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"FDR: A Democracy-Builder": Franklin Delano Roosevelt, democracy, and liberalism

I am against the beatification, secular or otherwise of politicians past or present. But some politicians have a record of greatness, some a record of achievement, some no record of anything, others a record of which to be embarrassed.  I believe that Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a record of greatness - not, not perfection, but greatness, that in part stems from his firm footing in the values of liberalism. Democracy, self-government by citizens, is a form of government that can further liberalism, so long as citizens and elected leaders appreciate the connection between each individual's  autonomy, the need to permit others their autonomy, and the need to collaborate in the grand experiment of self-government. Franklin Delano Roosevelt appreciated these connections, recognizing the value and dignity of the individual. Roosevelt appreciated the state's affirmative obligation to do more than simply stave off threats to individual autonomy. He understood the state's role in ensuring a social safety network that enabled the exercise of autonomy. While he experimented with the means to keep American democracy liberal, his programs were consistently aimed against absolutism and in favor of individual self-determination.

The selections below come from an article printed originally in 1995 (emphases mine, the link takes you to the full article). I find them as apt today as they were then.

FDR:A Democracy-Builder, Eager to Try
Kevin Baker

What did Franklin D. Roosevelt accomplish? It is vital to understand it now, as we Americans consider making fundamental alterations in his legacy. Essentially, he preserved and enlarged the promise of human freedom in our time. Or, as Joseph Alsop put it, "On a very wide front and in the truest possible sense, Franklin Delano Roosevelt included the excluded."
...
The America of 1933, racked by four years of depression, was all but exhausted with democracy. Every bank in the country was in the process of closing its doors. Thousands of square miles of farmland had become a desert. Between one-quarter and one-third of the work force was unemployed, and millions were being evicted from their homes and their land every year.

Depression was neither a natural catastrophe nor an isolated event. Things had never been quite so bad, but every 5 to 10 years, for the better part of a century, the country had suffered a wrenching economic collapse, much worse than any recession Americans have endured since World War II. Bank failures and Wall Street panics were common, and usually led to nationwide meltdowns.

Most elderly Americans lived in abject poverty. Working men and women worked six days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day. They were routinely joined at the job by their children; few people ever finished high school, let alone college.

A system of apartheid, rationalized by bad science and enforced by lynching, ruled in the South. Another system of quotas routinely kept blacks, women, Jews and ethnic whites out of the best jobs and schools.

Farmers could rarely make a living; more and more were reduced to the serfdom of share-cropping. Nine-tenths of rural Americans did not even have electricity.

The root causes of these conditions were basic, long-standing flaws in American democracy. More shocking than the conditions in which Americans of 1933 lived was how little say they had in anything that mattered. Banking and investment were dominated by a small circle of self-interested, often dishonest men. Politics in every large city was usually controlled by corrupt political machines. In the South, millions of blacks and poor whites were kept from the ballot box by poll taxes, literacy tests and force of arms.

The power of landlords and large corporations was rarely contained. Unions were small and powerless. The courts repeatedly struck down the most basic minimum wage, child labor, consumer protection and worker safety laws.

The Depression only brought these ongoing social crises to a head, yet few at the time saw more democracy as an answer. The very idea of democracy seemed to be outmoded in the swift and steely industrial world. Hard new nostrums abounded in the 1930s and '40s: communism, fascism, socialism, technocracy, corporatism.

... What Roosevelt possessed was the essential flexibility of mind for a democracy. It was indicative that during his first presidential campaign he promised above all "bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

Not everything he tried worked well, and some things did not work at all, and many of the New Deal's innovations have required revision. Roosevelt himself would have been baffled by the notion that they would not, for he was not erecting a Marxist utopia but a viable, modern democracy. What he did was to turn his entire administration into an ongoing debate on democracy.  ....

Best of all, he extended this debate into the living rooms of every home in America. FDR gave the press unprecedented access to the White House, and there were the "fireside chats."
....

