Excuse Me, I've Got A Headache

One of the best books on the 1930s (our last hard times) for this blogger was The Aspirin Age, 1919-1941: The Essential Events Of American Life In The Chaotic Years Between The Two World Wars (1949) edited by Elizabeth Leighton. In the collection, twenty-two authors treated — in an essay each — everything from Prohibition to Pearl Harbor. The main focus of the collection of essays was The Great Depression and the headaches that inspired "The Aspirin Age." If this is a (fair & balanced) migraine, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Beggars Banquet
By Timothy Egan

This city [of Vallejo, CA] is broke. Bankrupt. A ward of the courts. The police have pared their ranks, and every day two fire stations temporarily close, a rolling blackout of basic services.

Do we bailout Vallejo?

What about Philadelphia, Atlanta or Phoenix? They want $50 billion in emergency loans.

Years ago, when a close friend of mine lost his 75-year-old family retail business in Pittsburgh with the collapse of the steel industry, the federal government was nowhere to lend a hand to small business owners.

When aluminum factories in Spokane, Wash., folded after a corporate raider picked them to the bone, destroying the best middle-class jobs for blue collar workers in the city where I grew up, the government’s advice to people losing their homes, cars and dignity was: Learn how to say, “You want fries with that?”

And when this city of 120,000, one of the few places in the Bay Area where someone with a middle income could live well, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it became little more than a talking point in the debate over bloated public employee unions.

We like to think the free market picks our winners and losers. In its purest form, this is only true in Republican Disneyland. What was left of that illusion was swept away with words that will begin many a master’s in business theses in future years: “When President Bush nationalized the banking industry back in 2008…”

So, now we have arrived at that moment where taxpayers will play God with the American economy. What has been going on in Washington over the last month makes European-style planned economies look entrepreneurial by comparison.

Let’s be honest about this monumental exercise we’re going through. These are not Band-Aids or bridge loans or bridges to a new tomorrow we’re talking about here. A trillion dollars, more or less, is moving from Us to Them because they’re supposed to keep Us from going under like Them.

Get it? Nobody else does, especially the people running it. Thus far, the bailout has been a disaster, in keeping with the Bush practice of abject incompetence in everything they touch — a final kiss-off from The Decider.

The blue-suited beggars in the Capitol this week were executives of the Big Three American auto-makers, the humbled dinosaurs who gave us Hummers and S.U.V.’s for every suburbanite to drive two miles to Trader Joe’s.

See how they squirmed: dodging questions about whether they should get taxpayer money when they build cars overseas, about why they continue to make vehicles that nobody wants, about their overspending on Super Bowl bling.

Ford Motor stock was trading near $1 on Wednesday — you want fries with that? When even Mitt Romney, who famously pandered to Michigan voters this year about not losing another job, is willing to throw America’s auto-makers under the bus, you know the bell has tolled for thee, Detroit.

They will likely get nothing from this lame-duck Congress. The bankers and insurance companies were lucky they came before bailout fatigue — some getting theirs, others walking away empty-handed, off to cash the bonus check before it’s seized by creditors.

Next week it’ll be somebody else — universities, state governments, maybe even newspaper owners crushed in the move of readers to the Web.

“Everybody’s lining up now,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said last week. “There’s no industry that that isn’t saying, ‘We need a bailout.’ ”

The auto companies, and cities like Vallejo, are in trouble for a couple of reasons. The foreclosure crisis and the credit squeeze are freezing money everywhere, at a time when companies and governments are responsible for employee benefits well beyond what they can carry.

Nearly 300 employees in this city 30 miles from San Francisco make more than $100,000 a year in pay and benefits. After a mere five years on the payroll, all police and firefighters are guaranteed lifetime health benefits.

This was never sustainable. And now, with stores boarded up here and realtor flags flapping over empty, abandoned housing developments, the pyramid has crumbled.

All of which points to the need for a so-called Big Bang solution when a new administration and fresh Congress start to govern. Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has indicated that a President Obama may do just that, saying that the administration would “throw long and deep.” If business, or even mid-sized communities like Vallejo, were free of some of their social burdens they would be more nimble when downturns occurred, the argument goes.

General Motors supports more retirees than current workers. If you’re a taxpayer without health insurance, or paying $12,000 a year on the open market to cover your family’s health, you wonder why you should offer bailout billions for somebody with a rich safety net.

The arguments are endless loops, turning citizen against citizen, the haves against the have-nots.

Why not go green, go for universal health care, go for economic stimulus — all with one big vision? Imagine if the $700 billion were there for a fresh overhaul of the American economy, rather than being siphoned off by the very people who created the problem?

“There is no playbook for responding to turmoil we have never faced,” said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson this week, by way of explaining that everything he’s tried so far has failed, and he’s making it up as goes along.

So, maybe we should cut the spigot off while there’s still water in the tank. Save it for tomorrow, for January, for fresh thinking. Otherwise, the beggars banquet will only get more crowded.

[Timothy Egan writes "Outposts," a column at the NY Fishwrap online. Egan — winner of both a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 as a member of a team of reporters who wrote the series "How Race Is Lived in America" and a National Book Award (The Worst Hard Time in 2006) — graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in journalism, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by Whitman College in 2000 for his environmental writings. Egan is the author of four other books, in addition to The Worst Hard Time — The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West, Breaking Blue, and The Winemaker's Daughter.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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Another Nail In The Coffin Of The Myth Of A Team Of Rivals

Remember what we have learned from the late, great Richard Hofstadter:

"By myth..., I do not mean an idea that is simply false, but rather one that so effectively embodies men's values that it profoundly influences their way of perceiving reality and hence their behavior. In this sense, myths may have varying degrees of fiction or reality...."

