Post–War Liberalism and the American Reform Spirit (2.0)

8/6/2019 PostWar Liberalism and the American Reform Spirit (2.0)

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Roosevelt, by splitting the Republican Party, aided the election of Woodrow Wilson, himself a

committed progressive.

Woodrow Wilsons two terms in office mark the most successful point of American reform

up to that time and until Franklin Roosevelts New Deal. Indeed, many of the ideas and policies

expressed during the Wilson administration would greatly influence FDR. Domestically, Wilson

initially accomplished several progressive goals with the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to

the Constitution, an income tax and direct election of U.S. Senators respectively. The First World

War, however, distracted Wilson during his second term. His policy of a New Freedom stagnated,

though organized labor benefited from the AFLs support of the war effort and AFL president

Samuel Gompers seat on the War Labor Board. Yet despite continued legislative success, including

the Nineteenth Amendment granting womens suffrage, Wilsons administration broke itself trying

to save the League of Nations, helping begin the conservative revanchism of the 1920s.

It is in the conservatism of the 1920s, however, that one finds a reform movement that is

almost a proto-New Deal. In an attempt to dislodge the donothing Coolidge administration, a new

Progressive Party was formed for the election of 1924. Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin

advocated on behalf of organized labor and small farmers and won almost five million votes as well

as his home state.5 With almost 17% of the vote, LaFollette showed the permanence of the reform

spirit even in the face of advancing conservatism.

Unfortunately for the Republican Party, Coolidge Conservatism was built on bad ground.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the inability of Herbert Hoovers administration to break the

cycle of the Great Depression through economic orthodoxy gave the Democratic Party and Franklin

D. Roosevelt the opportunity not just win an election, but also to build a coalition. What separated

Roosevelt from Wilson is that Roosevelts legislative achievements, while arguably impressive, cut

across racial lines as blacks switched their allegiance to the party of the New Deal.6 Moreover,


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although even CIO organizing was sometimes frustrated by rank and file racism and many New

Deal programs excluded blacks de facto,7one must remember that Harry Truman still won the election

of 1948 with Hubert Humphreys civil rights plankthe nascent idea that the New Deal and civil

rights werent mutually exclusiveintact. Strom Thurmonds Dixiecrat challenge was trampled

underfoot.

Looking to the end of the postwar liberal consensus during the Johnson administration,

one again observes the tense racial compromise that the New Deal reform built on. More than

anyone, Lyndon Johnson, former Senator from Texas, was conscious of the risk he took of losing

the South by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.8 Southern politicians had frequently blocked

extensions of the New Deal for fear that it would bring civil rights.9 Importantly, however, the Act

did not cost Johnson the election in 1964; the American people delivered to Johnson one of the

great landslides of 20th Century politics. He defeated Barry Goldwater by almost sixteen million

votes, with 61.3% of the total.10 Johnsons mistake was that he had received a mandate for his Great

Society and a War on Poverty, not a divided public and war in Vietnam.

The Great Society continued in Johnsons vision of the New Deal, but by 1968 the

Democratic Party began to split. Though George Wallace made inroads among those opposed to

civil rights in the South and played off the common man theme in the North, it was the peace issue

that tore the Democrats reformist coalition apart. After the Tet Offensive in January 1968, Lyndon

Johnson, unlike Wilson, Roosevelt, and Truman before him, led a truly divided nation. The breach

produced by the conflicts between Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, and Robert Kennedy

created an opening for Richard Nixon, who skillfully exploited a growing gap between labors rank

and file and the liberal establishment.