Yet for all [Roosevelt's] democratic pragmatism, we look for something more. The life of Richard Nixon provides an example of what can come from expediency ungrounded in any deeper principle. Was there any guiding spirit, anything more to Franklin Delano Roosevelt than tactics and timing, to account for the great outpouring of grief 50 years ago? [note from Heidi Li: The original article was published on the anniversary of FDR's death]

There are at least two stories from his life that I think are telling. One was the account that he was unimpressed by the Grand Canyon: "It looks dead. I like my green trees at Hyde Park better. They are alive and growing."

"He responded to what was vital, not to what was lifeless; to what was coming, to what was passing away," wrote Mr. Schlesinger. "He lived by his exaltation in distant horizons and uncharted seas."

The other story is from when he was first trying to win back some use of his legs after the attack of polio that crippled him. He would try, every day, to make it the quarter of a mile from his Hyde Park home to the post office on his crutches.

It was a torturous journey for a man with no working muscles from his hips down. Sometimes he would fall - and have to wait, lying face down in the road, for someone to come along and help him back up. "For better or worse, I believe that the Roosevelt who could not walk was in most respects very like the one who could," writes Geoffrey Ward, and most current biographers would concur. It was Roosevelt's strong, optimistic - and deceptive - character that got him through the loss of his legs to polio, and not the polio that built the character.

Yet what better training has any president had - in patience, in humility, in building a basic sympathy for the human condition? Franklin Roosevelt understood the clumsy, halting progress of us all, and nurtured it, and the American people loved him for it as they have loved few men since.

Inaugaral addresses worth revisiting: another occasional series

We shall see whether Mr. Favreau can write Mr. Obama an inaugural address worthy of those delivered at other times of great concern for our country. Meanwhile, below are selections, with some emphases added, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address:

President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends. This is a day of national consecration.

And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.  ... So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

...

These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves, to our fellow men. Recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

What are we going to do about 2012?

Whatever you thought during the election or the primaries, what matters is what you think now. If you believe that President-Elect Obama is unwilling or unable to be anything more than an empty suit, you better start organizing around an alternative for 2012 right now. Because President-elect Obama has been organizing his run for 2012 since at least June of 2008, and probably earlier, assuming he has planned on being twice nominated by the Democratic Party.

If you have tended to prefer Democrats, you must accept the extreme unlikelihood of Senator Clinton challenging Senator Obama for the nomination. So, you need to identify somebody who would be willing and possibly able to challenge President-elect Obama for the nomination. It will be hard to find a person willing to do this. The last time a Democrat launched a serious primary run against an incumbent was when Senator Edward Kennedy unsuccessfully challenged Jimmy Carter; of course, the only opportunities since then have been to challenge President Bill Clinton who was, at the end of his first term, so successful a President that he was renominated by acclimation.

If you are looking ahead to the general election in 2012 and are an Independent, a Republican, or a Democrat willing to vote Republican, you have to accept that, as far as I know, there is no potential Republican contender with a commitment to gay rights or reproductive rights who could also garner the support of the Republican Party base.

You also need to face the fact that third party candidates do not win.

There is some possibility that Barack Obama may turn out to be this century's Martin Van Buren.  Van Buren faced an economy riddled with unsolvable problems, and that set up the Whigs for victory despite Van Buren's popularity. It is possible that President-elect Obama will face a similar problem.

