Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Tammy Duckworth, 45.

On to the good stuff:

1. David Frum doesn't like Woodrow Wilson and explains why you shouldn't, either.

2. New Buzzfeed WH reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro seems to be starting out with a healthy realistic view of the job. I wrote about this a while ago, by the way.

3. Andrew Sprung on the GOP, electioneering effects, and more.

4. Health care real estate, from Sarah Kliff.

5. And via Sarah Binder, Richard Arenberg's filibuster defense.

Conquest of the Planet of the Bride of the Son of the Return of Cranky Blogging

Oh, where to start.

Yes, Democrats during Woodrow Wilson's first term passed a whole lot of legislation, and Wilson acted as a legislative leader. A. Scott Berg got that much right in his NYT piece yesterday asking Barack Obama to be more like Wilson.

But that's about it.

Look, the very first thing to ask about a president's success with Congress is the partisan context. Woodrow Wilson enjoyed solid Democratic majorities in Congress during his first term -- not just two years, but the whole term. Republicans took back a very slim House majority in 1917, with Democrats retaining the Senate until the 1918 elections. Not only that, but 1913 brought the first unified Democratic government since 1893-1894, and outside of that there hadn't been unified Democratic control since James Buchanan was president. So it's also not all that surprising that Democrats were ready to work together to pass a large agenda.

That's not to say that Wilson did a bad job; it's just that advising Barack Obama to act as if he was Woodrow Wilson in 1913 is nonsense.

Besides: Obama is acting like Wilson, anyway. He can't help it; acting like Wilson is now built in to the presidency. Wilson gave his State of the Union address in person; so does Obama! Wilson had a legislative program; so does Obama! Wilson barnstormed to popular pressure on Congress in favor of his programs; probably a waste of time, possibly counterproductive, but so does Obama!

More to the point: Berg makes much of Wilson's use of the President's Room in the Senate; Wilson personally, Berg tells us, set up shop there in order to direct the legislative process. But Wilson pretty much needed to do that if he wanted to be involved in the intricate details of legislation. Sure, Wilson, unlike some of his predecessors, at least had the telephone. But he had no Congressional liaison staff; in fact, Wilson basically had no staff at all. Barack Obama doesn't need to hang out on the Hill in order to know what's happening there or to make his input heard, because he has a full staff of people to do that for him.

Of course, some things do need direct presidential involvement. But that only gets us back to the partisan context. It's no use pretending that anything Wilson faced was anything like today's House Republican majority. Indeed, it seems from recent reporting that John Boehner's job may depend on his refusal to engage with any negotiations with the White House. That doesn't mean that Obama has no good options, or that he has no responsibility to keep trying, but it does mean that it's misleading fantasy to suggest that all he needs to do "sidestep" gridlock is to emulate Wilson's supposed belief that "sustained dialogue is the best means of finding common ground."

Oh, did I mention the final paragraph?

Today, President Obama and Congress agree that the national debt poses lethal threats to future generations, and so they should declare war on that enemy and adjourn politics, at least until it has been subdued. The two sides should convene in the President’s Room, at the table beneath the frescoes named “Legislation” and “Executive Authority,” each prepared to leave something on it. And then they should return the next day, and maybe the day after that. Perhaps the senior senator from Kentucky could offer a bottle of his state’s smoothest bourbon, and the president could provide the branch water. All sides should remember Wilson and the single factor that determines the country’s glorious successes or crushing failures: cooperation.

What nonsense. The idea that Obama and House Republicans fundamentally agree on anything about the budget is pure fantasy; the idea that declaring "war" on long-term budget deficits could "adjourn politics" the way that World War I did would be just as insane, except that politics wasn't really "adjourned during World War I, either.

Moreover, while certainly Wilsonian, the idea that we should all just put politics aside and do what's obviously best is exactly what's wrong with Wilsonian politics. It's fundamentally anti-democratic. If we can't consider the federal budget (or, you know, war-and-peace) a political issue, then what's the point of having democracy?

It's enough to make me really, really cranky.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Bernie Worrell, 68.

