More from Ryan, via texts...

Ryan got backed up but sent me a mountain of texts last night in the midst of our stupor about why my argument for the New Deal's success are contrary to my conservative principles. So, headache and hang-over permitting, I'll try to both spell out Ryan's point and make my defense here. Bear with me, please... if I'm not perfect in my understanding of Ryan's point or in my clarity of explanation, I'm not 100% this morning.


1) Ryan asked why I feel that low taxes and less regulation is good for the nation in general, and why I am able to find examples of that through out history, but still feel that the era of the 1930's is an "exception to the rule" and that this 9 year period prior to the outbreak of WWII needed the New Deal to work.

I feel that history proves that lower taxes and less regulation on commerce is good for an economy, this is undeniably true. Maintaining the 63-70% top tax rate that Hoover implemented in 1932 was FDR's biggest mistake... that should have been thrown out with the rest of the Hoover trash. However, FDR maintained several aspects of Hoover's recovery plans, for reasons that I can only assume were political necessity at the time the determinations were made.

FDR promised a "New Deal" and that means (plainly enough, I think) that what had been being done wasn't working, whether we are talking in actuality or in the perception of the American people. The contemporary conservative viewpoint of the day was held exclusively by the Hoover Republicans, and in 1932 they constituted less than 24% of the ENTIRE scope of US Government. They had lost the confidence of the American public, and the demand that something be done to fix what wasn't working was very real, indeed.

Reagan raised taxes. Lincoln instituted an income tax and a draft. Washington instituted new taxes on products that previously hadn't been taxed before, and started an armed rebellion in the process (the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791) and ushered in the era of high Federal alcohol taxes ever since. Jefferson quadrupled the Federal deficit with one sweep of his quill... which many at the time felt was just as unconstitutional an act as anything FDR did as President. In one manner or another, each of these "great" Presidents broke with the established norm to achieve ends they felt were in the greater interest of the nation, not with the intention of setting some evil precedent or corrupting the Constitutionally established status quo, but with the hopes of seeing the nation through a particular crisis in its history. Furthermore, NONE of the Presidents listed above were able to completely follow the model of "Reaganomics" 100%... not even Reagan himself! Does this negatively impact their legacies? Does this negate their efforts to see the nation through a crisis? Is it fair to place the yardstick of Reaganomics, as we understand it today, on their efforts decades or centuries past? Does this make them ALL "failures"?

What I think benefited the economy from the New Deal most was the ability of the Federal government, in the time of a national (even global) crisis, to stabilize the volatile nature of our markets and to act the role of the largest "consumer" to be found. The Feds sought to defeat the Crash by being the entity that hired people, built roads, expanded power grids, planted or cut down forests, dug canals, improved railroads, paved airports... when no one else would or could. This was a progressive, centralized plan that was (and is) counter to much of what I now know to be sound economic national theory, but it was what they saw as the quickest and easiest means to solving the problem... and it worked.

It was EXACTLY the same theory and methodology that saw us to the successful conclusion of WWII, as well... and Ryan even credits FDR with that success, but it would seem that the "stand back and do nothing" approach of the Hoover years was a better alternative to a purely economic crisis (no matter how global in scope) than the "hands-on" approach that eventually won us a war the literally covered the globe and pitted us against TWO despotic empires bent on global domination.

While nations across the globe were falling to despotic leaders promising better futures and delivering tyranny and death by the truck-load, the New Deal kept peace and maintained the American way of life while delivering real and measurable benefits to our lives. Yes, this was accomplished at the expense of a purely-theoretical model of minimalist government that Reagan gave his name to, and a greater degree of centralization and Federal control, but it wasn't anything that couldn't have been reversed once it was found to NOT work. The aspects of New Deal that hadn't proven their worth before the end of the war were allowed to expire, were disbanded, or were found unconstitutional through a fair and democratic process that was not allowed FAIL because of a loss of confidence in our nation's fundamental principles.

2) Ryan asked why, knowing that the majority of New Deal programs were deemed "unconstitutional", and that the National Recovery Administration was the "corner stone" of the entire New Deal, how can the New Deal still be seen as a success?

My response is that I can find only TWO major New Deal programs that were found to be unconstitutional by the SCOTUS... the NRA and the AAA, and the AAA was disbanded and reconstituted in 1939 to meet the requirements laid down by the SCOTUS in 1936. The program then went on to be instrumental in our nation's ability to meet agricultural needs during the war years, and Ike praised it as part of the Arsenal of Democracy that finished the jobs in Europe and the Pacific.

So, that leaves only the NRA (what Ryan deemed the "center-point" of the New Deal) as glaringly unconstitutional in its nature because it violated the Constitution's clear separation or powers between the various branches of government.

The NRA was a key piece of New Deal legislation, but I think that like MOST of the New Deal, it was always seen as a temporary measure. Of the (literally) dozens and dozens of programs that the New Deal instituted, only SEVEN have remained in place past the New Deal era. ALL the rest either expired or were disbanded once the need for the program was gone. In the two years that the NRA was functioning, national industrial production capacity rose 55% above its pre-Crash level. That alone shows that something in the national infrastructure was broken and needed a fix, doesn't it?

Look, I'm not an apologist for the NRA, or for the entire ideology of progressive politics. Once again, we began this debate by asking if FDR was a good President or a bad one... and what portions of his policies were responsible for that "grade". We have agreed that unemployment remained too high all through the era, and that the true end of the unemployment problem didn't come about until the US military grew to its full height of 17 million (from a 1938 figure of 300,000).

However, to continue to blame what is wrong with the remaining aspects of New Deal (Social Security, for example) solely on FDR is no more a fair and just proposition than blaming what eventually became Reconstruction on Lincoln, who started the process before he was killed. Both FDR and Lincoln employed means that were later determined to be unconstitutional in their nature to reach the successful conclusions of their respective crisis', and real cases can be made that Jefferson and Madison did the same things (although I don't know that the cases ever went before the SCOTUS). Thus, I feel Ryan is holding FDR to an unrealistic and unreasonable measure of success/failure that he is not employing with any other Presidents in our history.

Finally, I want to say that I truly do understand what Ryan (and such pundits as Beck and Limbaugh) keep saying... that FDR was "bad" because he started a ball rolling that we haven't been able to completely stop in the nearly 80 years since he took office, but that doesn't mean that he should be vilified for making the effort. To do so then causes us to question the perceptions AND efforts of people like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and any other President that was acting out of genuine concern for the nation but employed questionable or unorthodox means to gain them. FDR was elected to do whatever he could to fix what wasn't working... and some of those things worked, while others didn't. What can be determined without question is that the vast majority of symptoms of the Great Depression were completely reversed by 1939, and ALL OF THEM showed vast improvements over what had been done to fix them in the past. If we all agree that Reagan had the "right stuff" in hand when it came to understanding how to run an economy, why didn't he end SSI once and for all? Because he would have been crucified in the court of "public opinion" that's why... which means that even the greatest of Ryan's "Great Presidents" list have to bow to what the people demand and that compromises have to be made to further the causes that reach the goals that benefit the nation the most.

FDR was a progressive, I do not argue that point at all. He was also the President that saw us through 15 years of the toughest times the US had to face in all of the last century, and he did it the best way he knew how... through the implementation of progressive programs and policies that did what they were intended to do, and either became the footnotes in history that they are now (NRA, CCC, WPA) or are still with us today (SSI, FDIC). We have not seen an actual "depression" since his terms, and what he accomplished in the '30s led directly to the success we saw as a nation in the '40s and '50s. Progressive or not, he ranks as a "great President" in my book for those reasons.