Conservative Rhetoric, Liberal Lion? FDR's Commonwealth Club Address

Yesterday, I looked at Obama's recent economy address in Ohio. I claimed that the speech (along with most of Obama's rhetoric) fails to create a morally compelling vision of liberalism (even as it successfully frames Obama as a mature, moderate politician). 


So who can create a broadly appealing vision of liberalism? FDR, of course. 


I should note that Roosevelt, unlike Obama, didn't have a big role in writing his own speeches. But it's a common trope in American political analysis to say "Roosevelt," or "Reagan," or whoever, when we really mean "the team of advisers and communications professionals associated with Roosevelt/Reagan/whoever." So I'll just go with it. 


My first (and only) speech-writing axiom: refuse to concede a single universally appealing moral good . If someone calls your foreign policy "weak," don't reply "my foreign policy is smart." Instead redefine strength so that it fits you own foreign policy. If someone calls your welfare policy "un-compassionate" redefine "compassion." And so on. 


Roosevelt (or someone on his team) was a master of this approach, as was Reagan. Roosevelt's liberalism is strong and disciplined. Reagan presents conservatism with a compassionate, loving face. 


I'll bloviate a bit on Reagan's rhetoric in the coming days (worth noting that Reagan voted for Roosevelt all four times). 


For now, let's see how FDR does it, after the jump. I'm using his famous "Address to the Commonwealth Club." 




He starts off (like Obama last week) by explicitly making the speech about governing philosophy, not "politics":

I want to speak not of politics but of government. I want to speak not of parties, but of universal principles. They are not political, except in that larger sense in which a great American once expressed a definition of politics, that nothing in all of human life is foreign to the science of politics...

Roosevelt has this approach right. You can't really talk about your "record," because it's too easily distortable. And voters don't know enough about political events to objectively judge records. You want to talk about moral vision, not cite stats and give policy laundry lists. Americans, in particular, like to think of their politics as founded in some historically-rooted moral tradition (the Constitution, liberty, etc.) and this approach gratifies the American political soul. But you have to enunciate these principles in precisely the right way (which Roosevelt, as I'll argue below, does). 


Now things start getting a bit counter-intuitive: 

The issue of government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government [or] economics, or whether a system of government and economics exists to serve individual men and women. This question has persistently dominated the discussion of government for many generations. On questions relating to these things men have differed, and for time immemorial it is probable that honest men will continue to differ.

This language about "individual men and women" serving government feels like something Ron Paul would say. What's going on? 


A few paragraphs later in the speech: 

When we look about us, we are likely to forget how hard people have worked to win the privilege of government. The growth of the national governments of Europe was a struggle for the development of a centralized force in the nation, strong enough to impose peace upon ruling barons. In many instances the victory of the central government, the creation of a strong central government, was a haven of refuge to the individual. The people preferred the master far away to the exploitation and cruelty of the smaller master near at hand.

So he's starting to frame central government as a protector of the individual, a counterbalance to localized coercive forces, right? That's a pretty classic lefty rhetorical ploy (a favorite of mine, for sure). Except he's not actually using it: 

But the creators of national government were perforce ruthless men. They were often cruel in their methods, but they did strive steadily toward something that society needed and very much wanted, a strong central state, able to keep the peace, to stamp out civil war, to put the unruly nobleman in his place, and to permit the bulk of individuals to live safely. The man of ruthless force had his place in developing a pioneer country, just as he did in fixing the power of the central government in the development of nations. Society paid him well for his services and its development. When the development among the nations of Europe, however, has been completed, ambition, and ruthlessness, having served its term tended to overstep its mark.

There came a growing feeling that government was conducted for the benefit of a few who thrived unduly at the expense of all. The people sought a balancing- a limiting force. There came gradually, through town councils, trade guilds, national parliaments, by constitution and by popular participation and control, limitations on arbitrary power.

Another factor that tended to limit the power of those who ruled, was the rise of the ethical conception that a ruler bore a responsibility for the welfare of his subjects.