Just to remind people of some basic history, with the fall of Van Buren, the country entered a period of rather underwhelming Presidencies:

• William Harrison
• John Tyler
• James Polk
• Zachary Taylor
• Millard Fillmore
• Franklin Pierce
• James Buchanan

Abraham Lincoln then came to power at a time of crisis for the Union - but not crises or problems of the sort confronting Barack Obama today.  We do not face the prospect of Civil War. Lincoln's ability to offer moral leadership in the face of that prospect in his time was well established prior to his election to the presidency, going back at least to one of his first major public speeches, The Lyceum Address, given in 1838, a speech that shows his awareness of the potential for tyranny to creep up upon a democratic republic whose citizens fail to commit themselves to the rules of law and the democratic institutions it rests upon. From that speech, entitled The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:

It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? — Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Lincoln's address invite "his audience to into a discussion of the principles, tendencies, and sustenance of self-government. He concentrates on its vulnerabilities and the burdens they place upon self-governing citizens." (source: John Channing Briggs, Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered, p. 55).

As we have learned, much to our cost, the pace of our current electoral politics means a president who takes office - however he or she wins it (e.g. consider Bush's 2000 victory) stands a high chance of being renominated by her or his party (again, consider Bush in 2004) and retaining the presidency even after doing dreadful things (Bush). I may be wrong about President-elect Obama's chances of being a good leader or being able to resolve problems that may well be beyond his control. Perhaps, come 2012 I will feel he has earned my vote. For me, that would take a lot, because I do not believe in rewarding people who take advantage of corrupted procedures to gain office in the first place (which is what happened in Denver in 2008). But people can learn, and perhaps President-elect Obama will.

Regardless of that the nature of contemporary presevidential politics seems to demand that President-elect Obama start his current term as if he is already running for his next one. Therefore, those of us who await an election where we do not feel there is no major party candidate for whom we can vote or an election where we are not choosing the lesser of two of evils, need to begin seeking and supporting an alternative now.

Serious ideas and suggestions welcome.

Why Rahm Emanuel's actual dealings with Rod Blogojevich do and will matter

I have just one question about this. Did Rahm Emanuel mention all of his connections to Rod Blagojevich on the famous vetting questionnaire that the Obama team supposedly required all prospective staff to answer? Given the broad wording of the questionnaire and the fact that Blagojevich has been under investigation for years for all sorts of crimes and shenanigans, I would have thought the Obama administration would want to know the full extent of overlapping ties, even if Emanuel has not done one improper or illegal thing in connection with the Senate vacancy created by President-Elect Obama's resignation. The issue that President-Elect Obama seems to have is one that cost him some people's trust back in the primary season. The change many of us have been waiting for is not us. It is a change from the hypocrisy, corruption, and absurdity that have riddled the last eight years of this country's political leadership. If the Obama questionnaire was meant to do more than provide protection for President Obama, that is, if the questions it asked were asked in good faith, seeking full disclosure up front in the name of creating a culture of transparency and truthfulness, then Mr. Emanuel should have revealed all of his overlaps and ties to Gov. Blagojevich. If you deal with dirty politicians, however much out of necessity, disclose your dealings; and, if need be, put them in context so as to show why you should not be seen to be cut from the same cloth. If Mr. Emanuel only now explains himself - or rather if an explanation is supplied only on December 22, when the Obama-Biden transition team releases its "internal investigation (the one that it has already told us clears its members of any wrongdoing), that is a post-hoc effort at rationalization, which is not going to cut it with people who thought that President-elect Obama was coming to the Presidency to stop that sort of thing. Since the inception of the office the President of the United States of America has merited a great deal of public scrutiny. No, this did not just start with Bill Clinton. In his own time, President Ulysses S. Grant's drinking habits were subject of much speculation; whether he was or was not an alcoholic and how that affected his ability to serve his country remains a topic of historical study and debate. The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemmings came up during his first term as president. I have no particular view as to whether Grant's drinking or Jefferson's relationship with Hemmings mattered during their own eras or whether and how they should matter know. But I do have a view about Presidents who expect not to come under scrutiny. In anything like an egalitarian democracy, it is the right of citizens to question their public servants, especially those who enjoy great public power. It is their right to care about the precise relationship and connections between their President's chief of staff and an apparently crooked Governor from the President's home state. It is their right to care about who their President chooses to write the words he speaks; or who he chooses to bless his inauguration. It is not only unrealistic to bleat about how unfair it is for the public to care about these things. It is to forget that the American public has always cared about these sort of things, even if at times the press has been selective and inconsistent in its reporting on different Presidents and presidential candidates. Certainly, part of why people care is that they care about sensationalistic matters or matters that may have nothing to with a person's actual qualifications or ability to be a good President. But people also care because they want to decide for themselves whether what a President reads or who she or he puts into a kitchen cabinet relates to a President's qualifications and abilities. So, people care about how Rahm Emanuel answered question 63: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.” They care whether he had to answer the question; they care whether he discusses any of his dealings with Gov. Blagojevich. And they care not only because they voted for a change in our nation's political culture; they care because many of them voted for the candidate they did because they took his discussions of change to mean a change from low standards when it comes to corruption or even questionable dealings. People want to trust Barack Obama. Many react badly to people who criticize his integrity or trustworthiness. But again, to expect any President to be forever unscrutinized by the public is naive. And if a a candidate makes people believe he offers more integrity and truthfulness than any of his rivals, it is naive to suppose that President will not be watched closely to see if that President lives up to the standards he himself set.

