I see Nicweb has already noted the similarities between Barack Obama and the 20th century's greatest president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on their national infrastructure plans. This is certainly a subject near and dear to the heart of this New Dealer. But after having read Jonathan Alter's excellent chronicle of FDR's First Hundred Days, "The Defining Moment," I suspect the similarities don't end there, though the comparisons may not sit easily with hard-core Obama supporters (of which I am admittedly one).
One of the most disconcerting things I encountered reading Alter's book was the sheer number of negative or somewhat dubious qualities FDR posessed - but these very same qualities were often the key to his success. FDR early in his career confronted the corrupt political machine of New York, just as Obama did to the ethics-challenged Daley machine in Chicago. Yet as they ascended the ladder of power, both of them made their peace with the urban political bosses, in way that disappointed their reformist supporters but, importantly, did not compromise their integrity.
Likewise, FDR had a habit of blaming his secretaries. When out-going president Herbert Hoover sent FDR a letter trying to get him to commit to Hoover's economic recovery plan (namely to balance the budget and keep America on the gold standard). FDR chose to ignore it both because he wanted to run out the clock on Hoover and not have to share the blame for Hoover's failed policies (or credit for adopting new ones); he later blamed his secretary for misplacing the letter, proving FDR was an early practitioner of the art of "plausible deniability." As his political guru Louis Howe described the stratagem in an earlier instance, "The net and unanimous opinion of everyone was to forget that you ever got it and if the matter ever came up afterwards to damn the secretary."
Obama is no stranger himself to the politics of "plausible deniability." As this somewhat negative profile in Sunday's NY Times relates, when Obama first ran for the Illinois state legislature in 1996, he returned a questionnaire from the Independent Voters of Illinois Independent Precinct Organization and subsequently got the group's endorsement. When the survey reappeared in right-wing attacks on Obama earlier this year (Obama had responded "yes" to banning handguns and "no" to supporting state-sanctioned murder [the "death penalty"]), Obama claimed that an aide had "incorrectly characterized" his positions.
FDR also had an ability to convince people of disparate viewpoints that he not only heard their concerns and their views, but shared them, without actually saying he shared them. Obama has displayed a similar ability. According to the same Times article, Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi stated that, "'You may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me.... But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure."
Do not get me wrong: I come not to bury Obama, but to praise him! While these traits hardly seem admirable on their surface, they proved essential to FDR in bringing about the greatest wave of progressive change this nation has yet seen and may yet allow Obama to accomplish the same in our time.
FDR was able to restructure the American social compact on liberal terms as he did because of his pragmatic, non-ideological nature. A revolutionary socialist or communist would never have been able to bring about even such modest changes as Social Security or the Civilian Conservation Corps, much less the National Recovery Administration, because their critics would have charged them rightly with seeking to impose communism one building block at a time. A reactionary conservative, even a thoughtful one like Hoover, would never have seen the need to remove their ideological blinders enough to create any of those programs, either. Only someone resolutely practical and non-ideological could have sold the American people on the liberal New Deal reforms.
Likewise, many observers and commentators have remarked on Obama's cool, deliberative temperament and his aversion to ideological framing. He has shown an ability to re-frame liberal ideas as pragmatic common-sense solutions - which they usually are, but it helps to have a candidate who can break the Republican "noise-machine" and reframe the issues in a way that favors liberal causes. In the Illinois state legislature he reframed the debate over a bill requiring the videotaping of police interrogations in such a way that he was able to accommodate opponents' concerns and get it passed with bipartisan support.
In his bid for the White House, Obama has run on his opposition to the Iraq War before it ever began. In the face of Republican (and Clintonian) criticism of his "radical" policy of actually talking to foreign leaders with whom we disagree, Obama has not only not changed his position to avoid such patently-ridiculous labels as the "appeasement" charge Bush in Israel just lobbed at him, he has made it a centerpiece of his campaign, mentioned at every campaign stop. Contrast this with Hillary's trashing of Obama on the matter last summer and her subsequent acknowledgment that she, of course, would also be willing to talk to our adversaries. Rather than quaking in his boots about the Republicans' inherent advantage on national security and trying to follow their lead for fear of being called unpatriotic, Obama has called "bullshit" on the chickenhawks, and is betting on the American people seeing through the GOP smokescreen in November.
Again, the Times: "'What’s fascinating about Barack is what he’s trying to do is reframe and change the discourse so you build support for liberal alternatives within the electorate,' said Will Burns, a former aide whom Mr. Obama also consulted on the speech."
The potential implications of such a reframing are profound. FDR was able to reframe the American attitude towards government as being one in which "the people support the government and the government supports the people," and away from the one espoused by Grover Cleveland in 1887 when he rejected an appeal from drought-stricken Texas farmers for aid: "Though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people." Ronald Reagan had only marginal success in undoing Roosevelt's reforms, but he was able to reframe the national debate for a generation with his simplistic banality: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." This framing proved so enduring that only 12 years ago, a popular two-term Democratic president felt compelled to state that "The era of big government is over."
That framing has thankfully loosened its hold on the American body politic and another transformational leader has come along just in time to offer a new progressive frame for the next generation. But to do that will require a leader willing to make compromises without compromising his integrity, a rarity in Washington. Obama is such a rarity, but we can never forget that he is a politician, after all. As Khalidi told the Times, "People think he’s a saint. He’s not. He’s a politician." He only appears to be a saint when compared with Bush, McCain, Hillary, etc.!
Those of us who support Obama have to constantly keep this in mind and not fall into the idealistic trap of holding him up to a standard of absolute purity that no one could meet, much less someone aspiring to high office. The few traits that Obama seems to share with FDR which are unappealing, because they are standard in the dysfunctional politics of Washington, may in fact, if coupled with Obama's gift for making center-left ideas seem pragmatic and uncontroversial, prove the most useful for building a new liberal governing majority in America.