The good stuff:

1. Adam Serwer on Woodrow Wilson, Communist.

2. Sarah Kliff on an important health care fight on the Hill that you probably don't know about.

3. Andrew Sprung hits Barney Frank over ACA.

4. David S. Bernstein makes the case that the Seamus story is more than a punch line; it could really push some swing voters the other way because people really care about dogs. I'm not convinced, but then again he has a dog and I certainly don't...anyway, check out his argument.

5. Mythbusting! Lynn Vavreck finds that people taking surveys about common knowledge don't cheat, even when they can.

Presidents for the Fourth Wilson/Harding

I mistakenly omitted mentioning in the previous post that I think Woodrow Wilson is overrated, but I'm glad, because while I was figuring out whether to do a whole item or just update the previous post, I saw what Matt Yglesias argued on the subject:

I think the other president primed for a historiographical re-evaluation is the little remembered Warren Harding. Arthur Schlesinger and the project of post-WWII Cold War liberalism casts a long shadow over popular understanding of a lot of American history, and that project almost requires an underrating of Harding and an overrating of his predecessor Woodrow Wilson. But the Harding administration is an example of the historically rare phenomenon of the civil liberties ratchet shifting in the direction of more freedom. Harding also began the process of raising the status of African-Americans from the low point we reached under Wilson—promoting, for example, an anti-lynching bill that passed the House of Representatives only to be filibustered to death in the Senate.  

Interesting!  I fully agree with him on Wilson, as long-time readers may recall.  And I agree on the historiography: Wilson was boosted by New Deal and then Cold War Democrats, who wanted to ground American foreign policy in a story about the total and complete failure of isolationism.  New Deal-era historians, too, were hardly eager to emphasize either civil liberties or race, since neither was particularly an FDR strength (although he wasn't nearly as awful as Wilson on either count).  Moreover, Wilson's mobilization looks better if you're seeking a patriotic precedent for FDR's National Recovery Administration.  One can overstate the extent to which the Blue Eagle version of the New Deal was fascistic, but it's not wrong, in my view, to say that it shared some family resemblance to Mussolini, even if it's more third cousin once removed than it is sibling -- and so if you're a historian trying to Americanize it, playing up Wilson makes a lot of sense.  Of course, on the biggest issue, New Deal and Cold War historians were eager to see American entry into World War I as an easy call, thinking through FDR's difficulty in moving the nation to war in 1939-1941.  However, the facts of 1914-1917 aren't even remotely similar, and in fact I've never really heard a convincing argument for why anyone should think of Wilson's path to war as a success. 

Now, as for Harding...I think I more or less agree.  Harding sat dead last in the first three Siena surveys, and third-to-last in 2002 and the brand new edition.  As far as I know, Harding was pretty much of a dud as a president, but bottom five does seem like overkill to me.  I'm confident that the Buchanan, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson richly deserve their spots in the bottom five.  Beyond that, I think that I'd prefer to fill the bottom spots with more active and consequential malfeasance than what Harding did.  I'm fairly confident that Harding was safely below average, but beyond that, I don't really know.  But I'm open to argument, here; if anyone has anything to recommend on Harding, I'd be interested in adding it to my reading list. In exchange, I'll recommend Al Stewart's solid track, "Warren Harding", which may not be as good as TMBG's better-known "James K. Polk," but I do think Stewart gets into the head of what it must sometimes feel like to be president: "I just want someone to talk to. To talk to. To talk to."

Progressives and Health Care Reform

Conservatives seem a bit obsessed with Woodrow Wilson hatred these days, I guess following Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Beck.  As Will over at League of Ordinary Gentleman points out, many of those conservatives tend to be quite selective in their Wilson hatred -- Patriot Act loving conservatives don't seem to be too worried about Wilson's terrible record on civil liberties (although I think that as awful as Wilson may have been on civil liberties, his even more awful racism was probably his real nadir). 

