Nathan Newman wrote:
>Clinton is not a socialist
>or even very progressive, but he is far more so than any other Democratic
>president of this century.
Doug: Nathan, is it Yale Law School doing these things to you?
Doug, I've always maintained that Clinton is more progressive than other Presidents and that the Dems are more progressive, on average, than in the past. They seem less progressive because they don't have the supermajorities that allowed the (smaller proportionally) progressive group to push through legislation.
But which President was more progressive than Clinton? Not which Presidency passed the most progressive legislation, since that reflects Congress often more than the President, but which intended the most progressive stuff?
Franklin Roosevelt is the only contender. On economic policy, he is the only other President to actually push progressive tax policy. The NRA and other early New Deal legislation of his first term was all basically pro-capitalist legislation that empowered big business to screw small business and stabilize a collapsing system. It had some small concessions to labor, although the really good piece of labor legislation, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, was passed in 1932 under Hoover. It was only with the labor upsurge and the 1936 election pushed by a whole range of radicals that we got the supermajorities in Congress that created the range of legislation that we think of as the New Deal: Minimum wage, social security, the Wagner Act, etc. But Roosevelt took four years to push any of the good stuff and mostly just signed off on legislation Congress drafted. On civil rights, Roosevelt did virtually nothing - wouldn't even push for an anti-lynching law, and only stopped employment discrimination in the war industries under threat of a mass march by A. Phillip Randolph.
Roosevelt's foreign policy before WWII was only mildly imperialist, somewhat of an improvement on his predecessors, and if he sacrificed the lives of most Jews barred from entry to the US, he justified it on the expediency of defeating Hitler.
So much for the contender, then look at the competition:
Truman? Some decent economic legislation, although he managed to fumble dealing with the Republican opposition so badly (Clinton is a master in comparison) that we ended up with Taft-Hartley and the destruction of the leftwing of the labor movement- which Truman applauded with his alliances with conservative forces in the labor movement. But Truman loses big time when you look at foreign policy as the military-industrial complex is made a permanent fixture of our lives, defense spending crowds out domestic spending, the Cold War is launched, and the Korean War sets the stage for militarization of the world under US auspices.
Okay, Kennedy? Terrible domestic economic policy. Slashed taxes for the wealthy with a range of pro-corporate policies. A few cute programs like the Peace Corps that hardly make up for what Ronald Reagan rightly cited as the precedent for his tax cuts in 1981. And on foreign policy, Kennedy ran to the right of Nixon and Eisenhower in expanding defense spending, threatening world war over Cuba, and launching the Vietnam War. Hardly anything redeeming there.
Then, Johnson? Well, I have a fondness for Johnson (you can say it;s a soft spot for Southern rascal political hacks if you want), but the Great Society was the product of the most amazing supermajorities the Democrats ever had, including 67 Senators, and budget surpluses due to the go-go economy that made a certain amount of noblesse oblige spending relatively painless for politicians. But then, of course, like Truman, he killed the heart of the Great Society by remilitarizing the budget to escalate in Vietnam, conduct invasions in the Dominican Republic, and generally murder millions of Vietnamese. Johnson gets only partial credit for the Great Society but gets full credit for essentially killing it through the lies that escalated Vietnam.
How about Carter? Temporarily brought down military spending, only to reescalate the budget and lay out plans for higher military spending than even Reagan was able to implement. He did some very good policies on K-12 and higher education spending but generally failed everywhere else, despite having Democratic majorities. And with those Democratic majorities, we got the 1978 tax bill that slashed capital gains tax cuts and expanded tax benefits for the wealthy. And Carter of course appointed Paul Volcker who slammed the economy into the ground, helped deindustrialize the Midwest, and helped elect Ronald Reagan.
Okay, then Clinton. Most of the good that can be said about Clinton is in the 1993 tax and budget bill, but it is probably the fairest assessment of his budgetary intentions, since everything else has been compromised with a Republican controlled opposition. That bill significantly raised the top tax rate on the richest taxpayers and cut taxes on the working poor through the massive expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. It may be the only tax bill in the last fifty years that both raised taxes on the rich and cut them for the poor (verification Max?). It also had significant gains in areas like Head Start and a number of other programs. Overall, even with the Republican Congress, assistance to the poor increased by 67% in Clinton's first six years, not too far off what happened under the Great Society years.
The difference was that Clinton did this while the defense budget was falling in real terms- this year's last minute expansion of the defense budget was the first year of the Clinton Presidency where defense was not falling in real terms. And Clinton's overall foreign policy, while continuing basic pro-capitalist policies, was not as horrifically murderous and supportive of fascist regimes as his predecessors. No giant foreign war and even a few praiseworthy, in my view, policies such as promotion of peace in Northern Ireland, pushing Israel harder than any other Democratic predecessor for concessions, and pushing out a murderous dictator in Haiti. All not perfect or even great overall, but far better than the murderous carnage left by Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.
The welfare bill is of course dispicable, but the fact remains that between EITC and other programs, we have higher net tranfers to the poor, working and nonworking, than before his Presidency. As for trade policy, Clinton did what every predecessor has done which is expand free trade for the capitalist class. The interesting change was a two-thirds majority of Democrats voting against NAFTA and then Fast Track authority. That is an indication of how much more progressive the Congressional Democratic party is than in earlier years when free trade pacts were rubber-stamped.
Okay, Doug, make your case for why Truman starting the Cold War and presiding over Taft-Hartley was such a more "social democratic" era of Presidential leadership.
--Nathan Newman