Why Obama cannot be our generation's FDR

by Susan Marie Kovalinsky | September 23, 2009 at 06:43 am

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From Salon.com to the New York Times, to Time magazine to the left-wing blogosphere to Air America: The consensus for months has been, "Obama must be this generation's FDR". Even Howe and Strauss, the two most clear-headed historians and political analysts this country has known, predicted an "FDR moment" right about the time of election 2008 - and they made the prediction in 1997.

As this video makes clear, and as Obama himself has said, many times, FDR was hated and feared perhaps to a greater degree than Obama. However, this does not mean that Obama can plough through with programs in the manner of FDR.

I n reflecting and researching, and the facts are pile up, and point to a dismal - for me and for certain types of progressives - conclusion: that things are simply too different in 2009 than they were in 1932. The following makes the case:

But this is not 1932, and Obama is not FDR. FDR came into office with 20+% unemployment and a banking crisis that was wiping out peoples' life savings every day. FDR also came into office with a trivial national debt, and a Federal government that consumed less than 4% of GDP. He had a lot of run room.
Maybe more importantly, he came into office without the kinds of institutional arrangements that made it politically difficult to pass his policies. There are a lot of these, but some highlights:

There was no institution like the CBO to model the impact of his programs, and implacably report that they were going to cost huge amounts of money

There was no vast fraternity of tax lawyers to help blunt the revenue enhancements from new taxes

Discipline in the Senate and the House was much stronger

Corporate lobbying was relatively weak, and interest group lobbying was in its infancy

There was no existing infrastructure of programs with constituents fighting change

What this means, politically and nationally, is anyone's guess: Where will this go, if there is to be no resurgence, no saeculum rendition? I think Howe and Strauss would have understood in advance that things are far different in the dawn of the 21st century, than they were in the middle of the 20th. And yet, I still wholly believe their saeculum theory (set forth in their epic book, The Fourth Turning: What the cycles of history have to say about America's next rendesvous with Destiny, Broadway Books, 1997).