Side note: I wish politicians still did this sort of sweeping historical commentary. But wow, "the creators of national government were perforce ruthless men?" That's not lefty-speak. And check out the list of checks on tyranny: trade guilds, local government, popular control. This language all sounds very libertarian. But he's starting to pull the rug out from under our liberty-loving feet; note the inclusion of "national parliament" in the list of forces arrayed against government tyranny. He's developing a more nuanced vision of government, a vision he's about to tie to the American political tradition: 

The American colonies were born in this struggle. The American Revolution was a turning point in it. After the revolution the struggle continued and shaped itself in the public life of the country. There were those who because they had seen the confusion which attended the years of war for American independence surrendered to the belief that popular government was essentially dangerous and essentially unworkable. They were honest people, my friends, and we cannot deny that their experience had warranted some measure of fear. The most brilliant, honest and able exponent of this point of view was Hamilton. He was too impatient of slow moving methods. Fundamentally he believed that the safety of the republic lay in the autocratic strength of its government, that the destiny of individuals was to serve that government, and that fundamentally a great and strong group of central institutions, guided by a small group of able and public spirited citizens could best direct all government.

 We traditionally associate Hamilton with economic centralization, with the "American System" of political economy. Hamilton, in other words, symbolizes many of the policy proposals at the core of Roosevelt's liberalism. But Roosevelt, rightfully, isn't interested in defining political beliefs using policy platforms. Instead of claiming Hamilton as his own, Roosevelt is using him as a symbol of the centralized, elite-centered state. 


Now, he begins using history to construct a moral-political alternative: 

But Mr. Jefferson, in the summer of 1776, after drafting the Declaration of Independence turned his mind to the same problem and took a different view. He did not deceive himself with outward forms. Government to him was a means to an end, not an end in itself; it might be either a refuge and a help or a threat and a danger, depending on the circumstances. We find him carefully analyzing the society for which he was to organize a government. “We have no paupers. The great mass of our population is of laborers, our rich who cannot live without labor, either manual or professional, being few and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families and from the demand for their labor, are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to feed abundantly, clothe above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families.” 

Roosevelt is claiming Jefferson, not Hamilton. He's erasing the traditional American divide: central government against decentralized liberty. He replaces it with a contrast of his own choosing: elitist skeptics of popular control against grounded skeptics of centralized power. Instead of a battle of poor against rich, he evokes a battle of plutocrats against democrats (small 'd' intended). 


We can already see him building something innovative from the bricks of traditional Jeffersonian thought; he ties Jefferson's limited vision of government to a specific societal reality, the labor-scare environment of colonial America. He frames Jefferson's skepticism not as an abstracted opposition to government, but as a practical, contextual approach to politics. 


He proceeds to dive even deeper into Jeffersonian language: 

These people, he considered, had two sets of rights, those of “personal competency” and those involved in acquiring and possessing property. By “personal competency” he meant the right of free thinking, freedom of forming and expressing opinions, and freedom of personal living each man according to his own lights. To insure the first set of rights, a government must so order its functions as not to interfere with the individual. But even Jefferson realized that the exercise of the property rights might so interfere with the rights of the individual that the government, without whose assistance the property rights could not exist, must intervene, not to destroy individualism but to protect it.

Now this is the rhetorical turn we've been waiting for! 

He has turned Jefferson's rights language against the liberty-loving right. A pragmatic skepticism of government power must also involve a pragmatic acceptance of the necessity of that power: "not to destroy individualism but to protect it." 


This language feels very different from that of Obama, who developed a "togetherness" theme in his economic address last week and likes to define "empathy" as the core of liberalism (Obama may be right, but we're talking about rhetoric, not political-psychological analysis). 


Note that "togetherness" or "empathy" will probably only appeal to people who hold an emotionally liberal predisposition. But "individualism?" Every American believes in individualism. Roosevelt is creating a path by which a conservative-minded individual can consider accepting his vision. 


Now we can sit back and watch the master work: 

You are familiar with the great political duel which followed, and how Hamilton, and his friends, building towards a dominant centralized power were at length defeated in the great election of 1800, by Mr. Jefferson’s party. Out of that duel came the two parties, Republican and Democratic, as we know them today.

Roosevelt now makes the link between Jefferson and his Democratic party explicit. He frames the election of 1800 as a rejection of centralized power. 


