A Political Scientist and the Great Depression

I have made many posts featuring economists who offer opinions about economic policy and its impact on resolving the Great Depression.  I asked Mike Campenni, who teaches government at McLennan Community College, and is trained as a political scientist for some thoughts about the Roosevelt administration and its policies.  Mike comments are expressed below. 

Economics is a science. Its subject matter consists of proven theories, theories in various stages of development and testing and the search for better understanding. And just as economics is far removed from economic punditry, politics is also both a topic of study and the domain of pundits. Luckily for economists their subject seems too complex for superficial discussion. If only political scientists were so lucky!

To the dismay of all the US, and indeed the entire world, we are falling into a severe economic downturn. Economists would point out that it is a well proven point that markets constantly enter periods of adjustments. In simpler times, the adjustments were shorter and often passed below the radar screen of most people. Today, we live in an increasingly complex world with ever greater economic interdependency. Subsequently, market adjustments take longer and are usually more painful for wider swaths of society. Our present situation is just one such adjustment.

But today we live in a far different world. Governments who allow too much pain to fall on their citizens often fall politically in a democracy, and by revolution in more authoritarian societies. Subsequently, it has become the norm for governments to intervene and attempt to mitigate economic pain.

So here we are today in the midst of one of the most severe economic downturns in recent history. By most accounts it is the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Popular history would say that the Great Depression was cured by the heroic efforts of FDR with his New Deal legislation. Economists studying the New Deal would probably say that the New Deal at best had a mixed record. They would probably point out the Great Depression was only cured by the huge stimulus package known as World War II. Maybe the New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression and it did take a war, but people only remember FDR and his policies. They say that he saved the country. And maybe he did.

It is hard to make people understand today about the Great Depression. Imagine 25% un-employment rates and 30% under-employment rates. Imagine banks going bankrupt where customers lose all their savings overnight. And imagine a time when people didn’t have any safety nets like social security, welfare or un-employment compensation. Imagine betting on a local church group setting up a soup line to feed your family. It was just these kinds of things that made FDR and his New Deal Legislation successful. It really saved the US from potentially system changing political dynamics.

Did the New Deal work in terms of economics? Perhaps it did not. But widespread news coverage of hundreds of thousands of Americans working on dams and roads, and more still building parks and buildings and electrifying the countryside made people think that things were getting better. Retirees getting a check from social security helped take the edge off because they mostly still lived with the family—and any income helped. Mothers getting welfare to feed their kids helped and a new thing called unemployment compensation gave people a chance to get on their feet. And regulating Wall Street made people get their faith back in the financial institutions of the country. And just as hope keeps people from despair, confidence is something to build upon.

That’s the real message that needs to come from Obama and his team. We are doing the things that need to be done to give people hope and to restore confidence in our economic system. It really doesn’t matter too much if they are the right prescriptions economically—they key is that they need to be politically correct. And that’s why we need to put politics aside. We need to build confidence…and hope. That’s what politics is all about.

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The Obama Inauguration

Ashley Cruseturner writes my first guest as a post as a witness to President Obama's inauguration. Ashley teaches government (well) for my employer, McLennan Community College. The subject matter is a departure from economics, but I thought that it would be of general interest. Ashley writes,

I have much to say about my trip to the Federal City. But, first, let me begin with an overview.

January 20, 2009. High Noon. There I was, standing with 1.8 million of my fellow Americans, wedged on the Mall between the Monument and the Memorial, with the Capitol as a backdrop, watching the 56th quadrennial American Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States.

My journey had been long and circuitous.

My pilgrimage began the day before in a parking lot on the campus of McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas. From there, eighteen of us flew 1200 miles from Austin to Baltimore-Washington International Airport, staying the night in College Park, Maryland, riding the Metro Green Line into the District the following morning, forced by overflow crowds to abandon the subway several stops short of our destination, walking west then north, then west then north again--and again, bellying around closed-off streets, eventually finding a clear artery onto the Mall.

There we stood, finally, on "America's front yard." But that famous pet name for the National Mall falls short of expressing the full power of the place, for the long stretch between Capitol Hill and the Potomac is not just a massive shared lawn--it is consecrated ground. We had arrived at the outer courtyard of the great temples of American democracy, independence, and our conception of justice, sprinkled throughout with shrines and tabernacles to our national accomplishments, sacrifices, heroes, and ideals.

