FDR, George W. Bush and the Lure of Authoritarianism

It was early 1933.  

FDR was set to take office in March. 

The country was in dire condition (worse than now if you can believe it).  

People were panicked, scared.  A persistent fear akin to the days immediately post 9-11 only on a deeper, more desperate and fundamental level.  

The future of everything was up for grabs.

You must remember the context...

Banks were failing everywhere.  Some hadn't been open for months.  The ones that did open their doors risked being wiped out in a day by depositors withdrawing all their money immediately.

Unemployment was 25%.  Only 50% of the country had a full-time job.  

We were an agrarian society who at this time had no market for our crops.  Europe had crawled out of the wreckage of WWI and was no longer importing our food.  This caused the bottom to drop out of the price of everything you could possibly grow and family farms were being foreclosed on at a breakneck pace.  

Capitalism was perhaps in it's death throes and other options were seriously being considered.

This may sound crazy to the modern ear but in the 1930's Fascism was still fashionable.  

People admired Mussolini because of Italy's high employment rate. 

People admired the Soviet Union because it too had a high employment rate.  

Italy and Russia seemed to be worker's paradises where if a man wanted to labor for his daily bread he was guaranteed to get it.  The same could not be said for America.

Make no mistake - the future of democracy was in doubt.  

FDR knew the stakes.  When told that if he succeeded in rescuing the country he'd be the greatest President in history he remarked that if he failed he would most certainly be it's last.

At this time many newspapers, intelligentsia, cultural elite and just regular ol' American folk wanted, perhaps even yearned and hoped for a dictator.  They desired a strongman to lift us out of the miasma we were in without any bureaucratic dilly-dallying. 

Just do something, anything they were pleading of their leaders.  Yet their leaders remained motionless, as frozen with panic as the people they claimed to represent.   

Everything seemed to be falling apart...

So when Roosevelt was inaugurated that March of '33 he had the public support to take his role as a strongman, as a leader of unlimited authority whom no one dared refuse.  He might have been our Caesar, our end of the Republic if he so desired.  He could have had it all.

But he chose not to go down that road.  He did not work outside the Constitution.  He worked with Congress.   He took his time and broke no laws.

He harkened back to the tradition of George Washington.  An American man offered almost unlimited authority who instead chooses to lay down his sword and work within the existing structures to accomplish what must be accomplished no matter how hard.

So how did FDR's decision to preserve democracy play out?  Did he make the right choice in turning his back to the siren song of unrestrained power?  

I believe you know the answer to that.  

The US government still exists in the same checked and balanced form it did before he took office.  We do not live in a dictatorship and capitalism still creeks along - aging, changed in it's form but viable nonetheless.

We did not go the way of Europe in the 30's, rather Europe has gone the way of us.  There is trade, a healthy interdependence and freedom across most of that continent.

Had FDR made a different choice I wonder what the World would look like now?

Roosevelt's most famous aphorism is without a doubt that great line from his first inaugural address, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Contrast this with George W. Bush who has tried to keep us as scared as possible for eight long years.

Bush used a single (admittedly horrific) act of terror on our soil to declare that we were in a state of permanent war.  

He  used it to win reelection by declaring terror alerts every time Kerry got close in the polls.

He used it as a rationale for spying on Americans without warrants, to destroy political enemies and whistleblowers (Valerie Plame).  

He used it as an excuse to wage an unnecessary war in Iraq that has bankrupted us.

He repeatedly used patriotism as a bludgeon against those who would thwart his authoritarian ambition as America's "decider" in Chief.  

In the carrying forth of this last action I think he accomplished his most egregious (perhaps unintentional) goal -  he has managed to confuse nationalism with patriotism in the minds of many an American.  

Nationalism is not patriotism.  

Ask the the innocents in Nazi Germany who decided not to join Hitler if I'm right about that.  If you can find one who wasn't executed I'm sure they'll back me up.

This is very simple, actually.

To quote Mark Twain, "Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it."

Therefore dissent is not treason or even dangerous.

Rather it is necessary for a healthy republic to survive.  Democracy should be noisome, boisterous and messy.  

If it is not your country is in more trouble than you can imagine.

By drumming up a "support your country at all costs" attitude to a fever pitch Bush ironically brought our nation - this supposed beacon of freedom -  closer to the mindset of the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany than any previous Chief Executive.

Don't mistake me, I'm not comparing Bush to those men.  That is reductive.  He is far less dangerous than them - in the main because our Constitution thankfully requires a peaceful change of power every eight years.

No I'm comparing the role his fear-mongering, power-grabbing actions have played in harming our national psyche to the similar deleterious effects those 20th century leader's actions had on the minds of their respective countrymen. 

So what, finally has all this wrought?  

What has Bush's "strong leader" style of rule brought us?  What has fear and nothing but fear given to this country as a lasting legacy?

Bush now ends his Presidency with our nation in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since 1933.

Have we come full circle or what?

I think to show we have learned a lesson from all of this our new mantra for the 21st century should be, "We have nothing to fear, no matter what your government tries to tell you."

Perhaps this will serve to remind us (and Obama) that this country was once populated by men who were offered great, almost unlimited power and who had the strength of character, the fortitude and the wisdom to turn it down.

How very American that idea seems to me at this moment.