Howard Zinn: Beyond the New Deal

[marmar]

from The Nation:



article | posted March 20, 2008 (April 7, 2008 issue)
Beyond the New Deal
Howard Zinn



We might wonder why no Democratic Party contender for the presidency has invoked the memory of the New Deal and its unprecedented series of laws aimed at helping people in need. The New Deal was tentative, cautious, bold enough to shake the pillars of the system but not to replace them. It created many jobs but left 9 million unemployed. It built public housing but not nearly enough. It helped large commercial farmers but not tenant farmers. Excluded from its programs were the poorest of the poor, especially blacks. As farm laborers, migrants or domestic workers, they didn't qualify for unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security or farm subsidies.

Still, in today's climate of endless war and uncontrolled greed, drawing upon the heritage of the 1930s would be a huge step forward. Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past the limits of FDR's reforms, especially if there were a popular upsurge that demanded it. A candidate who points to the New Deal as a model for innovative legislation would be drawing on the huge reputation Franklin Roosevelt and his policies enjoy in this country, an admiration matched by no President since Lincoln. Imagine the response a Democratic candidate would get from the electorate if he or she spoke as follows:

"Our nation is in crisis, just as it was when Roosevelt took office. At that time, people desperately needed help, they needed jobs, decent housing, protection in old age. They needed to know that the government was for them and not just for the wealthy classes. This is what the American people need today.

"I will do what the New Deal did, to make up for the failure of the market system. It put millions of people to work through the Works Progress Administration, at all kinds of jobs, from building schools, hospitals, playgrounds, to repairing streets and bridges, to writing symphonies and painting murals and putting on plays. We can do that today for workers displaced by closed factories, for professionals downsized by a failed economy, for families needing two or three incomes to survive, for writers and musicians and other artists who struggle for security. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/zinn

[Captain Hilts]

1. Sing it to me baby...

[Selatius]

2. I think such a candidate, if he spoke like that, would be savaged by the corporate press and...

suffer character assassination. I realize FDR is still considered one of the most popular presidents in American history, but I don't believe he would have won office if it weren't for the Great Depression.

If the economy were good or at least functioning, I highly doubt he would've won in 1932, much less get the Democratic nomination. He would be pigeonholed as a far leftist and ignored like Kucinich or a troublemaker like John Edwards.

[wuushew]

5. FDR was the VP pick in 1920.

The Cox/Roosevelt ticket got 127 Electoral votes, which is not the worst defeat in history. In many ways Wilson was an Bush like figure, somehow getting us in to war and clamping down on civil liberties.

I think had Cox won, Roosevelt would have won with the benefit of incumbency.

[Captain Hilts]

6. That's why FDR ran a FAR more conservative campaign in '32. nt

[antigop]

3. And we could have had a candidate who proposed the very thing...

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/08/kucinich_says_h.html

Dennis Kucinich likened himself to both FDR and Seabiscuit -- Franklin D. Roosevelt in proposing a 21st century New Deal and the legendary race horse in claiming that he'll come from way behind and win the Democratic nomination.

In an appearance this morning before the Globe editorial board, the Ohio congressman said as president he would create a new version of the 1930s Works Progress Administration to put Americans to work to fix the nation's crumbling infrastructure and to build a more environmentally friendly energy system.

[marmar]

4. True....but we have a mainstream media who trivialized him.

Noone fears a new New Deal more than corporate interests, Big Media included.

[Selatius]

7. I do agree that the WPA or some equivalent should be resurrected. n/t