Being President means coping with distractions

In 1972, here are just some of the items that were on President Nixon's plate that anybody - Nixon-hater, Democrat, liberal; Nixon-fan, Republican, conservative - who cared about welfare of the country would have thought the President should well have been concentrating on:

• U.S.- Sino relations
• War in Indo-China and Vietnam
• U.S. - Soviet Union detente
• Multi-lateral disarmament movements and treaties
• The U.S. Senate's ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment

Then, there were these "distractions":

• Congresswoman Bella Abzug's (D. N.Y.)  resolution calling for the impeachment of President Nixon following his decision to mine North Vietnamese harbors. [Note: This was back in the day when impeachment was not taken off the table when war crimes were at issue.]
• The Watergate break-in occurs [Nixon's reaction caught on tape on June 23 when Nixon meets  his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and says, "The only way to solve this, and we're set up beautifully to do it, is for us to have [Deputy CIA Director Vernon] Walters call [FBI Director Pat] Gray and say, 'Stay the hell out of this . . . [The CIA] should call the FBI and say that, 'We wish, for the good of the country, [that you] don't [look] any further into this case.' Period"]

The distractions spilled over into 1973:

• The Watergate break-in builds into a scandal. President Nixon names Plainfield, N.J.-born Harvard law professor Archibald Cox, 60, special Watergate prosecutor and tries to have CIA director Richard Helms prevent an FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in. Helms refuses and Nixon relocates him, making him ambassador to Iran.
• Vice President Agnew resigns under pressure October 10, pleading no contest to charges of income tax evasion in connection with money received during his tenure as governor of Maryland.

Of course, in 1973, there are matters that anybody would think deserved Presidential attention, including:

• A cease-fire in Vietnam January 28 ending direct involvement of U.S. ground troops in Indochinese hostilities.
• The Yom Kippur War occurs. It is the fourth and fiercest Arab-Israeli war since 1948.
• Britain joins the European Economic Community. Denmark and Ireland also join, bringing members to nine in the Common Market created by the Treaty of Rome in 1958.

The point: being President in complex times - and the early 1970s were complex times - means coping with a variety of events. Some make the President's job easier, some make it harder. But just because the ones that make it harder do that, does not mean they should not be examined.

I hope that the matters that the pundits are dismissively trivializing as distractions do not in fact lead to the same sort of demise for President-elect Obama  that the distraction of  the early 1970s brought to Richard Nixon. The revelation that Richard Nixon was possibly more corrupt than his greatest detractors ever thought he was was not good for the country. But that does not mean it would have been better for the country if press and public just went ostrich-like and refused to consider the "distractions" because of the very real difficulties facing the U.S. and the country at large. Ridding the country of a thieving vice-president and a president who regarded the U.S. Consitution as an inconvenient constraint on his own power was good thing.