As an avowed Wilson hater myself, I've been trying to avoid the Beck and/or Goldberg versions of Wilson hating, because I've assumed they are just excuses for whatever policy or partisan preferences they have.  For example, one of Wilson's legacies was an aggressive anti-communism investigated by a national police force.  I assume (and, again, I don't know for sure, since I haven't read his book) that Jonah Goldberg is an anti-communist who supported that legacy.

But I do think it's correct that there's a anti-democratic strain in Wilson's thinking, and I think it's more or less fairly described in this George Will column.  Wilsonian progressive politics are complicated (not least by his flip-flop from strong support of Congress to strong support of the presidency that just happened to coincide with, oh, his candidacy for the presidency).  I think it's fair to say, however, that the two most important strains are support of "scientific" administration of government, along with hostility to particular (or "special") interests.  Combine those, and it really isn't nuts to see the seeds of a presidential dictatorship supported by expert administrators.  The movie you're going to want to watch if you are interested in taking this attitude to the extreme is Gabriel Over the White House; I don't think it's much of a stretch to call it proto-fascist, and I'm fine with calling it Wilsonian.

At more restrained levels, yes, Wilsonian progressive ideas are certainly still with us.  It is seriously wrong, however, to identify them with liberals, or for that matter with conservatives, today.  Wilson's idea of democracy was, well, let's call it Wilsonian progressive democracy.  And while some of his public policy positions he took would map better onto 21st century liberalism, others sort better with 21st century conservative thought, and still others -- such as, again, his aggressive racism -- are presumably rejected by both. 

All of which leads up to this George Will column, which accuses Barack Obama of favoring Wilsonian democracy to the Madisonian variety (and don't forget to check out Jonathan Chait's take-down).  The evidence?  To Katie Couric, Obama said:

I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically approved approach to health care, and didn't have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it, and just go ahead and have that passed. But that's not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people.

Well, on the one hand, Will is correct that he did say "unfortunately."

On the other hand...

1. This is in the context of Couric pressing Obama on the Ben Nelson deal and other "backroom" deals.  Obama was, in fact, reluctant to defend those deals...but the criticisms of those deals -- on the basis that they were done out of sight and that they benefited particular groups at the expense of the national interest -- are very much Wilsonian criticisms.  In other words, everyone is buying into Wilsonian progressive assumptions here, but the leaders of the Wilsonian progressive posse are those who singled out backroom deals for criticism.  Which would be, I believe, the Rush Limbaughs and, well, the Glenn Becks of this world. 

2. It may, indeed, be true that Obama in some sense really would like a world in which experts in the bureaucracy develop policy and then presidents implement it, perhaps after a quick ratification by Congress.  But Obama hasn't come close to behaving that way.  Instead, he started out by cutting deals with special interests, and then took a more-or-less hands off approach to Congress.  Indeed, far from being overly Wilsonian, Obama has taken considerable heat for failing to present Congress with an expert-designed final product; there are no Ira Magaziners in this iteration of the battle over health care reform, but a lot of Henry Waxmans and Max Baucuses. 

3. And in fact the entire charge of Chicago-style politics runs directly counter to the charge that Obama is a Wilsonian progressive.  Wilson hated political parties (except when they agreed with him, but he still didn't like them much).  He hated urban machine politics.  Nor is community organizing a Wilsonian kind of thing to dedicate yourself too; there's no real place in Wilsonian progressive democracy for popular participation.


In his heart of hearts, I think George Will knows that -- I think Will is a real conservative, and a real Madisonian (two different things that can, but don't have to, go together).

But Glenn Beck?  Doesn't like special interests, worried about Chicago-style politics...I don't have the patience to read his book(s), but I think there's a pretty good chance that Glenn Beck is a serious Wilsonian progressive.

The Wilson Strategy

I asked for realistic ways to get a better bill (from a liberal point of view) passed. Matt Yglesias reports one such proposed alternative, courtesy of Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, framed by Green as what should have happened. It's too long to quote, but the essentials are: Obama should threaten to veto any bill that doesn't contain a public option; Obama should barnstorm Connecticut and Maine to secure the support of Lieberman, Snowe, and Collins; Obama and Reid should leak that Lieberman's committee chair is on the line if he doesn't stick, and that reconciliation will be used if necessary; and liberals should loudly threaten to vote against a final bill that doesn't include a strong public option.

