Bog Government

One final set of reflections after reading Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit.  (I promise: last one.  After this, we can return to comic books and other matters of more general interest.)

The Progressive Movement has been much discussed by Conservative pundits and intellectuals in the last 6 years.  Much discussed.  It’s been an interesting phenomenon generated by the Obama Presidency.  I have no idea who started the wave of articles about how the current Administration is in the Teddy Roosevelt/Wilson vein, but I have seen a lot of articles about that in the last 6 years.  (Someone could write a really nice paper on this trend.  Anyone know a historian of conservative thought?  (That is a joke, by the way—George Nash is a good friend of mine. (Is it name-dropping to mention George Nash?  I think it should be.)))

The Roosevelt/Wilson line is the first interesting thing to note:  notice who is missing in there? 

Also, why are TR and Wilson lumped together?  According to the recent literature, they were the starting place for Big Government (curiously, since my typing abilities are, to put it mildly, lousy (a tale for another day), and thus I make lots of typos (lots), the first draft of this post said “Bog Government” which is a terribly interesting typo—and much to my surprise according to my quick and non-scientific Google search, it appears to be a neologism), a government which moved beyond the bounds which it had known before.  The Progressive movement does not get much love in the Conservative discussion.  Yet, are Roosevelt and Wilson really the same?  Not really, and therein lies the tale.

Was the progressive Movement all bad?  I am risking losing my Conservative credentials by saying this, but I’ll say it anyway: The Progressive movement had costs and benefits.  (Gosh that makes me sound like an economist.)  At its inception, the Progressive Movement was attacking many things which one would think Conservatives would also attack.  Take Upton Sinclair (please!).  He was a socialist hack and The Jungle is a really lousy novel with overwrought conclusions and way too many maudlin tales of woe.  But, I sure wouldn’t want to eat the meat coming from the meat packing plants described (accurately, it turns out) in that novel.  Nobody would want to eat that meat.  Getting some sanitary standards in the food industry is a good thing.  Before the 20^th century, it wasn't necessary—you would get your meat locally; you knew the butcher and if he was a disgusting slob, he would be out of business.  But, with the coming of the railroads, suddenly meat is being packed on a mass scale and you no longer know your butcher.  So, it would be a public good if someone (read: the government) was making sure that when I walk into a grocery store and buy hamburger, it is cow flesh and not tainted rat flesh.  Similarly, take Standard Oil.  Monopolies are bad—Economics 101.  Rockefeller was building a monopoly—it’s hard to blame him for that; it is good to be a monopolist.  But, who can stop a monopoly from forming?  Again, it’s good if the government does such things—it improves economic efficiency. 

I’m not sure why it is so hard for conservatives to explicitly acknowledge that the origins of the Progressive Movement are founded in correcting some very bad trends in the American economy.  (And the American political system—does anyone want to bring back the days of the Political Bosses?  Or remove Women’s Right to Vote?  (By the way, William Howard Taft’s mother went to Mount Holyoke.))  But, then, after taking care of the blatant problems, the Progressive Movement does go on and on and on and on—and it is that later development, the move from legislation on which we would all agree to an ever-increasing bureaucracy, which is the problem.

So, who causes the transformation of the progressive Movement from something we can all embrace to something which divides us?  Why our dear friend Teddy Roosevelt!  At the start of his career, Roosevelt is the type of Progressive a modern conservative could embrace.  He, and not incidentally his good friend William Howard Taft, are full of all sorts of ideas which would make this country a better place.  But, then a funny thing happens.  Taft becomes President, and keeps right along with that nice set of really desirable polices.  Roosevelt, who needs to be center stage—he really, desperately needs to be center stage—has to come up with things that are even more radical than before—he has to become ever more Progressive in order to get the attention he craves.  And the Progressive movement gets more radical. 

It’s a fascinating tale when you step back and look at it.  The motto: Beware of people who demand to be constantly in the limelight.  Well, that would be a better moral if it didn’t describe everyone running for higher political office in modern America.

And since I have already endangered my conservative street cred, we’ll end with this because it is, if you are honest, funny.