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In looking for analogues to the record of Barack Obama as President,
many look to Hoover. But I think Woodrow Wilson offers some appealing
comparisons.
Here is the collection of his campaign speeches from the election of 1912 in
his book, The New Freedom. Compare this alternative he offers to
Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party with his actual performance once in
office.
"Shall
we try to get the grip of monopoly away from our lives, or shall we not?
Shall we withhold our hand and say monopoly is inevitable, that all that we
can do is to regulate it? Shall we say that all that we can do is to put
government in competition with monopoly and try its strength against it?
Shall we admit that the creature of our own hands is stronger
than we are?
We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power of high
finance would be greater than the power of the government. Have we come to a
time when the President of the United States or any man who wishes to be the
President must doff his cap in the presence of this high finance, and say,
"You are our inevitable master, but we will see how we can make the best
of it?"
We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one
or two or three, but many, established and formidable monopolies in the
United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into
which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter.
We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled
development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most
completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world--no
longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and
the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of
small groups of dominant men.
If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then
don't you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even
than they are now? Don't you see that they must capture the government, in
order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They
have already captured it.
Are you going to invite those inside to stay inside? They don't have to get
there. They are there. Are you going to own your own premises, or are you
not? That is your choice. Are you going to say: "You didn't get into the
house the right way, but you are in there, God bless you; we will stand out
here in the cold and you can hand us out something once in a while?"
At the least, under the plan I am opposing, there will be an avowed
partnership between the government and the trusts. I take it that the firm
will be ostensibly controlled by the senior member. For I take it that the
government of the United States is at least the senior member, though the
younger member has all along been running the business. But when all the
momentum, when all the energy, when a great deal of the genius, as so often
happens in partnerships the world over, is with the junior partner, I don't think
that the superintendence of the senior partner is going to amount to very
much.
And I don't believe that benevolence can be read into the hearts of the
trusts by the superintendence and suggestions of the federal government;
because the government has never within my recollection had its suggestions
accepted by the trusts. On the contrary, the suggestions of the trusts have
been accepted by the government.
There is no hope to be seen for the people of the United States until the
partnership is dissolved. And the business of the party now entrusted with
power is going to be to dissolve it.
Those who supported the third party supported, I believe, a program perfectly
agreeable to the monopolies. How those who have been fighting monopoly
through all their career can reconcile the
continuation of the battle under the banner of the very men they have been
fighting, I cannot imagine. I challenge the program in its fundamentals as
not a progressive program at all. Why did Mr. Gary suggest this very method
when he was at the head of the Steel Trust? Why is this very method commended
here, there, and everywhere by the men who are interested in the maintenance
of the present economic system of the United States? Why do the men who do
not wish to be disturbed urge the adoption of this program? The rest of the
program is very handsome; there is beating in it a great pulse of sympathy
for the human race. But I do not want the sympathy of the trusts for the
human race. I do not want their condescending assistance.
And I warn every progressive Republican that by lending his assistance to
this program he is playing false to the very cause in which he had enlisted.
That cause was a battle against monopoly, against control, against the
concentration of power in our economic development, against all those things
that interfere with absolutely free enterprise. I believe that some day these gentlemen will wake up and realize that
they have misplaced their trust, not in an individual, it may be, but in a
program which is fatal to the things we hold dearest.
If there is any meaning in the things I have been urging, it is this: that
the incubus that lies upon this country is the present monopolistic
organization of our industrial life. That is the thing which certain
Republicans became "insurgents" in order to throw off. And yet some
of them allowed themselves to be so misled as to go into the camp of the
third party in order to remove what the third party proposed to legalize. My
point is that this is a method conceived from the point of view of the very
men who are to be controlled, and that this is just the wrong point of view
from which to conceive it...
One of the wonderful things about America, to my mind, is this: that for more
than a generation it has allowed itself to be governed by persons who were
not invited to govern it. A singular thing about the people of the United
States is their almost infinite patience, their willingness to stand quietly
by and see things done which they have voted against and do not want done, and
yet never lay the hand of disorder upon any arrangement of government.
There is hardly a part of the United States where men are not aware that
secret private purposes and interests have been running the government. They
have been running it through the agency of those interesting persons whom we
call political "bosses." A boss is not so much a politician as the
business agent in politics of the special interests. The boss is not a
partisan; he is quite above politics! He has an understanding with the boss
of the other party, so that, whether it is heads or tails, we lose. The two
receive contributions from the same sources, and they spend those
contributions for the same purposes...
The critical moment in the choosing of officials is that of their nomination
more often than that of their election. When two party organizations,
nominally opposing each other but actually working in perfect understanding
and co-operation, see to it that both tickets have the same kind of men on
them, it is Tweedledum or Tweedledee,
so far as the people are concerned; the political managers have us coming and
going. We may delude ourselves with the pleasing belief that we are electing
our own officials, but of course the fact is we are merely making an
indifferent and ineffectual choice between two sets of men named by interests
which are not ours."
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, 1913
In
1912, "an unprecedented number"[1] of African Americans left the
Republican Party to cast their vote for Democrat Wilson. They were encouraged
by his promises of support for their issues.
With the wind of economic stability and a Democratic majority in the
Congress, Wilson proceeded to act on his vision of reforms, in particular
breaking up the 'trusts.'
"In
his first term as President, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass
major progressive reforms including the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade
Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and an
income tax. Wilson brought many white Southerners into his administration,
and supported the introduction of segregation into many federal
agencies."
On December 23, 1913, the new President Woodrow Wilson signed The Federal
Reserve Act into law.
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