Richard Nixons administration and the decade of the 1970s mark a long interregnum in the

politics of liberal reform. Nixon was certainly no Barry Goldwater. He was much more focused on


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building a conservative coalition, a New Majority, to replace the New Deal reformers.11 To this end,

Nixon sought not to destroy labor as a Democratic ally, but rather to co-opt it for Republican

support. Nixons overtures to labor were obvious: he invited AFLCIO president George Meany to

the White House on Labor Day;12 his conciliation during the 1970 postal workers strike stood in

stark contrast to his statement that, the survival of government based upon law. was at stake. 13

Nixon even managed to repurpose the reform spirit for his own benefit. Upon signing the

Occupational Safety and Health Act, he declared it to be one of the most important pieces of

legislationever passed by the Congress of the United States.14

The election of 1972 vindicated Nixons strategy. Though he split with AFLCIO leadership

after being snubbed at their 1971 Miami convention,15 Nixon largely succeeded in bringing rank and

file union members into the Republican Party; he won 54% of the union vote.16 The G.O.P.,

however, was helped immensely by George Meanys shortsighted recalcitrance; Meany had

organized a vote of neutrality in the election which cut Democratic nominee George McGovern off

at the knees. Though a National Labor Committee for the Election of McGovern-Shriver did break

from the official decision,17

Meany turned against a candidate with a 95% pro labor rating; for

comparison, Richard Nixon stood at 13%.18 In fact, McGovern was, to this day, the most pro-labor

candidate ever nominated by the American twoparty system and the president of the AFLCIO all

but endorsed his opponent.19

The split between some rank and file labor and the Democratic Party was a reaction to the

new movements of reform; to an extent, it was still about Vietnam. Upon arriving at the 1972

Democratic National Convention, a labor leader declared that there is too much hair and not

enough cigars.20 Even earlier in the decade, construction workers and peace protestors clashed in

the streets of New York City in what became known as the HardHat Riots.21 The New Left, the

peace protestors and college reformers, did not have to collaborate with the Old Left, exemplified


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by organized labor, as long as Richard Nixon was willing to work within the postwar consensus.

Liberal reform had not died, but it was undergoing a transformation. The fall of Richard Nixon after

Watergate inspired the hope that the two factions might finally work together.

Jimmy Carter supposedly represented the embodiment of liberal reconciliation. Leonard

Woodcock, president of the UAW, claimed he would unite not only the working class, blacks and

new liberals, but defeat the segregationists and Wallace voters as well.22 Compared to McGovern,

Carter did unite the organized working class in the election of 1976. He won 62% of the union

vote.23 Carter also managed to trump the rise of Southern Republicans and George Wallace.24 Yet

Carter did not unite the country. He received only 50.1% of the vote. McGovern pollster Pat

Caddell noted that historical New Deal patterns could not explain Carters victory; Gerald Ford won

large industrial states like Michigan, New Jersey, and Illinois.25 Carters role in the reform

interregnum represented the final break from the New Deal coalition, although its reform impulses

continued.

One must be fair in an evaluation of the Carter administration. Carter had to deal with the

persistent inflationary effects of Nixonera oil shocks and military spending; he also faced his own

foreign crisis in Iran. This said, however, Carter was not a liberal in the Roosevelt or postwar

consensus fashion and neither were his congressional allies. Senator Gary Hart famously declared

were not just a bunch of little Humphreys.26 While Carter did not repudiate his ostensible allies on

the Old Left, he did not exert the same effort on their behalf as he did his own causes. Considering

the nature of the Carter coalition though, it is all the more impressive that the HumphreyHawkins

Full Employment Act passed with Carters signature.27 Other reformist initiatives, such as labor law

reform, simply failed. HumphreyHawkins represents the astonishing resilience of liberal reform in

that although in the end only symbolic, the central idea of the law was full employment through


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Federal planning of the economy.28 This idea was now not only anathema to conservative

Republicans, but to new liberal Democrats trying to quell inflation as well.

It was the attempt by Carter to draw a line down the middle of the American political

spectrum that finally cleaved the successor to Roosevelts liberalism from the administration.

Through the appeals to a silent majority by Nixon and the lack of a uniting vision by Carter,

organized labor, the bedrock of the New Deal coalition had been split. By mid 1978, inability to

work within the government prompted UAW president Douglas Fraser to withdraw from the

LaborManagement Group, which had been set up to pass advice on resolving labor relations issues

to the White House. In his letter of resignation, Fraser identifies with the new reformers saying I

would rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the victims of racism,

and working people seeking a better life than with those whose religion is the status quo. 29 Fraser

ends with a challenge to the rest of the potential reformers to build a new coalition, to help our

nation find its way.30

Fraser did act on his promise of a new reform movement. The Progressive Alliance was

broadly conceived and took bold stances on issues of class, race, and sex.31

Like the Progressive

Parties of 1912 and 1924, however, Frasers movement was shortlived; the Alliance was

overpowered by a rising conservative movement that drove the impetus for reform underground.

