Obama as Hoover vs. FDR

I think the more apt description is Bush as Hoover and Obama as FDR. Of course, if you think Bush and Obama were pikers with respect to activism, then you'll see them as Coolidge and Hoover.

In the most recent issue of Harpers, Kevin Baker tries to make the case for the latter, arguing that Obama is being too cautious. (The cover art follows the cover piece, with an interesting morph from Obama's hope poster to Obama as Hoover.) Whether you agree with him or not, it's interesting to recognize and register his prophetic discontent.

Beyond that, the parallels in background and worldview between Obama and Hoover are quite interesting. At the least, it makes quite clear that Hoover had a dramatic bent toward government activism, despite the common view that he was laissez-faire.

Three months into his presidency, Barack Obama has proven to be every bit as charismatic and intelligent as his most ardent supporters could have hoped. At home or abroad, he invariably appears to be the only adult in the room, the first American president in at least forty years to convey any gravitas. Even the most liberal of voters are finding it hard to believe they managed to elect this man to be their president.

It is impossible not to wish desperately for his success as he tries to grapple with all that confronts him: a worldwide depression, catastrophic climate change, an unjust and inadequate health-care system, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ongoing disgrace of Guant·namo, a floundering education system.

Obama’s failure would be unthinkable. And yet the best indications now are that he will fail, because he will be unable—indeed he will refuse—to seize the radical moment at hand.

Every instinct the president has honed, every voice he hears in Washington, every inclination of our political culture urges incrementalism, urges deliberation, if any significant change is to be brought about. The trouble is that we are at one of those rare moments in history when the radical becomes pragmatic, when deliberation and compromise foster disaster. The question is not what can be done but what must be done....

Probably the moment most comparable to the present was the start of the Great Depression, and for the scope and the quantity of the problems he is facing, Obama has frequently been compared with Franklin Roosevelt. So far, though, he most resembles the other president who had to confront that crisis, Herbert Hoover.

From there, Baker gives us a provocative biography of Hoover:

The comparison is not meant to be flippant....Herbert Hoover was widely considered the most capable public figure in the country....

The story of the real Herbert Hoover reads like something out of an Indiana Jones script, with touches of Dickens and the memoirs of Albert Schweitzer....

Removed from public school at fourteen to work as his uncle’s office boy, Hoover nonetheless learned enough at night school to make the very first class at the newly opened Stanford University, where he studied geology and engineering....After graduation, he ran mining camps and scouted new strikes around the globe. It was an adventurous life; on one occasion he made a small fortune by following an ancient Chinese map and tiger tracks into a moribund silver mine in Burma. By the time he was forty, Hoover was worth $85 million in today’s dollars, and he retired from business to take up public life....

Baker then notes that Hoover had "long lived up to his ideals", citing his work on behalf of Chinese Christians, those starving in occupied Europe during WW I (despite the dangers), and those in Europe and the Soviet Union after the war.

Baker concludes with this amazing nugget: "it’s unlikely that any other individual in human history saved so many people from death by starvation and want".

As president, Baker says this about Hoover:

Mere politicians were supposed to leave the outcome to the workings of the market. But Hoover—much like Obama—plunged right in...a new partnership between the public and private sectors....urged them to cut as few jobs as possible...encouraged public and private construction projects, signed bills recognizing the right of unions to organize...

Hoover, as the historian David M. Kennedy writes, had shown “himself capable of the most pragmatic, far-reaching, economic heterodoxy,” a trait that “would in the end carry him and the country into uncharted economic and political territory.” New Dealer Rexford Tugwell would, many years later, claim that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.” Indeed, “Hoover had wanted—and had said clearly enough that he wanted—nearly all the changes now brought under the New Deal label.”

Tugwell’s appraisal, though considerably exaggerated, nonetheless testifies to the boldness of Hoover’s program. The only problem was that it did not work....

This is the oddest piece of Baker's piece. In encouraging Obama to be more bold, he has an unsubstantiated faith that Obama would be more successful than Hoover's antics. One thing that stokes Baker's faith is a belief that this time, it could be better. For Hoover, though...

Hoover reacted by increasing interest rates and raising taxes, in an effort to further deflate the economy, balance the federal budget, and thereby lure the gold back. This was the textbook economic response of the time to fleeing gold reserves; in the midst of the Great Depression, it was a disaster.

Meanwhile, the RFC was derided by populist critics as “bank relief” and “a millionaire’s dole”—criticisms echoed today by all those who see George W. Bush’s Troubled Asset Relief Program and Obama’s own Public-Private Investment Program as outrageous giveaways....

Exacerbating the entire situation was the RFC itself. Hoover’s leading weapon to combat the Depression performed with TARP-like languor, secrecy, and nepotism....The RFC’s deliberations were understood—with good reason—not as effective management but as insider dealing...What’s more, even the loans that were made proved less than effective....

After his opening odd sentence below, here is Baker's thesis about Hoover-- and thus, Obama:

Why was Herbert Hoover so reluctant to make the radical changes that were so clearly needed? It could not have been a question of competence or compassion...Ultimately, Hoover could not break with the prevailing beliefs of his day. The essence of the Progressive Era in which he had come of age—the very essence of his own public image—was that government was a science....

Since the 1890s, Hoover and his contemporaries had promoted this brand of progressivism as an alternative not only to the political and corporate corruption of the Gilded Age but also to the furious class and regional warfare that progressivism’s predecessor, populism, seemed to promise. Progressivism aspired to be something of a political science itself, untrammeled by ideological or partisan influence: there was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and all unselfish and uncorrupted individuals could be counted on to do the right thing, once they were shown what that was....

Farsighted as he was compared with almost everyone else in public life, believing as much as he did in activist government, he still could not convince himself to take the next step and accept that the basic economic tenets he had believed in all his life were discredited; that something wholly new was required....

FDR was by no means the rigorous thinker that Hoover was, and many observers then and since have accused him of having no fixed principles whatsoever. And yet it was Roosevelt, the Great Improviser, who was able to patch and borrow and fudge his way to solutions not only to the Depression but also to sustained prosperity and democracy....The programs of the First and Second New Deals were a hodgepodge of ideologies—which is precisely why they worked.

Uhh, Kevin, they didn't work-- except perhaps politically and in most of the history books (for now)!

Originally, Roosevelt, too, endorsed much of the progressive vision—or at least its pale 1920s imitation—as evidenced by his National Recovery Administration, a flabby utopian plan that would have had business, labor, and government collaborate to set prices, wages, and industry standards down to the most minute details....When the NRA quickly proved to be a bust, FDR discarded it, and replaced his failure with the Second New Deal...

Then, Baker returns to the present with a strong and reasonable critique of our contemporary Congress. Baker is excellent in acknowledging their fecklessness, but misses that politics has little else to offer. Even representatives with courage can only embrace a fallen god or move in a truly radical direction-- toward freedom.

The most appalling aspect of the present crisis has been the utter fecklessness of the American elite in failing to confront it....across the entire political spectrum, the lack of both will and new ideas has been stunning....More frustrating has been the torpor among Obama’s fellow Democrats....we have seen a parade of aged satraps from vast, windy places stepping forward to tell us what is off the table....Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—yet another small gray man from a great big space where the tumbleweeds blow—seems unwilling to make even a symbolic effort at party discipline....

Baker blasts Senator Even Bayh as "perpetually callow" before returning to praise President Obama-- a mixed bag of things that he has and has not done (which ought to disappoint Baker and inform his view of Obama). Baker's final line:

It is not too late for him to change direction and seize the radical moment at hand. But for the moment, just like another very good man, Barack Obama is moving prudently, carefully, reasonably toward disaster.