Now he moves into an even more full-throated embrace of individualism: 

So began, in American political life, the new day, the day of the individual against the system, the day in which individualism was made the great watchword of American life. The happiest of economic conditions made that day long and splendid. On the Western frontier, land was substantially free. No one, who did not shirk the task of earning a living, was entirely without opportunity to do so. Depressions could, and did, come and go; but they could not alter the fundamental fact that most of the people lived partly by selling their labor and partly by extracting their livelihood from the soil, so that starvation and dislocation were practically impossible. At the very worst there was always the possibility of climbing into a covered wagon and moving west where the untilled prairies afforded a haven for men to whom the East did not provide a place. So great were our natural resources that we could offer this relief not only to our own people, but to the distressed of all the world; we could invite immigration from Europe, and welcome it with open arms. Traditionally, when a depression came, a new section of land was opened in the West; and even our temporary misfortune served our manifest destiny.

Roosevelt begins to call individualism his own. More importantly, he begins to frame the West and the frontier, the greatest symbols of American individualism, as a safety net. The West enabled individualism. The promise of the frontier provided a guarantee against the great economic forces which threaten individual agency in a chaotic world.  I'm sure readers (if they exist) have started to see where he's going with this line of rhetoric. The West, after all, is all used up: 

It was the middle of the 19th century that a new force was released and a new dream created. The force was what is called the industrial revolution, the advance of steam and machinery and the rise of the forerunners of the modern industrial plant. The dream was the dream of an economic machine, able to raise the standard of living for everyone; to bring luxury within the reach of the humblest; to annihilate distance by steam power and later by electricity, and to release everyone from the drudgery of the heaviest manual toil. It was to be expected that this would necessarily affect government. Heretofore, government had merely been called upon to produce conditions within which people could live happily, labor peacefully, and rest secure. Now it was called upon to aid in the consummation of this new dream. There was, however, a shadow over the dream. To be made real, it required use of the talents of men of tremendous will, and tremendous ambition, since by no other force could the problems of financing and engineering and new developments be brought to a consummation.

Great stuff here. Roosevelt doesn't reject the benefits of industrialization. But he's beginning to suggest that industrialization will affect the nature of government. How could it not, if we're all Jeffersonian pragmatists concerning state power? And he's not condemning the titans of industry, those "men of tremendous will, and tremendous ambition" (so much more subtle than Obama's "fat cats"). But notice that he begins to describe them just as he did the tyrannical centralizers of European power: necessary, but dangerous: 

So manifest were the advantages of the machine age, however, that the United States fearlessly, cheerfully, and, I think, rightly, accepted the bitter with the sweet. It was thought that no price was too high to pay for the advantages which we could draw from a finished industrial system. The history of the last half century is accordingly in large measure a history of a group of financial Titans, whose methods were not scrutinized with too much care, and who were honored in proportion as they produced the results, irrespective of the means they used. The financiers who pushed the railroads to the Pacific were always ruthless, we have them today. It has been estimated that the American investor paid for the American railway system more than three times over in the process; but despite that fact the net advantage was to the United States. As long as we had free land; as long as population was growing by leaps and bounds; as long as our industrial plants were insufficient to supply our needs, society chose to give the ambitious man free play and unlimited reward provided only that he produced the economic plant so much desired.

Really masterful stuff, in my opinion. He's building up to a sweeping critique of concentrated economic power while still endorsing the tangible benefits of an industrialized economy. Like the European kings who eradicated the oppressive barons, the titans of industry are helpful, but only if we don't let them get out of hand. By developing this sort of framework, Roosevelt gets to look like an even-handed pragmatist, even while, in effect, launching a pretty sweeping leftist critique of unregulated capitalism:   

During this period of expansion, there was equal opportunity for all and the business of government was not to interfere but to assist in the development of industry. This was done at the request of businessmen themselves. The tariff was originally imposed for the purpose of “fostering our infant industry”, a phrase I think the older among you will remember as a political issue not so long ago. The railroads were subsidized, sometimes by grants of money, oftener by grants of land; some of the most valuable oil lands in the United States were granted to assist the financing of the railroad which pushed through the Southwest. A nascent merchant marine was assisted by grants of money, or by mail subsidies, so that our steam shipping might ply the seven seas. Some of my friends tell me that they do not want the Government in business. With this I agree; but I wonder whether they realize the implications of the past. For while it has been American doctrine that the government must not go into business in competition with private enterprises, still it has been traditional particularly in Republican administrations for business urgently to ask the government to put at private disposal all kinds of government assistance.