We are suddenly quiet--even in the midst of the din of a million voices. Now we are ready to celebrate the most sacred rite in our political culture: the constitutionally prescribed installment of a popularly elected Chief Magistrate of the United States of America.

For all the rhetoric of bipartisanship, the crowd was primarily Democrats--not surprising and not necessarily unfitting. When Jimmy Carter appeared on the screen, they erupted with excitement and approval. When the Clintons came into focus, the boisterous multitudes screamed with glee. Bush-41 and Barbara: silence. Bush-43: snarling enmity. For the vast majority of these pilgrims, this is not a day to forgive easily or indiscriminately hail presidents in general. They had arrived with a palpable malice toward at least one. Perhaps one day they will feel more charitable toward Forty-Three--but this is not that moment. Again, no real surprise--and no offense taken.

The intermittent chant: O-bam-a. O-bam-a. O-bam-a.

An Aside: there is something unsettling about this brand of personal adulation. If this were a Republican crowd, it would be U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

Rick Warren's invocation is long--but not offensive to the throng. The moment passes without comment.

Joe Biden becomes vice president. His voice is loud and clear, almost startling over the massive public address system.

There is a moment of high art. Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and other musical luminaries play a stringed ditty to sooth the savage beast and prolong the moment of anticipation. Is it live? Or is it Memorex? Memorex, as it turns out.

Then there is Aretha--and her hat, which is somehow perfectly befitting in the great collage.

Then the Oath (including the "stumble"). The new President is nothing if not a gracious man--in the big picture, this is very good news for the nation and carries a whole host of positive ramifications.

We are packed in--tighter and tighter as the climactic moment of transfer draws near. By the time Obama raises his hand we are pressed together snugly, straining to see through the smaller and smaller cracks in the wall of humanity. Every time Dianne Feinstein, master of ceremonies, gives permission for the audience to "sit down," the mob on the Mall roars with laughter and Bronx cheers.

Then the address: it is wonderfully traditional, subtlety stressing continuity over change. Inaugurations, of course, were not intended as victory parties; rather, they provide an institutional moment for renewal and re-dedication to the principles of the Revolution and the hard realities of constitutional governance. The lofty rhetoric of the address is properly replete with echoes of FDR and JFK and a host of other former chief executives and ancient Greeks and Romans. The newly remastered words roll over the crowd, plucking "mystic chords of memory connecting every living heart with every patriot's grave," perfectly tailored for ceremonial re-absorption into the collective American canon.

Early on in the speech, I am aware of a man in front of me. He is about my age. He is above-average height, with a relatively athletic build, and white. He is with his wife. They both carry themselves with a confidence that leads me to guess that they are comfortable professionals. I imagine both of them to be alumni of some prestigious institution of higher learning. By the end of the address, they will both be crying--and happily taking digital photographs of their tear-stained faces. But before that, the man is holding a small American flag above his head. Following a few early Obama oratorical high points, the man smiles down at his wife and observes, with great irony, "look at me; I am now a flag-waving American."

A flag-waving American? Who would have believed it--I think I hear him saying. Prior to this moment, the patriotic pose had been for simpletons--the last refuge of a scoundrel. Clearly, this man was much too sophisticated to "wave the flag." Men and women of great intellect had taught him long ago that the emotional exhortations to nationalism were ill-intentioned broad-axes designed to manipulate ignoramuses in Kansas and other backward parts of Red-State America.

But there this man stands, inches away from me, waving his American flag, and wiping away the tears of joy streaming down his face. God Bless America? Could this really be the land of the free? Could it be possible that the creed is NOT merely a lie manufactured and promulgated by rich white men to obscure the issues of exploitation, racism, sexism, and corporate greed.

My most optimistic hope: this really is a new day.

For all the hackneyed talk of "history in real time," this time and place presents Barack Obama with a truly unique opportunity. His presidency has the potential to usher in a watershed moment in our modern national life. Might this be the dawning of a new era in which the several generations of citizens hyper skeptical of the "mythic" American narrative reconnect with a less antagonistic view of the American past?

It is a heavy burden--much too much to ask any one man to carry in our current milieu of ironic detachment. Nevertheless, I choose to believe this President sees the danger of our collective loss of faith and plans on pursuing a rigorous agenda of renewal.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

Are we on the cusp of a New American Patriotism?

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray...."

My Prayer for US. My prayer for this President:

"With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."

May God Bless this President. May God Bless America.

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