True, how troubling distractions are is a matter of degree. A plagiarizing Vice-President is not as troubling as one who is an income-tax evader. A Presdent whose staff may be involved in high level state corruption is less bothersome than a President who is personally directing violations of national and international law. A President who retains a misogynistic speech writer, keeping him out of sight, presumably in the hope that all will be forgotten is terribly bothersome.

But whatever the final truths we learn aout the current "distractions" facing President-elect Obama, we need to know the truth. After we get some information we can decide whether it disqualifies Mr. Obama from the presidency. But for now, we need to the press to take the heat and find out some truth for us.

It would also be helpful if the Obama administration's transition team would ditch the bunker mentality. Somebody has to begin the process of political disarmament in Washington D.C.

American women diplomats: a touch of history

Although only two women precede Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State, scattered through American history are women in official diplomatic service. Ruth Bryan Owen stands out for a number of reasons, including the fact that she was elected to Congress before women could vote. (Typical, eh? A woman could serve her fellow citizens but not participate in electing her representatives.) Another woman diplomat, of rather different political views than Owen, was Clare Boothe Luce (as Owen was the first woman congressional representative from Florida, Luce was the first woman to represent Connecticut in the House; both served as ambassadors after their stints in Congress). One of Luce's greatest legacies: The Clare Boothe Luce Program. In her bequest (almost her entire estate),' she sought “to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach” in science, mathematics and engineering.'

Despite the careers of women like Owen and Luce are impressive, the Department of State does not have a particularly woman-filled history.

Women in the Foreign Service [from the Department of State]

Who were the first women in the Foreign Service?

Lucile Atcherson passed the Diplomatic Service examination in 1922 with the third-highest score, and was appointed a secretary in the Diplomatic Service on December 5, 1922. She was assigned as Third Secretary of the Legation in Berne, Switzerland, on April 11, 1925. She resigned September 19, 1927 in order to get married. Pattie H. Field was the first woman to enter the Foreign Service after passage of the Rogers Act. She was sworn in on April 20, 1925, served as a Vice Consul at Amsterdam, and resigned on June 27, 1929 to accept a job with the National Broadcasting Company.

Who was the first woman to be chief of a U.S. diplomatic mission?

Ruth Bryan Owen, daughter of William Jennings Bryan, was appointed Minister to Denmark on April 13, 1933. She presented her credentials on May 29, 1933 and served until June 27, 1936.

Who was the first woman to hold the rank of Ambassador?

Eugenie Moore Anderson was appointed Ambassador to Denmark on October 20, 1949. She presented her credentials on December 22, 1949, and served until January 19, 1953.

Who was the first woman Foreign Service Officer to become an Ambassador?

Frances E. Willis was appointed Ambassador to Switzerland on July 20, 1953, and presented her credentials on October 9. She served until May 5, 1957. She later served as Ambassador to Norway (1957-1961) and Ambassador to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) (1961-1964). Willis was the third woman Foreign Service Officer, being appointed on August 29, 1927. She was appointed Career Ambassador on March 20, 1962.

Who was the first woman to become an Assistant Secretary of State?

Carol C. Laise was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs on September 20, 1973. She served until March 27, 1975. She then served as Director General of the Foreign Service from April 11, 1975 to December 26, 1977.

Who was the first woman to head one of the regional bureaus?

Rozanne L. Ridgway was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs on July 18, 1985. She served until June 30, 1989. She had also been the first woman to serve as Counselor of the Department of State (March 18, 1980-February 24, 1981).

Who was the first woman Under Secretary of State?

Lucy Wilson Benson was appointed Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology on March 23, 1977 and served until January 5, 1980. At the time of her appointment, she was the highest-ranking woman in the Department.

Presidential Advisory Boards - Part Two: Do past members indicate objective, bipartisan input being provided to the President?