No need to repeat myself concerning the framing strategy, which becomes more evident by the paragraph. I'll just note that the "corporate welfare" rhetoric holds up quite well today. He moves on to echo (once again) libertarian critiques of state-centered "crony capitalism":

The same man who tells you that he does not want to see the government interfere in business-and he means it, and has plenty of good reasons for saying so-is the first to go to Washington and ask the government for a prohibitory tariff on his product. When things get just bad enough-as they did two years ago-he will go with equal speed to the United States government and ask for a loan; and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation is the outcome of it. Each group has sought protection from the government for its own special interest, without realizing that the function of government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens 

Note yet another redefinition effort, as he works to subvert (and in fact claim as his own) all the traditional critiques of the modern liberal state: of course government should help business in hard times. But the state must not simply help those with hands closest to the levers of power, it must help "all its citizens." 


Now, finally, he comes to the the narrative climax of his historical narrative, capitalism gone too far:

In retrospect we can now see that the turn of the tide came with the turn of the century. We were reaching our last frontier; there was no more free land and our industrial combinations had become great uncontrolled and irresponsible units of power within the state. Clear-sighted men saw with fear the danger that opportunity would no longer be equal; that the growing corporation, like the feudal baron of old, might threaten the economic freedom of individuals to earn a living. In that hour, our antitrust laws were born. The cry was raised against the great corporations. Theodore Roosevelt, the first great Republican progressive, fought a Presidential campaign on the issue of “trust busting” and talked freely about malefactors of great wealth. If the government had a policy it was rather to turn the clock back, to destroy the large combinations and to return to the time when every man owned his individual small business.

The baron comparison is now made explicit. He moralizes the industrial titans not like a liberal ("greedy") but like a conservative ("irresponsible"). His language becomes metaphorical rather than sociologically descriptive: those who recognize the dangers are not "ordinary folks" (as Obama would say) but "clear-sighted men." Critics of unbound capitalism are not members of a certain class, but pragmatic observers of misplaced power. 


He moves on to discuss how this trend developed through the Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson years, continuing to emphasize the necessity of opportunity, the opposition of concentrated economic power and indiviudal economic agency.


And then, once again, he subverts the conservative association of individualism and capitalism:  

Just as freedom to farm has ceased, so also the opportunity in business has narrowed. It still is true that men can start small enterprises, trusting to native shrewdness and ability to keep abreast of competitors; but area after area has been preempted altogether by the great corporations, and even in the fields which still have no great concerns, the small man starts with a handicap. The unfeeling statistics of the past three decades show that the independent business man is running a losing race. Perhaps he is forced to the wall; perhaps he cannot command credit; perhaps he is “squeezed out,” in Mr. Wilson’s words, by highly organized corporate competitors, as your corner grocery man can tell you.

Industrialization, whatever its benefits, has changed the contours of our society. The continuation of American individualism will require a new societal bargain, a new compromise between the forces of concentrated power and the people. A New Deal:

Clearly, all this calls for a re-appraisal of values. A mere builder of more industrial plants, a creator of more railroad systems, and organizer of more corporations, is as likely to be a danger as a help. The day of the great promoter or the financial Titan, to whom we granted anything if only he would build, or develop, is over. Our task now is not discovery or exploitation of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, of seeking to reestablish foreign markets for our surplus production, of meeting the problem of under consumption, of adjusting production to consumption, of distributing wealth and products more equitably, of adapting existing economic organizations to the service of the people. The day of enlightened administration has come.

Like any good lefty, I enjoy the nod to "enlightened administration," as I do the Keynesian hat tip ("meeting the problem of under consumption"). But, more importantly, he's not framing enlightened administration as abstractly, inherently desirable, simply as a pragmatic response to the historical moment.  


