The Academy’s Bench Warmer

New preliminary exam prep strategy: I tell you what I’m reading, you ask me questions for which I should have answers.  I’m hoping these will be conceptual/metanarrative/analytical questions, rather than factual (you can find Wikipedia as easiliy as I can…).  Stuff like “Explain the rise and fall of the New Deal coalition.”  You get the idea.  I’ll post the subject/readings on Monday; you send in questions throughout the week; then I sit down and respond on Friday.  I know, right?  Awesome.

This week’s topic: The Great Depression and the New Deal.  This week’s readings:

Last night I dreamt that I had been asked to write a response to Donald Worster.  To what I was to respond I can not remember; perhaps his excellent Dust Bowl (the culture of capitalism screwed it all up), or maybe his Rivers of Empire (“hydraulic society” built California and dooms us to a dry death).  In any case, my dream took me to Africa (?), where I guess I was doing research for the review, when I came upon a mustachioed engineer who kicked my dog.  And then I woke up.

Time to take these exams and get this crap out of my head.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading/thinking/teaching a lot about the Progressive Era.  And yes, despite what Peter Filene argues, there was such a thing as a Progressive movement and era; a quick scan of the massive amount of legislation (over 100 bills passed at the state level between 1903 and 1905) shows that something was going on.  So there’s a “what”: lots of legislation, most of it pointing in the general direction of improving the quality of life (through cleaner food, better housing, better wages, shorter working hours, direct democracy, etcetera and so forth und so weiter) of a lot of Americans.  There were limits, of course: to how much was done (TR’s unenthusiastic “trust-busting,” the repeal of the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, etc.) [for a good explanation of why the limits, see Skowronek re: state capacity].  There were also limits to who was allowed to benefit (immigrants were eligible, but only if they strived for bourgeois Nordic-ness).  That’s part of the “who”; the other part–those who drove and led Progressivism–were a diverse lot, from the new middle-class seeing an opportunity and responsibility in an industrializing/modernizing/urbanizing world (see Wiebe), to elite professionals like Pinchot who sought control, order, and efficiency (see Hays and Haskell), to ex-Populist farmers in the West (see Sanders), to women pushing for suffrage through maternalist rhetoric/ideology (see Skocpol and Sklar) or belief in the family as a model for society (see Rauchway’s first book).

For the why, look to a series of -tions: industrialization, urbanization, immigration, modernization.  Through these -tions, more people were brought into more contact (direct or indirect) with more people from more widely diverse backgrounds (socio-economic, cultural, and “racial”, as the prevailing science of the day asserted).  Middle class smarty-pants, for instance, got an education from European progressives (see Rodgers); Riis’s photos of the miserable pulled middle-class heart-strings; TR dealt with anarchists putting him in the presidency; capitalists dealt with the specter of the IWW.  Through contact (see Rauchway’s second book) came the sense for a need for action: to stave off the revolution or temper the effects of capitalism.  Which fits nicely into my metanarrative of American history (pre-19th century: Birthing American Capitalism; 19th century: Raising American Capitalism; 20th Century: Saving American Capitalism).

And then the Great War.  So sad, not just for the deaths of so many, but also for the lost hopes of Progressivism (see Kennedy).  They hoped for national unity; they got the Red Scare.  They hoped for increased efficiency and state regulation of necessary functions; they got the railroads for a year or so and then gave up.  They hoped to break the back of conservatism; they got a reinvigorated Republican party.  They hoped for American democracy writ across the globe; they got American parochialism that would, perversely, lead the country back to international war (see Rauchway’s third book).

In the end, Progressives may have come from different backgrounds and may have had different objectives, but what they achieved was kinda nice.  Good people.

“It” being blogging. About preliminary exams, especially, which are coming up in t-minus 70 days.

About a month ago, The Washington Post published an opinion piece by Kenneth Baer (former Gore speech-writer) about the relevance of 1978, “the beginnings of the world we live in today.”  It was also the beginning of my world, as I was born in 1978.  (Sidenote digression: yes, I just turned thirty, and no, I’m not quite comfortable with that yet.)  And though Baer’s observations about the year’s importance for cell phones, the internet, and in vitro fertilization are amusing, I’m more interested in what the article says about politics in 1978 and the origins of the New Right.  And wouldn’t you know it, I just happen to be reading about the New Right for my prelims:

David Harry Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History
Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics
Michael Lienesch, Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