As I wrote in Part One, PERAB, President-elect Obama's new economic advisory board self-styles itself on Dwight Eisenhower's original PFIAB. So was the last Presidential economic advisory board, created by Ronald Reagan. Members of Ronald Reagan's President's Economic Policy Advisory Board:

Arthur F. Burns, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Counsellor to President Nixon, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Eisenhower.
Milton Friedman, senior research fellow, the Hoover Institution, and Nobel Laureate in economics.
Alan Greenspan, president, Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc., and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ford.
Arthur Laffer, Charles B. Thornton Professor of Business Economics, University of Southern California; president, A. B. Laffer Associates.

James T. Lynn, managing partner, Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue; former Director, Office of Management and Budget; and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Paul McCracken, Edmund Ezra Day University Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan; former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon.
George Shultz, president, Bechtel Group, Inc.; former Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Labor, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
William E. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury.
Thomas Sowell, senior fellow, the Hoover Institution.
Herbert Stein, senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute; former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon.
Charls E. Walker, chairman, Charls E. Walker Associates, Inc.; former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
Walter B. Wriston, chairman, Citibank/Citicorp.

George Shultz will serve as Chairman of the Board. Martin Anderson, Assistant to the President for Policy Development, will serve as Secretary to the Board.

Hmmm..lots of Nixonians, lots of Hoover Institute types, plenty of neo-classical economic thinkers. Not the sort of group that seems likely to have provided unbiased, nonpartisan advice.

How will PERAB differ in this respect? We citizens need to know who the members will be sooner rather than later.

On Presidential Advisory Boards - Part One: Just exactly what is the President's Economic Recovery Board?

"The President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board..is modeled on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board created by President Eisenhower to provide rigorous analysis and vigorous oversight to our intelligence community by individuals outside of government, individuals who would be candid and unsparing in their assessment. This new board will perform a similar function for my administration as we formulate our economic policy. "
-Barack Obama, November 26, 2008

Since reading about the new President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board ["PERAB"}, I have been curious about presidential advisory boards. I decided to check on how often they have been used and for what purposes. As it turns out, presidential advisory boards are not that uncommon, and the most recent President to use one dedicated to economic matters is Ronald Reagan. As for Eisenhower's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board "PFIAB", it has been in operation since then under one name or another except under President Carter, who canceled it - Ronald Reagan reinstated it.

According to the White House webpage on The President's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board (emphases mine):

Introduction

The President's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board (PIAB) provides advice to the President concerning the quality and adequacy of intelligence collection, of analysis and estimates, of counterintelligence, and of other intelligence activities. The PIAB, through its Intelligence Oversight Board, also advises the President on the legality of foreign intelligence activities.

The PIAB currently has 16 members selected from among distinguished citizens outside the government who are qualified on the basis of achievement, experience, independence, and integrity.

The Role of The Board

Unique within the government, the PIAB traditionally has been tasked with providing the President with an independent source of advice on the effectiveness with which the intelligence community is meeting the nation's intelligence needs and the vigor and insight with which the community plans for the future.

The History Of The Board

The Board was established in 1956 by President Eisenhower and was originally called the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities. It gained its current name under President Kennedy and it has served all Presidents since that time except for President Carter. A record of chairpersons is available.

For over four decades the PIAB has acted as a nonpartisan body offering the President objective, expert advice on the conduct of U.S. foreign intelligence. This role reflects the vital assistance that intelligence provides the President in meeting his executive responsibilities. The President must have ample, accurate and timely intelligence; and most recent Presidents have sought the assistance of a separate, unbiased group -- the PIAB -- to advise them on intelligence matters.

PIAB Operations

Through meetings with intelligence principals, substantive briefings, and visits to intelligence installations, the PIAB seeks to identify deficiencies in the collection, analysis, and reporting of intelligence; to eliminate unnecessary duplication and functional overlap; and to ensure that major programs are responsive to clearly perceived needs and that the technology employed represents the product of the best minds and technical capabilities available in the nation.