Richard Nixons fall from grace following the eruption of the Watergate scandal delivered the

Republican Party and, more importantly, Nixons New Majority, into the hands of a truly

conservative movement. Gerald Ford had only barely fought off Ronald Reagan, who began his

political career as a Goldwater stumpman, for the Republican nomination in 1976. 32 As the election

of 1980 approached, Reagan promised to deliver psychological, if not material, comfort to the

working class.


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Civil Rights Act of 1991 as well as the election of Bill Clinton. Yet there were also the midterm

elections of 1994 and the bitterly contested election of 2000 which put George W. Bush in office.

Bush, however, galvanized reformers. Barack Obamas election in 2008 resulted in a version of

national healthcare, the Lily Ledbetter Act, the repeal of the discriminatory policy of Dont Ask

Dont Tell, and recently a nuclear disarmament treaty. Liberals, labor, civil rights activists, and peace

protesters have all seen the beginnings of reform once again.

President Obama, however, must now face a situation similar to Woodrow Wilsons. Public

sector unions are fighting back against an encroachment on collective bargaining and have gained

the support of a nascent student movement. With a sizeable amount of reformist legislation, Obama

must now choose if and how he approaches labor while prosecuting two wars. His decision will

shape the future of the reform movement for years to come.


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1 Hugh Brogan, The Penguin History of the USA, (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001), 427.2 Ibid.3 Ibid, 458.4 Ibid, 460.5 Ibid, 501.

6 Cowie, Jefferson. "We Can't Go Home Again: Why the New Deal Won't Be Renewed." New Labor Forum,no.Winter 2011 (2011): 5.7 Ibid.8 Perlstein, Rick, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, (NewYork: Nation Books, 2001), 305-07.9 Jefferson Cowie, Stayin Alive: the 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, (New York: The NewPress, 2010), 100.10 Perlstein, Before the Storm, 513.11 Cowie, Stayin Alive 138-39.12 Ibid141.13 Ibid 140.14 Ibid 139.15

Ibid 154.16 Ibid 161.17 Ibid 113-14.18 Ibid 117.19 Ibid 7.20 Ibid 105.21 Ibid 135-38.22 Ibid 264.23 Ibid, 265.24 Ibid.25 Ibid.26 Ibid, 123.27 Ibid, 285-8628 Ibid, 288.29 Ibid, 297.30 Fraser, Douglas A., Letter of Resignation, 4.31 Cowie, Stayin Alive, 299.32 Ibid, 265.33 Union Membership, Coverage, Density, and Employment Among Private Sector Workers, 1973-2010,The Union Membership and Coverage Database, accessed March 16, 2011, www.unionstats.com.34 Cowie, Stayin Alive 31135 Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson, WinnerTakeAll Politics: How Washington Made the Rich RicherAnd Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 23.36 Cowie, Stayin Alive, 363.37 Ibid.

38 Union Membership, Coverage, Density, and Employment Among Public Sector Workers, 1973-2010,The Union Membership and Coverage Database, accessed March 16, 2011, www.unionstats.com.


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Brogan, Hugh. The Penguin History of the USA. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001.

Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin Alive: the 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York: The

New Press, 2010.

Fraser, Douglas A. Letter of Resignation. Detroit: Solidarity House, 1978.

Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson. WinnerTakeAll Politics: How Washington Made the RichRicherAnd Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010

Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus,New York: Nation Books, 2001.

The Union Membership and Coverage Database, Union Membership, Coverage, Density, andEmployment Among Private Sector Workers, 1973-2010. Accessed March 16, 2011.

www.unionstats.com.

The Union Membership and Coverage Database, Union Membership, Coverage, Density, andEmployment Among Public Sector Workers, 1973-2010. Accessed March 16, 2011.www.unionstats.com.

Post–War Liberalism and the American Reform Spirit (2.0)

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