By “New Right” we’re talking about that ascendant conservative movement that got Goldwater the nomination, Nixon and Reagan the presidency, Newt his “Contract with America,” evangelicals their spot in the national limelight, and a welter of anti-government sentiment and initiatives.  A diverse movement:  white supremacists who hated black people, suburban parents who hated integration-through-busing, Christian moralists who were disgusted with obscenity and abortion, Sunbelters who disliked taxes (though they loved the lives made possible by federal spending on transportation infrastructure and the defense industry), anti-Communists who feared Nixon’s trip to China as much as they feared Soviet missiles, and “regular folk” who were appalled by the rising tide of vocal assertions by blacks, women, and homosexuals.  Baer suggests that it all came together in 1978, with anti-tax actions (California’s Proposition 13), anti-gay rights initiatives throughout the country (and the murder of San Francisco’s mayor and gay city supervisor), and backtracking from affirmative action (Bakke decision).  I buy it; 1978 is a good culmination year.

Origins, of course, are a whole other matter, as are explanations–the two being intimately connected (what else would you expect a historian to say?).  Historians point in a lot of different directions for origins/explanations of the New Right.  Bennett sees a long tradition of fear–not paranoia, ala Hofstadter, but three stages of actual fear of actual problems for certain groups: immigrant pressures; communist ideas; secularism/concentrated liberal political power/anti-Americanism.  Hodgson provides an intellectual history of the New Right, outlining its conservative/authoritarian, anti-communism, and libertarian elements, and arguing that the New Right rose on the back of problems pinned on liberalism: violent racial encounters, affirmative action, the disgrace of Vietnam, stagflation, and America’s standing in the face of communism.  This confrontation took place in “Nixonland,” a country divided between a diverse group of people, often radical, who saw themselves as liberators and defenders of justice and peace; and those who rejected condescending liberalism and saw themselves as an increasingly persecuted “silent majority,” embracing family values, hard work, law and order, and Richard Nixon.  The Edsalls flesh out the issues of this Nixonland and trace their evolution into ReaganWorld, with race, taxes, rights, and Democratic Party reform transforming the presidential electorate from a bottom-up coalition of economic interests supporting Democrats to a top-down coalition of values interests supporting Republicans.  Lienesch analyzes the ideology of some evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, showing how their hopes to save souls and the world have been pinned to conservative Republican politics.  McGirr gives us a case study of Orange County’s evolution, where affluent residents, motivated by a particular vision of family values, economic development, and freedom, helped propel the New Right from a grassroots movement focused on local issues to the national stage.  Whew.

Here’s what I think.  The New Right wasn’t filled with a bunch of freaked-out, angry, paranoid crackers; in that, I agree with McGirr, Hodgson, Bennett, and anyone else who takes seriously the complaints of those who voted for Nixon and Reagan.  I don’t agree with the complaints of the New Right, but it’s stupid to be as dismissive as Hofstadter/Bell/Lipset.  As the Edsalls show, the Democratic Party really had dropped the electoral ball–while not the ethical one–when it focused so much attention on and party power in the hands of historically under-represented groups (blacks, women, homosexuals).  The Party’s actions simultaneously (a) failed to address the real problems facing these groups–particularly blacks, who by 1965 had figured out that the Dems weren’t going far enough, so they got more vocal and active (I shy from “violent”); and (b) pissed off enough whites to make them open to voting Republican.  Add to that a hairy international situation–Vietnam, oil embargoes, stagflation, globalizing economy–that Democrats couldn’t solve, and you’ve got people not only open to reconsidering their party affiliation, but actively seeking an alternative.  And that’s where the New Right steps in, selling a diverse (and contradictory) ideology that’s broad enough to bring in libertarians and evangelicals, all under the roof of blaming liberals for the country’s problems.  Nixon was good at seizing this moment, as Perlstein shows; Reagan was a master, riding and controlling the tide of discontent.

This was the historical moment into which I was born.  It was also the historical moment in which my parents developed their own political consciousness, they being in their mid-20s.  During that time, the mid-to-late 1970s, they came to grips with a world that seemed to have a lot of problems.  Those problems could be tied to liberals–hey, they were the ones in charge, right?–and conservatives were selling an ideology that oversimplified the problems (“Democrats want to bus your children into downtown Detroit!”) and provided oversimplified, yet satisfying solutions (“It’s not your fault.  Let’s let people figure out on their own–government is the problem!”).  That, I think, helps explain my parents, the rise of the New Right, and the importance of 1978.  Beyond it being my birth year, which, let’s admit, is pretty awesome on its own.

* With apologies to Paul Simon.

