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FDR brought us through two enormous national crises:  the Great Depression and World War II.  Was he indispensable?  The answers are probably and certainly, in that order, for the following reasons:

1.  The Great Depression:  Roosevelt called out Hoover for failing to balance the budget in the 1932 campaign.  He didn’t have any innovative ideas on economic issues.  What he did have was a willingness to try just about anything, because, unlike Hoover, he thought the dangers of inaction to American liberal democracy were greater than the costs of experimenting and failing.

You can break Roosevelt’s actions into three groups.  His welfare state legislation was helpful to his contemporaries and obviously has stood the test of time.  His Keynesian fiscal and monetary actions were only intermittently successful, as he was not completely committed to them.  His corporatist legislation simply didn’t work.  Much of it was struck down by the Supreme Court; the country was better off without it.

Was there anyone around who, realistically, could have done better?  Certainly, there were no Republicans.  I think you have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

2.  World War II:  Roosevelt was a brilliant war president.  He saw the dangers coming and did his best to prepare the country even though the population was predominantly isolationist before Pearl Harbor.  He managed to provide Britain and the USSR with a lifeline through Lend-Lease in spite of, not because of, public opinion.  He picked excellent military leaders and stuck with them.  He succeeded in mobilizing the economy for war to a greater degree than had ever been imagined.  The Allies never fell out over war aims, as could easily have happened, while he was president.  Finally, most of the international institutions that were created to keep the peace after the war were conceived during his administration.

No one else could have done all of this.  FDR passes the indispensability test with flying colors.

Marco Rubio and other GOP figures have been complaining about a double standard with regard to Cuba and North Korea.  Rubio thinks the (obviously left-wing) MSM was uncritical of Obama’s willingness to make nice with Raul, but far too skeptical of Trump’s approach to Kim.

Are they right?  There are clear similarities:  in both cases, the US decided to reach out to Communist dictators after decades of efforts to isolate them had failed to remove them from power.  The difference is that, while the attempts to isolate the Kims had not resulted in regime change, they were, in fact, treated as pariahs by the rest of the world, whereas America’s hard line on Cuba had no support elsewhere.  In other words, it was the US, not the Cubans, who came out of the wilderness by restoring diplomatic relations.

Not to mention, of course, that the charge of hypocrisy can be leveled at the GOP just as well as at the media.

Lincoln owes his reputation to some remarkable displays of humanity and to his oratory, which was as groundbreaking for its day as it was brilliant.  Of all of the figures in American political history, you could count the number of people who even approached his gift with language on your hands.

As a war president, his record was mixed.  On the positive side:

1.  He did a good job of mobilizing the obviously superior resources of the Union;
2.  He managed to keep Britain and France from intervening;
3.  He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, which helped define the Union’s war aims and won the support of abolitionists at home and abroad; and
4.  He succeeded in positioning the Confederacy as the aggressor, which also helped win support from neutrals at the beginning of the war.

On the down side, his grasp of military strategy was limited, and his taste in leaders left a lot to be desired.  In particular, he should have fired McClellan far earlier than he did.

Would, say, a President Seward have won the war?  Given the Union’s considerable material advantages, my guess is yes, but we’ll never know.

You can’t–or, at least, I can’t.  The other Founding Fathers remain influential today largely because of what they said, but Washington is still significant because everything that he did mattered.  While he made plenty of tactical mistakes, most notably in the New York and Philadelphia campaigns, he won enough battles to keep the army together even in the worst of times.  He could easily have used his prestige to turn himself into a dictator and his country into a banana republic, but he didn’t.  He played an important role in the Constitutional Convention.  He hired Hamilton as his Secretary of the Treasury and supported him against his opponents.  He wisely avoided war with Great Britain and France.  He was an important symbol of national unity at a time of intense factional strife.  Finally, he set a precedent by giving up power voluntarily and peacefully after two terms.

Was anyone else available who could have done all of this?  Absolutely not, and his contemporaries (even the Republicans) knew it.  You can, therefore, easily make the case that of all of the Founding Fathers, Washington was the most indispensable.  Our debt of gratitude to him is immeasurable.

 

There have been several articles since Tuesday’s primaries about how the GOP has become the POT (Party of Trump).  And with good reason–it’s true.

The essence of the POT is that it stands for nothing other than the caprices of one man.  What happens when he’s out of the picture, which, regardless of the outcome of elections, will happen sooner or later?  What do you stand for then?

It occurred to me this morning that May and Ryan are essentially in the same position–both are cat herders in the service of severely divided parties who maintain their positions simply because there is no obviously better alternative.

What would it take to reunify the GOP and the Tories?  Defeat at the polls, of course.  The two parties may have trouble identifying what they want, but everyone agrees on what they don’t.

The more I read about the Founding Fathers, the more I’m attracted to Madison, as opposed to the manic Hamilton and the mercurial Jefferson.  With his intellect and even temper, he reminds me of one of our contemporaries–Barack Obama.

