilding American Infrastructure
· A Connected America
· Support Small Business and Entrepreneurship
· Real Leadership for Rural America
III. Economic Stewardship
· Restoring Fairness to our Tax Code
· Housing
· Reforming Financial Regulation and Corporate Governance
· Consumer Protection
· Savings
· Smart, Strong, and Fair Trade Policies
· Fiscal Responsibility

Yes, the section devoted to "Opportunity for Women" discusses a range of issues related to women's empowerment, but that language clearly reads like an insert placed there to placate supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Note that platform does not have a single major heading devoted to specifically to women's empowerment. Furthermore, the neither by Party rules nor Party tradition does the Democratic Party platform in any way bind the Party's presidential nominee. Unless she or he specifically endorses any given provision, there is no way of knowing where it ranks on her or his list of priorities.

"Beware an obsessive focus": Consider how a politician might effect change without demanding slavish "loyalty" to a party just because of its name

"In truth we are likely to miss the unsettled character of things in American political life if we focus obsessively on particular elections and parties."

From Progressivism and the New Democracy, p. 2

At the present moment, when neither major political party has managed to produce a Presidential candidate who can take a commanding lead in the polls, and neither candidate seems to present a clear and credible alternative to the utterly failed policies of the Bush-Cheney administration, it seems worthwhile to examine a different kind of political figure than either Senator McCain or Senator Obama. Consider Robert M. La Follette, a major figure in politics throughout the late 19th and early 20th century Progressive Era. La Follette provided progressive leadership for citizens not only in his own state of Wisconsin, where he served as Governor, but also for all Americans during his career in the U.S. Senate and as a the Progressive Party's candidate for President in 1924.

The Career of Robert M. La Follette (from The Wisconsin Historical Society, with emphases and annotations provided by me).

Robert La Follette developed his fierce opposition to corporate power and political corruption as a young man. Affiliated with the Republican Party for almost his entire career, La Follette embarked on a political path that would take him to Congress, the governorship of Wisconsin, and the U.S. Senate. His support for progressive reforms, rousing oratory, and frequent clashes with party leaders earned him the nickname "Fighting Bob."

Born in Primrose township, Dane County, in 1855, La Follette worked as a farm laborer before entering the University of Wisconsin in 1875. After graduating in 1879, La Follette launched his political career as district attorney the following year. Elected to Congress in 1884, La Follette was defeated in 1890 by Democrat Allen Bushnell. While for some people a defeat might have signaled the end of a political career, for La Follette it marked the beginning of a lifelong fight for political reform. [Annotation: shades of the young Bill Clinton, who responded to his defeat for reelection to the governorship of Arkansas with a tenacity that led him ultimately to a two-term Presidency and beyond in his work with the William J. Clinton Foundation.]

La Follette's career as a reformer began in earnest a few months later when the state Republican leader, Senator Philetus Sawyer, offered him a bribe to fix a court case against several former state officials. Furious that Sawyer would try to use money to influence the legal system, La Follette refused the bribe, angrily denouncing the use of money to shut out the voice of the people. For nearly ten years, La Follette traveled around the state speaking out against the influence of crooked politicians and the powerful lumber barons and railroad interests that dominated his own party. Elected governor in 1900, La Follette pledged to institute his own form of political reform.

Until that time, the candidates whose names appeared on ballots were selected by party leaders in private caucuses. [Annotation: caucuses - never have been, never will be good for democracy] Drawing on the ideas of other reformers to make politics more democratic, La Follette successfully pushed the legislature to pass measures instituting direct primary elections, which gave voters the right to choose their own candidates for office. [Annotation: too bad this year's DNC couldn't get behind this concept.] He supported measures that doubled the taxes on the railroads, broke up monopolies, preserved the state's forests, protected workers' rights, defended small farmers, and regulated lobbying to end patronage politics. La Follette worked closely with professors from the University of Wisconsin to help the state become "a laboratory of democracy." [Annotation: Shades of Senator Clinton's ideas about engaging leading institutions in higher education in the work of political change and American innovation and invention.] By the time he joined the U.S. Senate in 1906, La Follette had become a national figure.

In Washington, La Follette pushed for the same kind of reforms he had promoted in Wisconsin. [Annotation: Demonstrating the power of a powerful and respected Senator with a reputation of accomplishment.] He often spoke at length on the corruption of government and the abuse of industrial workers. Arguing that the entire nation's economy was dominated by fewer than one hundred corporate leaders, La Follette supported the growth of unions as a check on the power of large corporations. In 1909, La Follette and his wife, Belle, founded "La Follette's Weekly Magazine," a journal that campaigned for woman [sic] suffrage, racial equality, and other progressive causes. [Annotation: La Follette understood that opposing sexism and misogyny was entirely compatible with opposing racism and bigotry and spoke out against both.]

Though La Follette supported Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential election, he adamantly opposed U.S. entry into World War I, believing that disputes should be solved peacefully. Although he was accused of being unpatriotic, La Follette believed that American's involvement in the war would end democratic reforms at home. Though critics declared that his opposition to the war was political suicide, La Follette was re-elected to the Senate in 1922. [Annotation: Hey, John Kerry! In your race against Ed O'Reilly, please stop arguing that you had no choice but to vote to support the invasion of Iraq: it would not have been political suicide for you to do so as long as you had done enough for the citizens of your state to support you on other grounds. See this endorsement of Ed O'Reilly for related observations.] In 1924, he ran for president on the Progressive ticket [La Follette could not tolerate the anti-progressive turn the party of Lincoln had taken during the early twentieth century...more about that in future posts] and received almost 5 million votes, losing to Republican Calvin Coolidge. La Follette died the following year.

The Progressive Era: a very brief introduction

 Depending upon which historian, the Progressive Era is generally regarded as having run from the late 1890s (give or take) through the early 1920s (give or take). The moniker "Progressive Era" is a bit murky as well because many of the major developments of this time were progressive or anti-progressive depending upon one's vision of progress understood as a good thing.  (For more on the difficulties of pinpointing the dates and nature of the Progressive here go see this article.) One thing was definitely true at the time: U.S. society underwent unprecedented shifts and changes and this produced innovations and counter-innovations and changes galore. In this period the country developed a fully national economy, with the rise of institutions that both made this happen and benefited from it - this was the era of the predecessors to today's multinational corporations and their place in a global economy. The country country became highly urbanized, but at the same time the first wave of environmental conservation came about. Working class people were exploited by the emergence of Big Capital but this was also the period when union organization really took hold in the country. The fight for women's suffrage was at its height as was the backlash against women gaining the franchise. The temperance movement, an experiment in controlling individual moral choice, scored its biggest successes and only to rather quickly suffer a rapid demise.

This is a very partial recounting of some of the hallmarks of the Progressive Era. (For a somewhat fuller and well-done discussion please refer to this source.) I leave it to readers to draw the parallels, if any, they see between that other early time in a new century and our own.

But on this Sunday night as we head into the first full post-convention week of our own general election, I hope that noting some of what was going on early in the 20th century sets the backdrop for understanding some of the odder aspects of the Presidential career of Theodore Roosevelt, the subject of the next historically oriented post for this blog.

Sneak preview of that next post:
Theodore Roosevelt was a reformer and a maverick and although he was a Republican for most of his political career he does not fit comfortably in the tradition of Republican Party as we now know it. Whether he fits into the tradition of the Democratic Party that emerged after his cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the country and brought it a New Deal is a question that I will consider. A further question is whether the current the Democratic Party fits comfortably with the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Democrat Party.

To be continued...