It was a New Deal weekend here on the Bench, and I got through nine books.  Too bad I’m now two days behind, but whatever.

William Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.  Piss off, says Leuchtenberg to all the New Deal naysayers: the New Deal was truly a revolution, transforming the terms of political debate, the power of the executive, and invigorating a stagnant spirt of practical reform.  Those New Dealers were doing the best they can–and they did a lot.  I’m inclined to agree.

Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939.  Hang on, there, Billy Leuchtenberg and Dickie Hofstadter–don’t forget the regular folks; workers helped make the New Deal.  In this case, ethnic workers in Chicago, who (a) understood the limits of local relief institutions (b) demanded that the federal government step up to the plate and deliver where welfare capitalism had failed (c) voted in overwhelming numbers for FDR and (d) were fundamental to the formation of the CIO, which was one of those nifty countervailing forces of which Eric Rauchway writes.  She goes deep on this one, and scores.

Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s: The culture of capitalism caused the ecological and economic disaster that was the Dust Bowl, and the culture of capitalism precluded plainsmen and New Dealers from trying a sufficiently revolutionary approach to living on the Great Plains.  I love it; Worster minces no words, and it may be blunt, but it’s on the money.

Sarah Phillips, This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal.  The philosophy (or ideology?  Policy pattern?  That’s not entirely clear) of New Conservation–use resources efficiently and make sure the benefits are distributed to farmers as well as cities–shaped the agricultural policies of the New Deal (AAA, TVA, REA), and its inherent conflicts (though perhaps not contradictions) eventually led to a shift from an agrarian to industrial approach.  Although slightly muddled in its explanation of New Conservation, still a good book for getting a sense of the importance of agriculture to the New Deal and of the various approaches within New Deal agricultural policy.

Neil Maher, Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement.  We all like the CCC–dude, have you seen Timberline Lodge?–and so did FDR and the rest of the country.  The CCC served a couple of purposes: (a) it spread support, geographically and ideologically, for New Deal programs and the growth of the federal government; (b) it transformed conservation into the environmental movement by bringing more people into touch with nature (through trails, parks, publicity, work) and by sparking debate over conservation/preservation because of the CCC’s occasionally anti-wilderness behavior.  Fascinating thesis, well-developed argument, and lots of great examples.

Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.  Boy, those New Dealers sure built a lot of stuff–and they meant to, too, says Smith, who says we need to remember that fact when assessing the New Deal, which was, ultimately, a series of programs designed to use public works to encourage economic development; ending unemployment was gravy.  He goes too far with the latter part–we know that many of the New Dealers, like Hopkins and FDR himself, were interested/obsessed with unemployment–but his main point re: New Deal liberalism as Keynesianism state-spending for the purposes of economic development is sound.  Plus: buildings and bridges are neat.

Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War.  The Roosevelt Recession and World War II foreclosed on the imaginative, potentially revolutionary elements of the New Deal, instead creating a particular form of rights-based liberalism, focused on ensuring the rights of the individual, but uninterested in a class-based or economic planning approach.  Seriously, how does Brinkley do this kind of stuff?  Amazing.  He provides an explanation of modern liberalism that seems to flow naturally out of the pressures of the late New Deal and World War II.  Dammit this guy is good.

Faster and Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980.  A post-mortem of New Deal liberalism, these essays mostly focus on how the 1940s spelled the end of it all (it’s Brinkley’s thesis, written 7 years earlier and with less coherency).  My favorite is the essay from Ira Katznelson, who argues that the lost opportunity of the Great Society was actually lost in the 1940s.  It’s like a case study of what Brinkley argues.

Elizabeth Bordgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights.  The ideas of the Atlantic Charter–to individualize human rights and guarantee them for “all the men in all the lands”–came at the right historical moment (when people were ready to think internationally) and found their embodiement in Bretton Woods (IMF and World Bank), the United Nations, and the Nürnberg trials, heralding a brief moment when the United States (for selfish purposes, naturally) sought to be a positive actor on the world stage.  As she states in an afterword, this is a book about ideology, which I usually don’t like, but I’m down with this book.  It’s got an interesting thesis–the Cold War wasn’t inevitable; the US was on the path to internationalism–and although Borgwardt doesn’t explain that thesis fully (what about US actions that brought on the Cold War, like the Marshall Plan, its actions throughout Germany at the end of the war, dropping the A-bomb on Japan?), she effectively demonstrates that there was a powerful strand of enthusiasm for a New Deal-y approach to foreign affairs.