You know what that sounds like? It sounds exactly like Woodrow Wilson's strategy for passing the League of Nations Treaty. Barnstorming, refusing to accept amendments, going after Senators who opposed the treaty...that's pretty much what Wilson did.

It doesn't work. Presidents have extremely limited ability to convince Members of Congress to do what they want by going over their heads to constituents. There's some debate about whether they have any such ability, but even the optimists (if you want to call them that) don't really think there's a lot of opportunity. And, in this case, the key Senators (Lieberman, Nelson, Snowe, and Collins) were each pretty safe from such appeals; Nelson is in an anti-reform state, the two Republicans are very popular and their real danger is probably a future conservative primary challenge, and Lieberman...well, we've done that one to death. I can't prove it, but I'm very confident that both barnstorming in his state and threatening his committee would only annoy him more.

A much more plausible strategy would involve finding some substantive trade-offs that marginal Senators might go for. But they've probably tried that; it's likely that that's what worked for Landrieu. And Matt is completely correct:

[P]eople sometimes write about this as if there are 57 Senate Democrats itching to do a health care reconciliation bill, being held back by Barack Obama and Harry Reid. As best I can tell, though, the reason the Senate leadership keeps taking reconciliation “off the table” is that there’s very little support for it among the caucus. For starters, Kent Conrad, who’d be in charge of a reconciliation bill, seems to be against it. For another thing, there are doubtless many Senators who are much more comfortable being one vote out of 60 or 61 for a bill than they are of being one vote out of 50 for a bill that “Republicans and moderate Democrats” oppose.

Yup.

Anyway: the Wilson strategy? I'm not saying that it automatically leads to Hitler, but I'd just as soon not try to find out.

Wilson

Matt Yglesias is surprised to learn that Woodrow Wilson has a good reputation. Alas, it's true. Many scholars consider him a great or near-great president. For what it's worth, I know that when I teach the presidency -- and bashing Wilson is a fun part of that -- I run into a lot of students who are shocked to learn that not everyone loves Woodrow Wilson, which I take to be evidence that high school history books and high school history teachers tend to leave their students with a positive impression of him.

As far as why Wilson is overrated, I don't think it's actually much of a mystery. Midcentury historians and political scientists were big fans of Franklin Roosevelt (with good reason), and tended to see the world through FDR-tinged glasses. Wilson's strengths and weaknesses are almost perfectly designed for that. If the big question is isolationism vs. internationalism, Wilson is on the correct side. If it's government intervention in the economy vs. laissez faire, Wilson is basically on the correct side of that, too. FDR fans also tended to be supporters of the president against Congress, and from that vantage point Wilson's early legislative victories are a good example of presidential domination, while his League defeat looks like a case of Congressional misbehavior against presidential good intentions, a story that midcentury historians and political scientists were eager to tell.

Wilson's weaknesses were easy to overlook or miss entirely. On race -- and Matt is absolutely right about Wilson's disgraceful record -- it's no surprise that the same academics who idolized Adlai Stevenson also praised Wilson. Northern Democrats of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, while probably notionally in favor of integration, were in fact supporting a party, and many candidates, that were operationally willing to let the South do whatever it wanted to do (and of course were also all too willing to see race as just a Southern problem). Meanwhile, the focus on Internationalism Good, Isolationism Bad obscured other important questions, including Wilson's actual performance with regard to foreign affairs. It's probably not a big surprise, either, that the people who supported FDR would overlook Wilson's miserable record on civil liberties. And Wilson's sometimes shockingly poor management of the presidency, most notably his bungling at Versailles and in the League battle, were ignored or blamed on others.

Presidential reputations tend to be sticky, I guess; one would think that Wilson's reputation would fade as the midcentury conditions that helped his reputation recede farther into the past. At least I hope it will.