Eric Rauchway: The Party of Stinkin'

What's behind the Republican's "inability to govern"? Do Democrats overreach?:

The Party of Stinkin', by Eric Rauchway, TNR: If the mixed results in the early Republican primaries--a Huckabee here, a McCain or Romney there--portends a split between the GOP's religious, fiscally conservative, and security-state wings, it won't be the first time a national American political coalition has failed. But it will be the third time in a hundred years an apparently strong Republican majority cracked up due to the party's inability to govern. By contrast, Democratic coalitions have failed mostly because the party has overreached after governing successes.   

In the midst of an economic depression, the Republican Party assembled a presidential majority in 1896 for William McKinley and his conservative platform. McKinley won despite the revolt of many traditionally Republican western states, whose citizens believed the party's elite had grown too cozy with industrial and financial leaders, while leaving the stricken farmers of the heartland in the cold. ...

With McKinley, the Republican Party shifted away from its post-Civil War habit of bludgeoning the South, and McKinley ran as a candidate of sectional reconciliation. He wooed the South with symbolic gestures, like declaring that their soldiers had demonstrated "American valor" in battle... He wooed the West with promises of renewed prosperity under his tariff and monetary policies. And Roosevelt's subsequent presidency--he took 56% percent of the popular vote in 1904--appeared to show that the Republicans could campaign and govern as a truly national party.

But the seeming solidity of this coalition concealed real divisions, owing largely to the Republicans' unwillingness to give Westerners what they demanded. Out there in the new states, voters began agitating for and adopting democratic measures--women's suffrage; initiative, referendum, and recall; and ways to popularly elect Senators and presidential candidates. Mere national prosperity, unevenly spread as it was and almost never trickling down to farmers, wasn't going to satisfy them. They actually wanted to take part in the country's government and change it for themselves.

Roosevelt made the right noises in response to this stirring insurgency... But, since he was a Republican beholden to eastern industry, he could do little more than talk... As another student of Rooseveltiana more acutely mentioned, he was "the greatest concocter of 'weasel' paragraphs on record."

Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, couldn't weasel charmingly enough for an electorate increasingly dissatisfied with Republican complacency. In 1910, the Democrats took the Congress.

Roosevelt tried to push his party back in his direction, and when that failed, he led a third-party movement in 1912 that put Woodrow Wilson into the White House, along with a Democratic House and Senate. [...continue reading...]

Update: Underbelly Buce comments.

Comments

[ken melvin]

It may be that a distinction between governing and ruling needs be made.

[bakho]

Interesting to bring up income tax and direct election of senators. Before direct elections, big corporations would bribe state legislators to appoint a Big Business rep as senator. Now they buy the guy with campaign contributions after the fact.

Income tax when initiated was only on the wealthy. However, bracket creep eventually pushed most people into the taxpayer category.

[skeptonomist]

"Roosevelt...could do little more than talk". He didn't just talk - he carried on a very active anti-trust campaign. No wonder the party ignored him after he left office. His progessive leanings were sincere (as much as any politician's) and began long before the Bull Moose campaign of 1912. (I just happen to have read a biography of Roosevelt recently.)

[paine]

skept
you got gonged by that bio

tr was a velvet pants amateur pol
with a pedigree fetish
bright but splutter prone
confidently self posed
a burly parlor bully
freaky fearless like george paton
a fraud and a bloody fool
sympathetic unto himself and his alone
untutored by empathy
prolly
unto the ages a roughing it gentleman anecdote
an ole vic version
of a hemingway man
more reckless rentier
and less the boundless climber then hem-self
---he bounded about ...not... up ----

enough of this teddy r
his class mates
fdr jfk and gwb prolly
wished to shine thru time like

will not some one rid me
of his 200 year long east coast
crumbling crust spectre

[paine]

yes its only been a hundred years but it seems twice that

[Holly W.]

Has the recent GOP congress and presidency really "failed to govern," or have they suffered a bit from over-reaching? It seems to me that a pretty record amount of legislation was passed before the Dems got Congress back -- No Child Left Behind, the Healthy Forests Initiative, the Medicare drug bill, the huge tax cuts/shifts packages, the Jobs Creation Bill, and more, with many of these bills written by lobbyists who were just handed everything they wanted. To my mind, this is pretty much the modern Grover Norquist/K Street-run GOP behaving just the way one would expect them to, if one pays any attention.

Sure, these bills mostly suck, but they've been pretty successful at achieving what the GOP wants -- moving money away from the middle class and into the pockets of the already-wealthy, disabling environmental regulations, and enriching the personal buddies of the people who make the laws (Crony capitalism at its best!).

Is it possible that the American people have finally decided that while the GOP was governing fairly successfully by GOP standards, the results really aren't good for very many of us?

[TigerPaw]

I would submit it's a matter of ones point of view. If one is a rich right-wing type, the Republicans are probably viewed as having ruled effectively. After all, your taxes dropped significantly, your opponents have been emasculated by having the courts packed with right-wingers, inconvenient regulations were squashed or left unenforced, signing statements were added onto laws that might have been a nuisance, and innumerable government contracts are now flowing your way. On the other hand if one is middle-class or lower they've done a dreadful job.

As long as the "other guy" is getting screwed the right-wing and the deluded will always think the Republicans did a "heck of a job". The rich are mobile and therefore the fate of the country is meaningless and they know that they can wiggle out of most any problem by waving a cheque book. Plus having a beaten down peasantry is a benefit when one needs compliant worker drones. Add on religious intolerance and/or a war to keep the peasantry occupied to ensure they don’t notice your affluence and it’s almost a perfect situation.

