Another Perspective
FDR and Obama: Their First Hundred Days
Unfortunately, they did have much in common.
On April 29, the U.S. will have survived the first hundred days of President Barack Obama. Of course, unemployment is up and the stock market is down, but the president’s optimism is still unbounded. Mr.Obama’s staff is encouraging writers to find parallels to FDR and his first hundred days as president 75 years ago during the Great Depression. Let’s take the challenge: Here are three points of similarity between the two presidencies.
First, President Obama, like FDR, has used the economic emergency to pass massive spending bills. For example, Obama warned of dire consequences if Congress failed to pass his 1,100 page emergency “stimulus bill” of $787 billion. Congressmen had no time to reflect on the bill, or even read it. They passed a bill that would spend $25,000 per second every second of the year 2009—without serious debate. In doing that, President Obama was taking a page from FDR’s emergency banking bill, which the House passed, sight unseen, after only thirty-eight minutes of debate. As Congressman Robert Luce of Massachusetts responded, “judgment must be waived… argument must be silenced, we should take matters without criticism lest we may do harm by delay.” The atmosphere in the House in 2009 was almost identical.
Second, President Obama, like FDR, has already begun centralizing power in the executive branch. For example, Obama is already trying to move the Census Bureau into the executive department, from the Commerce Department, to control the counting of the U. S. population for the 2010 census — which will help to determine congressional representation and federal funding. In FDR’s first hundred days, he moved to control the currency — the banking bill gave him control over the movement of gold, and the Thomas Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act allowed the president to issue greenbacks or tinker with gold and silver, as he saw fit, to promote inflation.
Third, President Obama is following FDR by vilifying businessmen. On TV, we see Mr. Obama pointing his finger at bankers, cajoling executives at credit card companies, and regularly denouncing “Wall Street greed.” In doing so, Obama has followed FDR’s script. In his first day in office, Roosevelt set the tone for his relentless attacks on businessmen: “rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence.… The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.”
What is disturbing about these parallels to FDR’s first hundred days is to contemplate the next 2,500 days of that bygone era. Where did the cries of emergency, the centralization of power, and the vilification of business take the nation? The answer is class warfare, a deeply divided country, and 18 percent unemployment. The Great Depression of the 1930s lingered — and lingered, and lingered. It could do nothing else. Massive federal spending merely transferred money from the wallets of average Americans to the hands of federal bureaucrats. As taxes rose to a top marginal rate of 79 percent under FDR (Obama has already promised to raise the current marginal rate on top incomes), entrepreneurs had no incentive to take what capital they had left and start new businesses, or expand existing ones. Uncle Sam wanted almost four out of five of their last earned dollars for taxes. Class warfare, and the redistribution of income, had knocked the creativity out of a generation of entrepreneurs — some of whom in the 1920s had either invented or expanded the production of radios, talking movies, air-conditioners, zippers, scotch tape, and even sliced bread.
In running for re-election in 1936, FDR said, “They [businessmen] are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.” He had found, as his speechwriter Ray Moley pointed out, that “every time they [businessmen] made an attack on him… he gained votes and that the result of carrying on his sort of warfare was to bring the people to his support.” In other words, FDR had discovered a striking paradox: Attacking businessmen, and raising their taxes, prevented the Great Depression from ending, but it won votes from Americans who came to believe that businessmen were their enemies and FDR was their “fireside chat” friend.
As in the case of FDR, President Obama will soon approach a fork in the road — does he cut tax rates on income and capital gains, and give incentives to entrepreneurs to invest, or does he continue to vilify businessmen and risk another Great Depression?
About the Author
Burton Folsom, Jr. is professor of history at Hillsdale College and author of New Deal or Raw Deal? (Simon & Schuster, 2008). His latest book, co-authored with Anita Folsom, is FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America (Simon & Schuster, 2011).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (33) | Leave a comment
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Dustoff| 4.29.09 @ 9:52AM
Well, at lease FDR didn't fly AF-1 over NY to scare the heck out of everyone.
Man was that a stupid stunt! On day 99 to beat all.