As a result, the myths of a golden agrarian past, the self-made man, and "the team of rivals" became increasingly fictional over time. In fact, Doris Kearns Goodwin's "team of rivals" has become a viral meme that threatens the political fabric of the nation. Yet another scholar, not a popularizer on cable news shows, has taken Goodwin's concept to task. A team of rivals in 2009 — like the first Lincoln Cabinet — would be a national disaster. George Santayana spoke wisely about ignoring the lessons of the past and being condemned to repeat them. Doris Kearns Goodwin has ignored the lessons of the past and propagates historical mischief. If this is a (fair & balanced) attack on mythification, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
What’s So Special About A Team Of Rivals?
By James Oakes

Inspired by the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, President-elect Barack Obama is considering appointing a “team of rivals” to his cabinet — if rumors about the nomination of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state are true. But there’s more mythology than history in the idea that Lincoln showed exceptional political skill in offering cabinet positions to the men he had beaten in the race for the 1860 Republican nomination.

For one thing, there was nothing new in what Lincoln did. By tradition, presidents-elect reserved a cabinet position, often secretary of state, for the leading rival in their party. John Quincy Adams inaugurated the practice by appointing one of his presidential rivals, Henry Clay, to that post. It was a controversial move in 1824; enemies of Adams denounced the appointment as a corrupt bargain.

By the 1850s, the practice had become a tradition. In that decade, Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan installed in their cabinets men who had been major rivals for their party’s nomination. Daniel Webster, who lost the Whig Party nod in 1848, became Fillmore’s secretary of state. William Marcy, after failing to win the 1852 Democratic nomination, took the same position in Pierce’s cabinet. Lewis Cass, the Democratic nominee in 1848 and a man whose presidential dreams never diminished, was appointed Buchanan’s secretary of state in 1857. These were not notably successful administrations. Most historians agree that Pierce and Buchanan rank among the worst presidents in American history. There was nothing particularly unusual, or even impressive, when Lincoln followed this well-established practice.

Nor is it quite correct to say that Lincoln installed his “enemies” in the cabinet. Rivals for his own party’s nomination are not the same thing as political “enemies.” It would have been inconceivable, for example, for Lincoln to offer a cabinet appointment to his Democratic opponent, Stephen Douglas.

In the months after his election, Lincoln tried to find a Southerner as a symbol of national unity. But he drew sharp limits. He would appoint no one who did not endorse the Republican platform. What was the point, Lincoln asked, in naming someone who did not share the president’s basic principles? “Does he surrender to Mr. Lincoln,” the president-elect wondered, “or Mr. Lincoln to him?”

Limiting his appointments to like-minded Republican rivals was no guarantee of a harmonious administration either. The worst of Lincoln’s cabinet appointments was Simon Cameron, a senator from Pennsylvania. Cameron had been one of Lincoln’s major rivals for the Republican nomination. He eventually threw his support to Lincoln at the convention and fully expected to be paid back with a cabinet position.

Cameron had a reputation as corrupt, and he had made a lot of enemies over the years. Nevertheless, against his better judgment Lincoln appointed him secretary of war. Soon enough, charges of irregularity in the awarding of military contracts were flying. Within a year Lincoln had to get rid of his former rival by offering him a diplomatic post in Russia.

The rest of the “team of rivals” spent the war years scheming and squabbling among themselves. The cabinet never really functioned as a cohesive group. Lincoln replaced Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton, a former Democrat who had never been one of his political rivals. But Stanton quickly grew so suspicious of leaks by his fellow cabinet officers that he stopped bringing important questions to the table, reserving such discussions for private audiences with Lincoln.

He was not the only cabinet secretary who preferred back-channel communication to full discussion with the cabinet. Secretary of State William Seward, Lincoln’s main rival for the nomination, eventually gained so much private access to Lincoln that he didn’t bother attending most cabinet meetings. Most of the other cabinet secretaries became jealous of Seward’s close relationship with the president.

No one was more suspicious of Seward than Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase, another rival for the Republican nomination. Chase was competent but never really loyal to Lincoln. His double-dealing eventually provoked a “cabinet crisis” that left Chase humiliated. He grew so disgusted that he rarely attended regular cabinet meetings. But Chase kept scheming, and in 1864 he ran a barely concealed campaign to deprive Lincoln of the party’s re-nomination. As soon as Lincoln had secured the Republican nod he accepted Chase’s resignation.

Attorney General Edward Bates, another of the rivals Lincoln appointed, grumbled throughout his tenure about Lincoln’s incompetent handling of the cabinet. Envious of his more influential colleagues, Bates resigned in 1864, still complaining that Lincoln never really relied on his cabinet for its collective wisdom. There was something to Bates’s complaint. The most momentous decision of Lincoln’s presidency was whether to issue an Emancipation Proclamation. But Lincoln made the decision pretty much on his own, and he presented it to his cabinet as a fait accompli.

There is little doubt that Abraham Lincoln was a great president. But not much of what made him great can be discerned in his appointment of a contentious, envious and often dysfunctional collection of prima donnas to his cabinet.

[James Oakes, a professor of history and holds the Humanities Chair at the CUNY Graduate Center, is the author of The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (co-winner of the 2008 Lincoln Prize). Oakes holds a PhD in history from the University of California-Berkeley.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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