My summary of the New Deal: The emergency of the Great Depression effectively silenced economic conservatives for a few years and opened doors for all sorts of policies that (more or less) permanently enlarged the power of the federal government.  Though policy specifics were set by the New Dealers (Hopkins, Ickes, Wallace, etc.), the general idea came from the interaction between FDR and the masses of people suffering through the Depression.  FDR started off as a conservative economic voice, but he faced voters who wanted–desperately needed–economic help, though most were not willing to take the fatal step to socialism.  The result was far-reaching, but at times tentative, programs.   When the New Deal didn’t immediately stop the Depression, conservatives got back in the game and were able to stop the flood of systemic changes, instead pushing New Dealers toward an intervene-during-emergency-only, individual rights-focused approach, capturing an anti-state tradition that has deep roots in American history.  Nevertheless, the New Deal left a permanent and irreversible mark on the American landscape, electoral system, and body of political ideology.  Something like that.

I hit three books and three articles yesterday:

John Milton Cooper, Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920.  A synthesis history of two decades which, per the title, were “pivotal.”  By which he means “really, really important, because there was radio and cars and women’s suffrage and the NAACP and black migration and a fundamentalist backlash and OH! Roosevelt and Wilson were so cool.”  Cooper has a love affair with the two presidents (he wrote a dual bio of the two).  Not much of an argument, but certainly good on details about the era.  Tedious.

William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity: 1914-1923.  Another synthesis, but way more interesting and better written than Cooper because it–gasp!–has a thesis.  [Sidenote digression: it's stupid to write a book without a thesis, even if that book is a synthesis.  C'mon.  Do your homework and make it interesting, even for the undergraduates who are forced to read your book.]  That thesis, in my awkward paraphrasing: During 1914 to 1932, the United States became an unwilling world leader while at the same time confronting domestic tensions rising from the increasing contact between the urban present and future and the rural past.  Country mouse vs. city mouse, and city mouse wins, though he pisses off country mouse and creates a ramshackle economy.  Which leads us to…

Lester Chandler, America’s Greatest Depression, 1929-1941.  Yet another synthesis–it was one of those days–that’s great on detail and short on argument.  The best I could come up with:  The Great Depression had deep and complex roots, had deep and complex effects, and was addressed by a series of deep and complex federal government responses.  A good book from which to jack some lecture material.

Roy Rosenzweig and Barbara Melosh, “Government and the Arts: Voices from the New Deal Era,” The Journal of American History 77, no. 2 (September 1990): 596-608.  Neat article about oral histories of people who were involved in all those marvelous WPA programs–the Federal Art Project, the Federal Music Project, the Federal Writers’ Project, and the Federal Theatre Project.  Despite what some historians have argued, these projects actually produced good art, according to the people who were involved.  Okay, so that’s expected.  Still, these folks look back on WPA projects with a solid sense of their contribution to society and society’s (through the federal government) contribution to them.  Sigh.  I love WPA art.

Christina D. Romer, “The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 105, no. 3 (August 1990): 597-624.  Holy economic mumbo-jumbo, Batman!  Still, a good thesis and thoroughly demonstrated: the stock market crash of October 1929 freaked people into uncertainty, which kept them from buying durable goods, which really damaged the economy and led to the Great Depression.  Romer’s found a way to prove the connection between the Crash and the Depression, and it’s pretty convincing.  With graphs and stuff.

Christina D. Romer, “What Ended the Great Depression?,” The Journal of Economic History 52, no. 4 (December 1992): 757-784.  Romer’s got an attraction to the Depression, which is a good thing, because she’s got a way of understanding and tackling the big questions.  Here, she argues that an expansion in the money supply–from an influx of gold after FDR’s revaluation and political instability in Europe in 1934–lowered interest rates and increased investment and spending on durable goods.  Not all that sexy, but an interesting contribution that goes beyond “The war stopped the Depression.”

Today’s reading: Brinkley’s The End of Reform and Voices of Protest, Cohen’s Making a New Deal, Skopol’s Protecting Mothers and Soldiers, Smith’s Building New Deal Liberalism, Worster’s The Dust Bowl, and Borgwardt’s A New Deal for the World.  Whee!

Check it: I’m a French-using snob. Anyway, I’ve been plotting out my prelim reading (holy FUCK there’s a lot), and here’s what’s on tap for today:

Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914
Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882
John M. Cooper, Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920
David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
Lester Chandler, America’s Greatest Depression

Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Concise book reviews that would keep me from having to read these things?  Kidding, kidding.