Obama and Roosevelt, Continued

The overriding challenges confronting Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and Barack Obama this year are similar in that both concerned the economy. The major difference is one of degree. As serious as the financial and economic problems today are, those faced by FDR in 1933 were incomparably worse.

By the time Roosevelt took office the Great Depression had been underway for nearly three and a half years. Over that time the Gross National Product of the American economy had been cut nearly in half, falling from $104 billion in 1929 to $56 billion in 1933. Five thousand bank failures had erased nine million bank accounts. Unemployment stood at 25%. Underemployment, including both the unemployed and those with meager or part-time employment insufficient to maintain their financial obligations, may have reached 50%. No one knows for sure. The price of industrial stocks had plummeted by 80%. People were so desperate that when the Soviet trade office in New York announced a need for 6,000 skilled workers to go to Communist Russia, 100,000 Americans applied.

In agriculture, farm income had fallen from $12 billion in 1929 to $5 billion in 1932. Wheat sold for twenty-three cents a bushel. Overall, farm prices had dropped 50%, far below the cost of production. In response, farmers plowed corn under, poured milk into the ground and allowed cotton to rot in the fields. The governors of several states shut down their school systems, there being no money to pay for them. Other states mobilized their national guards to control fighting over farm foreclosures. Health researchers estimated 90% of the citizens of Kentucky and West Virginia suffered from malnutrition.

Today’s figures are of a far different magnitude. The recession has lasted 13 months to date. GDP appears to have fallen 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2007 and will perhaps come in at a four to five percent loss for the fourth quarter of 2008. Twenty-five American banks failed in 2008, the biggest of which, Washington Mutual, was taken over by JP Morgan Chase. The stock market index has fallen 40% since its peak at over 14,000 in October of 2007. Unemployment is currently at 7.2%, with fears it may reach 10. If you add in the underemployed as reported this week, that figure could be as high as 13%. States and municipalities are strapped; in California Governor Schwarzenegger is contemplating cutting school funding by 4%, cutting the school year by a week and furloughing state employees two days a month. In a current sore spot for the ag sector, milk prices are once again below the cost of production. The bottom line is that if the 2009 Inaugural will be held in difficult times, 1933 took place during unmitigated catastrophe.

Looking at the campaigns that brought them to office, there were several similarities. Roosevelt pledged serious change, what he called “a new deal for the American people.” He ran against the record of the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, whom he blamed for the state of the nation’s ills. Obama also hammered home the change message, in the form of “change we can believe in” and later, “the change we need.” Although the incumbent, George W. Bush was not running, Obama attempted to tie his opponent John McCain as closely to Bush as possible so that he too would have an advantage as though he were running against an unpopular incumbent.

Both Roosevelt and Obama were accused of dangerous radicalism by their opponents. Hoover called the Democrats “the party of the mob” and likened FDR’s ideas to those of Soviet Communism. McCain similarly attempted to paint Obama as out of the mainstream, calling him a “socialist” and accusing him of questionable associations. Neither charge appeared to resonate with the voters as both FDR and Obama were elected by comfortable margins.

Though both won solid election victories, Roosevelt surveyed the crowd at his inaugural secure in the knowledge that his election was an immense landslide and Congress stood ready to approve more or less anything he proposed. Of the two, Roosevelt’s victory was much the more decisive. Because conditions were so much worse in 1933, a larger majority were eager to make a change. Roosevelt captured 57.4% of the popular vote to Hoover’s 39.7%. FDR won 42 of the 48 states and captured the electoral vote 472-59. His party controlled the House of Representatives by almost three to one, 310-117, and the Senate 60 to 36.

When Obama turns from taking the oath to begin his Inaugural Address, he may face a sea of as many as 1,500,000 faces. But he will probably not have quite Roosevelt’s political muscle. Obama won a substantial victory, though not an overwhelming one. He took 52.9% of the popular vote to McCain’s 45.7% and won the electoral vote 365 to 173. His party will enjoy a margin of 258-177 in the House and probably 59-41 in the Senate.

The country had to wait longer for the Roosevelt inauguration, too. According to the original Constitutional wording it took place on March 4, seventeen weeks after the election. The Twentieth Amendment, passed in 1932, has meant that in every election since Roosevelt’s in 1933 the inaugural is held on January 20th, a full six weeks earlier.

And Obama has had a more cooperative relationship with the man he is succeeding than Roosevelt did. Hoover beseeched FDR to make public statements supporting his policies in order to bolster confidence in the economy. Roosevelt pointedly refused, both because he strongly disagreed with Hoover’s laissez-faire approach to combating the Depression and also because he wanted to make no commitments until he had the authority to act. Their ride together to the Capitol steps took place in icy silence.

In contrast, once the slings and arrows of the 2008 campaign were over, President Bush and President-elect Obama have been most gracious to each other. Bush has invited Obama to the White House twice and has seemingly sought to coordinate some of his anti-recession actions, such as the auto bailout and in moving to make more of the recovery funds available when Obama takes office. For his part, though Obama is deferring to President Bush on foreign matters he has been making frequent statements on economic affairs, almost as though he is already president. This is very different from Roosevelt’s pre-inaugural practice.

Of course, no comparison of the two inaugurals would be complete without mention of the groundbreaking nature of the two men themselves. Roosevelt broke precedent as the first disabled president. Afflicted with polio as a young man, FDR was usually confined to a wheel chair and could only stand with the aid of leg braces or walk laboriously supported by the arm of a strong man. At his public appearances this was often one of his sons. His 146-foot walk to the dais at his Inauguration earned the respect of many. Radio broadcaster Ed Hill remarked, “If this man had the courage to lift himself by sheer willpower from the bed of invalidism…then he must have within him the qualities to lead the nation to recovery.”

For his part, Obama’s election as the nation’s first president of African-American descent will be remembered as a great historic watershed as long as the nation’s history is told. His inauguration is a powerful signal of the nation’s progress toward its founding dream of universal human equality. And just as Roosevelt marshaled America’s hope and will by memorably declaring, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” so will Obama seek to unite his fellow citizens in the shared vision of the possible and the best we can become. A presidential inauguration has traditionally been a time when Americans of all parties come together in wishing the new president well, when optimism and hope reign supreme. As such, it remains one our most important and unifying civic rituals, as essential to the fabric of our democracy in 2009 as it was in 1933.