[ken melvin]

Twain had Teddy's number.

[calmo]

Ok, hands up those who want paine to write their obits?
I was going to go for cremation but now I think I'll go for the glowin in the dark, pulsating purple LED lit headstone...provided I get a preview, you know?
Who says I can't stay on topic...despite grave temptations?

But it will be the third time in a hundred years (any scholars out there willing to skirmish on this point or are you loading the pea shooter as we type?) an apparently (this was Eric's clue: sadly 'twas only apparent to him) strong Republican majority cracked up due to the party's inability to govern (like Eric's command of his own intelligence: crackable).

What planet is Eric on again?

[Lafayette]

All that for just that?

HW : (Crony capitalism at its best!).

TP : I would submit it's a matter of ones point of view.

There, we have it in a nutshell. Both comments apply basically.

And, frankly, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Had the Dems planned and implemented a run on the Treasury to implement Public Services (for the poor and not-so-poor-but-needy) the Right would have been rabid with accusations of Creeping Socialism.

A bit of socialism would not be bad for America, which has moved subtly rightwards in its political complexion. I see that movement not based upon any desire to enrich even further the rich, but the fact that Americans sensed a loss of “Traditional Values”. Too much crime, too much wantonness, too much vanity / cupidity – and much of it in a Lust for Lucre.

That concoction was enough to move reactively any sane person to the Right. But, in doing so, Americans did not anticipate the wholesale rip-off that enriched the already rich. The Right took the movement to mean a blank check, which was never meant at all. (Politicians habitually make the same mistake, once elected. A mandate to serve is not a mandate to pillage. But, no one ever told them -- and certainly not the Press Corp.)

That particular economic phenomenon, enriching the rich, had been started long before by Reagan's wholesale marginal tax reductions in the US and Thatcher's in the UK.

Billy-boy Clinton did not budge a finger to change it, probably feeling that it was time to create the Leftist Rich in order to feed Democrat election coffers. Not bad as a political tactic, admittedly. You can't fight political campaigns with just good intentions -- a candidate needs BigMoney for the mindless Media Sloganeering that seems to sway electors.

The Truth is in the Middle, friends, as I am wont to say again and again. I see it everywhere, that people instinctively move to the middle in their political POV.

We move Right when we sense that policies need tightening up seeking more effective crime control, less budget profligacy, etc. We move Left when we figure that too much lucre has gone to too few, or that Lead-head-in-Chief has lost leave of his senses in a needless war. Or any number of other, less obvious reasons that may well apply.

Voters have matured and that is goodness, methinks. We oscillate politically around the middle. Such electoral behaviour is consonant with a common tendency seen in other democracies globally. Politics has lost the “labeling” that once characterized “Voting Blocks” -- meaning those conservative-in-nature voted systematically for the Right and those progressive-in-nature systematically for the Left.

There is no more Systematic Voting, either on the Left or Right as the electorate has become a chameleon that changes its colours according to its … uh, points-of-view-of-the-day or emotion or inspiration. Whatever -- it certainly makes for different politicking today compared to the past.

So, what's my point? It's this: We should not need to spend half a billion dollars on a Media Circus to elect a PotUS. That money could be better spent elsewhere ... and it's not as if we had money pouring out of our ears. So, half a Giga-Buck is being largely wasted. All that for just that?

[reason]

Lafayette...

Voters have matured and that is goodness, methinks.

You and I have, but lots of them are younger than us!-) Comeon Lafayette, if voters really showed their maturity in the voting booth, then elections would be about policies not dress sense. What has changed is how electoral compaigns are run. Society has in general showed a strong movement to individualisation, so yes, people don't identify so closely with the mass herds anymore. But they still don't make decisions mostly on the basis of the actually relevant criteria. They would get closer to that by going with the herd. And we live in the "risk society" (Risikogesellschaft), uncertainty caused some to tend to extremes, not all are heading to the centre. The "American Taliban" has been growing in power. (Read Orcinus http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ if want to have nightmares).

Now I agree the American presidential circus is a waste of money and more importantly intellectual effort. I'm a parliamentary democracy man myself. I don't believe the figurehead in charge is that important, although that belief since built into human nature. It is the team that counts (I should link here to Donovan singing "Universal Soldier).

[reason]

Oops
.. that belief seems built in ...

[Lafayette]

reason: ... if voters really showed their maturity in the voting booth, then elections would be about policies not dress sense.

I am old enough to remember stories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's grandfather being reelected Mayor of Boston ... from his jail cell. How? Because the Irish owned the Democratic Party in Boston at the time and, of course, Fitzgerald was of Irish descent.

Block voting is still in more recent history, but it is changing. We like to think that the Latinos vote in block for Democrats. It's not so. In fact, the Evangelical Latino's voted heavily for Bush throughout the US.

But they still don't make decisions mostly on the basis of the actually relevant criteria.

That I can agree with, wholeheartedly.

What can you do, other than educate them? But, how do you educate a people who are addicted to the boob-tube for information, sensation and manipulation.

Nowadays, you sell a presidential candidate like a six-pack of beer. Make him/her personable, likable, sexy, one-of-the-guys/girls. What the hell does economic or social policy have to do with electing a president?

Not a damn thing. Joe/Jane Sixpack are just looking for the froth.