If you want to make sense of the Presidential Election, then you should definitely pick up Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit.
The Progressive Movement has been much discussed by pundits and intellectuals in the last decade. Much discussed.
Suddenly the word “progressive” became chic in some circles. It became anathema in other circles
This was one of the interesting phenomena generated by the Obama Presidency. I have no idea who started the wave of articles about how the Obama Administration was in the Teddy Roosevelt/Woodrow Wilson vein, but there has been a ton of articles about that in the last decade.
The Roosevelt/Wilson line is the first interesting thing to note: do you notice who is missing in there?
Also, why are TR and Wilson lumped together? According to the recent literature, they were the starting place for Big Government, a government which moved beyond the bounds which it had known before.
Yet, are Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson actually the same? Not really, and therein lies the tale.
Was the Progressive Movement all bad? I am risking losing my Conservative credentials by saying this, but I’ll say it anyway: The Progressive movement had costs and benefits. (Gosh that makes me sound like an economist.)
[It is well worth noting that if you are ever talking with someone who claims the Progressive Movement was all good, just slowly back away. The eugenics arguments much beloved by the Progressives are downright chilling.]
At its inception, the Progressive Movement was attacking many things which one would think Conservatives would also attack.
Take Upton Sinclair (please!). He was a socialist hack and The Jungle is a really lousy novel with overwrought conclusions and way too many maudlin tales of woe. But, I sure wouldn’t want to eat the meat coming from the meat packing plants described (accurately, it turns out) in that novel. Nobody would want to eat that meat. Getting some sanitary standards in the food industry is a good thing.
Before the 20th century, it wasn’t necessary. You would get your meat locally. You knew the butcher and if he was a disgusting slob, he would be out of business. (Or, hard as it is for some people to believe, you just killed the cow yourself.)
But, with the coming of the railroads, suddenly meat is being packed on a mass scale, shipped long distances, and you no longer know your butcher.
So, it would be a public good if someone (read: the government) was making sure that when I walk into a grocery store and buy hamburger, it is cow flesh and not tainted rat flesh. Yes, I have heard the argument that we could do away with that now because a private firm could provide a seal of approval. But, in the early 20th century? Who would have monitored the seals of approval?
Similarly, take Standard Oil. Monopolies are bad. That’s Economics 101. Rockefeller was building a monopoly. It’s hard to blame him for that; it is good to be a monopolist. But, who can stop a monopoly from forming? Again, it’s good if the government does such things. It improves economic efficiency.
I’m not sure why it is so hard for conservatives to explicitly acknowledge that the origins of the Progressive Movement are founded in correcting some very bad trends in the American economy which was undergoing a massive economic transformation.
(And, also, in the American political system. Does anyone want to bring back the days of the Political Bosses? Or remove Women’s Right to Vote?)
But, then, after taking care of the blatant problems, the Progressive Movement does go on and on and on and on. It is that later development, the move from legislation on which we would all agree to an ever-increasing bureaucracy, which is the problem.
So, who caused the transformation of the Progressive Movement from something we can all embrace to something which divides us? Why our dear friend Teddy Roosevelt!
At the start of his career, Roosevelt is the type of Progressive a modern conservative could embrace. He, and not incidentally his good friend William Howard Taft, are full of all sorts of ideas which would make this country a better place.
But, then a funny thing happens. Taft becomes President, and keeps right along with that nice set of really desirable polices.
Roosevelt, who needs to be center stage—he really, desperately needs to be center stage—has to come up with things that are even more radical than before. He has to become ever more Progressive in order to get the attention he craves. And the Progressive movement gets more radical.
Making the connection to the 2020 Democratic Primary is left as an exercise for the Reader.
It’s a fascinating tale when you step back and look at it. The motto: Beware of people who demand to be constantly in the limelight.
Making the connection to the 2020 Republican Primary is left as an exercise for the Reader.
By the way, William Howard Taft’s mother went to Mount Holyoke. So, I guess that makes the solution to our political woes obvious…
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