Pingback| 4.29.09 @ 11:09AM
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JJ JR| 4.29.09 @ 11:16AM
Y'all and to the author,
Nice article; one correction to wit:
"For example, Obama is already trying to move the Census Bureau into the executive department, from the Commerce Department, to control the counting of the U. S. population for the 2010 census -- which will help to determine congressional representation and federal funding. "
All cabinet agencies are part of the "executive branch" (not "department")--believe you meant that the Census was being move out of Commerce (and the executive branch) and into the Executive Office of the President.
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dagny taggart | 4.30.09 @ 10:43AM
FDR could provide a fightening template for the Obama adminstration.
FDR forced busniesses to form cartels and prescribe detailed specifications for products. Look at Obama's takeover at GM and Chrylser. He will probably force them to produce unpopular green cars.
FDR used the IRS to go after the publisher of the Phiadelphia Inquirer (an oppostion newspaper). Obama would probably like to promote some version of the fairness doctrine such as localism.
FDR famously paid farmers not to plant crops under the AAA to support prices. Obama wants to continue ethanol programs even while they serve no useful purpose.
Like FDR, I think that Obama will ultimately raise taxes with result being sustained unemployment and further economic contraction.
Let's hope that Obama does not do the most shameful and oppressive act of the FDR adminstration: the forced internment of Japanese Americans during WWII without charges.
Claire Solt| 4.30.09 @ 11:15AM
My mother cussed FDR her whole life. I remember the scarcities rationing produced. No thanks!
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barbara| 6.21.09 @ 11:02AM
Just read your book on the New Deal. Despite having been educated in American history by Morris and Commager am an ardent believer in states rights, individual liberty and weak central gov't. Loved your book. Learned much more about specific effects of the New Deal than I did as an undergrad or graduate student. If we could survive FDR I am more hopeful that we will survive ----orama.
Jeff| 6.23.09 @ 3:47PM
As a confirmed radical libertarian (guns and free abortions for everyone) I love your inane comments. Well there are still FDR haters out there even tho my grandparents and parents worshipped him. And as a clue toward truthfulness and full exposure you might have noted that Congressman Robert Luce was a confirmed REPUBLICAN and although he lost in 1934 he was reelected twice more. I checked on this because your stupid comments distort history and step away from reality. If the standard comment is that it took WW II to end the depression all that means it took that much government spending to end it. And I grew up on MORISON and Commager also and know it is very bad history - but then all history is filtered though the views of the time. What is not filtered are facts and that you fail to mention that Luce as a Republican I regard as deliberate distortion and very close to Goebbels big lie. Thanks for your time and trouble - and if you are so capitalistically inclined how come you solicit donations? Can't your mag make it on it's own?
Robert Rubin| 7.19.09 @ 11:32AM
First of all, the government spending under the New Deal saved us from an even greater calamity. Second, Wall Street speculators and irresponsible bankers (together with a do-nothing Republican administration) caused the horrific problems, so why should FDR have not attacked them? Fourth, you example of FDR and Obama's attempts to expand the power of the presidency pale beside the "Imperial Presidency" inaugurated by Nixon, continued by Reagan, and brought to a new level of Constitutional crisis by GW Bush.
You frankly don't know what you are talking about.
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Kiime| 4.24.10 @ 11:44AM
Noni-hedelmämehu sai EU:n hyväksynnän elintarvikkeena ja koska markkinointia korjattiin, sai tuotetta jälleen myydä Suomessa. EU:n elintarvikealan tiedekomitea mainitsee lausunnossaan, että sille toimitetuista tiedoista ja käytettävissä olleesta aineistosta ei käy ilmi mitään näyttöä siitä, että ”noni-mehusta” olisi muihin hedelmämehuihin verrattuna erityistä hyötyä terveyden kannalta. Elintarvikeviraston päätöksen mukaan Nonin markkinoinnissa ei saa väittää, että tuotteella olisi sairautta ehkäiseviä, hoitavia tai parantavia vaikutuksia.
jpjoshprice31| 10.1.09 @ 8:43AM
The only problem with the "Change" and “The New Deal” being alike is that the American people of today differ from the American people of FDR's time. Today people spend more liberally, and they are likely to selfishly take advantage of government funds. It is happening now in colleges where people are given Pell grants, and then soon drop out after they get a check for school expense, (ex: books, fuel costs, or supplies), Let’s just hope that Obama can tune in to problems like that.
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