His claim to indispensability is based on his role in creating the Constitution.  He was heavily involved in the effort to call the Constitutional Convention.  He played a very significant part at the Convention.  He wrote Federalist No. 10.  He led the effort to ratify the Constitution in Virginia.  Finally, he was the compiler and principal drafter of the Bill of Rights.  No one has a better claim to be the Father of the Constitution–it’s not even close.

Nothing about the writing and approval of the Constitution was in any way inevitable.  And so, America would be a far different place without him.  The country that we know simply wouldn’t exist.

Now we know the answer to the question about a bad deal or no deal–it’s both!

The two leaders signed a document that is in the form of an agreement.  Given that it contains no legally enforceable commitments binding either party, it might as well be no deal at all.  In exchange for Kim’s signature on this vacuous document, Trump agreed to stop our joint military exercises with South Korea.  And, of course, the whole exercise gave Kim more legitimacy and weakened the world’s resolve to maintain sanctions, so, to the extent that there is any kind of a deal, it’s a bad one.

It could obviously be worse–at least there’s no war.  However, it clears the deck for the one Trump really wants with Iran.

What really jumps out at you is Trump’s apparent affection for the young dictator, which stands in stark contrast to his relationships with the G7 leaders.  Maybe my prediction about the S6 won’t be satire, after all.

Jefferson was in France during the Constitutional Convention, which, for the sake of the country and his reputation, was probably a good thing.  His tenure as a wartime governor was, to say the least, far from glorious.  Most of the Declaration of Independence is a laundry list of grievances that is actually fairly banal.  He was unscrupulous in his attacks on a government of which he was a prominent member.  His greatest accomplishment as president, the Louisiana Purchase, violated his principles regarding the interpretation of the Constitution.  The Kentucky Resolutions can be viewed as a precursor to secession.  His embargo was a disaster.  And that doesn’t even include his equivocation on slavery, and the Sally Hemings thing.

As with Hamilton, there are plenty of blots on his record, his undisputed intellectual brilliance notwithstanding.  His claim to indispensability rests on four things:

1.  The second paragraph of the Declaration, which, while anything but “self-evident,” has inspired Americans and people throughout the world since 1776;
2.  His moderation, and willingness to accept most of Hamilton’s financial system, after the 1800 election, without which our political system might be very different today;
3.  His role in fighting the excesses of the Federalists after 1796, which may well serve as a template for the current resistance to Trump; and
4.  His vision of an America run by yeoman farmers, which persists even in the face of a Hamiltonian economic system, and continues to motivate the Palin wing of the GOP today.

Would American history have been dramatically different if, say, Madison had been the leader of the Republican Party between 1796 and 1808?  My guess is no, but it is debatable, and we’ll never know.

One of the most memorable scenes in “A Man For All Seasons” features dialogue between Thomas More and Roper, his future son-in-law.  When Roper says he would cut down all of the laws in England to get at the devil, More asks him where he will hide without them when the devil turns on him.  More concludes that it is better, and safer, to keep the laws in place.

For some reason, I can’t help thinking about this every time Trump and his enablers complain about rules-based systems.

So Trump is now meeting with Kim.

His chance of success is quite slim.

A bad deal or none?

Guessing’s certainly fun.

It means more attention for him.

Saudi Arabia did, in fact, qualify for the World Cup.  Their team stinks, so Trump won’t root for them.  Brazil is still the choice.

With the notable exception of country music, the arts in America belong to Team Blue, and are its not-so-secret weapon.  The Tonys in particular can be viewed as a pep rally for the team.

By any standard, last night’s broadcast of the Tonys was a huge success.  If you weren’t moved by Bruce Springsteen and by the performance of the song from “The Band’s Visit,” you must be either deaf or heartless.

There is a lesson here for both artists and Democratic politicians.  If you have a message that is genuine, human, and crafted to transcend partisan boundaries, you can find an audience on the other side.

Hamilton was a war hero, but his role in the Revolution was hardly decisive.  He accomplished very little at the Constitutional Convention.  The Federalist Papers, while historically important, made little difference during the ratification process.  His “Report on Manufactures” was ahead of its time, and was rejected by Congress.  His interventions into national politics after 1796 were almost uniformly disastrous for his party.   At the time of his death, he was a spent volcano.

And yet, he was an indispensable Founding Father, because:

1.  There would have been no Constitutional Convention without his persistence and energy;
2.  He is primarily responsible for the creation of our financial system, most of which survived the election of Republicans in 1800; and
3.  His vision for a dynamic capitalist America was ultimately realized, and is a huge part of the national DNA.

Would America be anything like the country it is today without him?  Not a chance.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being pushed around by Canadians.  Just because they have a cool flag, and funny comedians, and a great hockey team, they think they have the right to tell the world what to do.  In light of their history, it’s not surprising;  after all, they invaded our country and burned the White House in 1814.

And so, I’m glad our president, as always, stood up for the cause of truth and called out Justin Trudeau for being the lying, bullying bastard that he really is.

Or not.