There's good news and bad news. One the one hand, more people lost their homes so far this year than at any comparable period since the Great Depression. On the other hand, banks are getting profitable again, especially Goldman Sachs, former home to Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner. Whether or not you're cheering depends on how you view the opinions of a famous Republican president.
We've been hearing a hot debate between Democrats who want to turn off the taxpayer-financed spigot supply nourishment to oil, insurance and banking companies and Republicans who feel the free market should be freer to corporations than, say, the homeless. One interesting argument is that since our generous government provides over a hundred billion dollars in corporate tax breaks, if it fenced off one section of the trough, it would be a threat to the other diners. Loud cheering from the Chamber of Commerce.
In choosing between government and free-market solutions, Republican candidates, to a man, invoke the spirit of Ronald Reagan to justify the opinion that the government is not the answer, but the problem. These people favor the “invisible hand” of the market to make things right. Conspicuously absent are the words of another Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower: “As we peer into society's future," he said, “we must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
I voted for Mr. Eisenhower in 1952, largely in support of ideas like these. I wore an “I like Ike” button. This was the guy who was offered the nomination for President by both parties. He was the general who led allied troops to victory in World War II. Sixty-seven years later, we might still want to pay attention.
Would Ike would be happy about Goldman's increased profit margins? I suspect, in normal circumstances, he would. Good Republicans cheer successful companies as they cheer successful people. Whether he would cheer so loudly if he knew Goldman's profits were due in no small part to the trust of people who could now be losing their homes is another question. Although businesses were a lot smaller in his day, Eisenhower knew the dangers of allowing either commerce or the military to assume too much of a role in America's future. In his most famous speech, he called this danger “the military-industrial complex.”
Today, when the role of government is more in the news than ever, it might be a good idea to examine the thoughts of a man who had the support of everybody from millionaires to the guy fixing the plumbing: “I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.” It's as true about the Middle East as it is about health care.
For instance, everyone agrees that private companies are generally more efficient than government agencies, recent corporate behavior to the contrary. The flip side is that, while efficient, private companies are out to make money first and help people second. So who gets to give out medical care to 300 million Americans? Will we be helped inefficiently or screwed efficiently? And how about Republican arguments that we can't afford universal health care because of the wars we've been paying for since 2003?
Well, General Eisenhower had something to say about priorities, too: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Was Ike a “liberal?” Try this one: “In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?” Sounds like common sense to me. Were Bush and Cheney listening?
But maybe what he said about the basis on which we should pick our leaders is my favorite: “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.” Well, we did take a giant step in that area.
I liked Ike.