PIAB Product

Independent of the intelligence community and free from any day-to-day management or operational responsibilities, the PIAB is able to render advice which reflects an objective view of the kinds of intelligence that will best serve the country and the organizational structure most likely to achieve this goal. The effect of the Board's recommendations over the years has been to influence the composition and structure of the intelligence community, the development of major intelligence systems, and the degree of collection and analytic emphasis that is given to substantive areas.

In carrying out their mandate, the members of the PIAB enjoy the confidence of the President and have access to all the information related to foreign intelligence that they need to fulfill their vital advisory role.

Assuming the P(F)IAB is really the model, I will quite curious to see who the additional 14 or so members of the new PERAB will be; how bipartisan it will be; what will ensure its objectivity and lack of bias; and what the full scope of its reviewing authority is going to be. Which Republicans will be serving? Will there be representatives from various economic schools of thought such as the Marxist School, the Institutionalist School, and the Keynesian School, just to name three of the major schools identified by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco? Will the members of the committe be able to/be expected to review the FEC, the FTC, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, the Department of Commerce, the Treasury Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Pentagon, etc. to gather all information related to economic recovery?

As these questions indicate, if the model is PIAB, PERAB could be an extremely wide-ranging and influential body. Note it will operate independently of legislative oversight, reporting to the President and not to Congress. Maybe this is fine, maybe it is not - much depends on just how influential and wide-ranging President-elect Obama intends it to be. We citizens need some details about this newly minted Advisory Board.

Based on a quick survey of the literature, the last President to appoint an advisory board specifically dedicated to economic matters was Ronald Reagan, who created the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board ("PEPAB"). PEPAB is not currently in existence; it is unclear whether PERAB is modeled upon it.

According to Martin Anderson, a historian and Reagan domestic policy advisor,  Reagan's economic policy board was also modeled on Eisenhower's PFIAB (remember Reagan reinstated PFIAB after Carter had discontinued it (see Anderson, Revolution: The Reagan Legacy, p. 261)). Anderson describes the formation of the PEPAB, and notes that it was meant to silence potential outside critics by bringing them "inside the Reagan Tent" (p. 262); it also served to empower Anderson, who mistrusted other Reagan administration team members such as David Stockman (pp. 262-64). PEPAB reported directly to the President to the consternation of the Treasury Department and, according to Anderson, to Don Regan. Anderson credit PEPAB with the creation and implementation of "Reaganomics" (p. 267).

Assuming Anderson is correct, and assuming that the new PERAB is intended to have the same force as the other self-styled economic descendant of Eisenhower's foreign intelligence advisory board, we citizens definitely need more details about President-elect Obama's intentions for PERAB.

Don't read me to learn about women and progressivism: read Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton one of the staunchest fighters for the passage of the 16th Amendment absolutely understood that right in progressive political terms: as key to equality of opportunity underwritten by a government that considered itself responsible for providing it to the republic. I advise reading her entire speech, Solitude of Self, which she delivered to the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress, Monday, January 18, 1892, when she was 77 years old.

Here are some passages worth special note (emphases mine):

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: We have been speaking before Committees of the Judiciary for the last twenty years, and we have gone over all the arguments in favor of a sixteenth amendment which are familiar to all you gentlemen; therefore, it will not be necessary that I should repeat them again.

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul; [...] the right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.

Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government.

Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same--individual happiness and development.

Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, that may involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman's sphere, such as men as Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison, and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations, some of which a large class of woman may never assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother, or a son, relations some of which he may never fill. Moreover he would be better fitted for these very relations and whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread by the complete development of all his faculties as an individual.

Just so with woman. The education that will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human usefulness will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings.

The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.

[...]

To throw obstacle in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property, like cutting off the hands. To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men" (the play tells us) "seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, out off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What a picture of woman's position. Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection.

[...]

Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?