His tight adherence to practical, contextually oriented language only becomes more explicit. I don't want to interrupt the rhythm of his concluding flourish, where Roosevelt finally weaves together Jeffersonian rights language, a balancing (not controlling) government, and American individualism. 


So I'll challenge your attention spans: 

Just as in older times the central government was first a haven of refuge, and then a threat, so now in a closer economic system the central and ambitious financial unit is no longer a servant of national desire, but a danger. I would draw the parallel one step farther. We did not think because national government had become a threat in the 18th century that therefore we should abandon the principle of national government. Nor today should we abandon the principle of strong economic units called corporations, merely because their power is susceptible of easy abuse. In other times we dealt with the problem of an unduly ambitious central government by modifying it gradually into a constitutional democratic government. So today we are modifying and controlling our economic units.

As I see it, the task of government in its relation to business is to assist the development of an economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional order. This is the common task of statesman and business man. It is the minimum requirement of a more permanently safe order of things.

Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may by sloth or crime decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him. We have no actual famine or death; our industrial and agricultural mechanism can produce enough and to spare. Our government formal and informal., political and economic, owes to every one an avenue to possess himself of a portion of that plenty sufficient for his needs, through his own work.

Every man has a right to his own property; which means a right to be assured, to the fullest extent attainable, in the safety of his savings. By no other means can men carry the burdens of those parts of life which, in the nature of things afford no chance of labor; childhood, sickness, old age. In all thought of property, this right is paramount; all other property rights must yield to it. If, in accord with this principle, we must restrict the operations of the speculator, the manipulator, even the financier, I believe we must accept the restriction as needful, not to hamper individualism but to protect it.

These two requirements must be satisfied, in the main, by the individuals who claim and hold control of the great industrial and financial combinations which dominate so large a pert of our industrial life. They have undertaken to be, not business men, but princes-princes [sic] of property. I am not prepared to say that the system which produces them is wrong. I am very clear that they must fearlessly and competently assume the responsibility which goes with the power. So many enlightened business men know this that the statement would be little more that a platitude, were it not for an added implication.

This implication is, briefly, that the responsible heads of finance and industry instead of acting each for himself, must work together to achieve the common end. They must, where necessary, sacrifice this or that private advantage; and in reciprocal self-denial must seek a general advantage. It is here that formal government-political government, if you choose, comes in. Whenever in the pursuit of this objective the lone wolf, the unethical competitor, the reckless promoter, the Ishmael or Insull whose hand is against every man’s, declines to join in achieving and end recognized as being for the public welfare, and threatens to drag the industry back to a state of anarchy, the government may properly be asked to apply restraint. Likewise, should the group ever use its collective power contrary to public welfare, the government must be swift to enter and protect the public interest.

The government should assume the function of economic regulation only as a last resort, to be tried only when private initiative, inspired by high responsibility, with such assistance and balance as government can give, has finally failed. As yet there has been no final failure, because there has been no attempt, and I decline to assume that this nation is unable to meet the situation.

The final term of the high contract was for liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have learnt a great deal of both in the past century. We know that individual liberty and individual happiness mean nothing unless both are ordered in the sense that one man’s meat is not another man’s poison. We know that the old “rights of personal competency”-the right to read, to think, to speak to choose and live a mode of life, must be respected at all hazards. We know that liberty to do anything which deprives others of those elemental rights is outside the protection of any compact; and that government in this regard is the maintenance of a balance, within which every individual may have a place if he will take it; in which every individual may find safety if he wishes it; in which every individual may attain such power as his ability permits, consistent with his assuming the accompanying responsibility...

Faith in America, faith in our tradition of personal responsibility, faith in our institutions, faith in ourselves demands that we recognize the new terms of the old social contract. We shall fulfill them, as we fulfilled the obligation of the apparent Utopia which Jefferson imagined for us in 1776, and which Jefferson, Roosevelt and Wilson sought to bring to realization. We must do so, lest a rising tide of misery engendered by our common failure, engulf us all. But failure is not an American habit; and in the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common load.

Now that's a morally cohesive statement of the liberal vision.