Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 469: An American King?

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Episode 469: An American King? · Words & Numbers

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Next on words and numbers elections.
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Can you trust your vacuum? Barack Obama.
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And FDR. All this and more coming up next on Words and
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Numbers, a civil original production.
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Check us out at civil.com. That's C ivl.com.
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Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony.
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And this is words and numbers, Ant it's not exciting in your
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world this week. Well, I think, you know, first
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one of our listeners gets back-to-back, mentions this is
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again Signa to Wind, who sent me something.
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This is wonderful. She's like a clipping service.
0:37
She just keeps sending me interesting things.
0:40
I still don't get anything from Cygnus, so there you go.
0:43
She doesn't like you. That's understandable.
0:46
She the the. Let me just read you the opening
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sentence here. A computer programmer discovered
0:55
his iLife A11 smart vacuuming. The smart vacuum was secretly
1:01
transmitting data to service to servers halfway around the
1:05
world. Including what kind?
1:07
Of what kind of data can a? Robot vacuum Get a detailed 3D
1:13
map of his home. Well, that could be a problem.
1:18
Now I have all kinds of questions and a concern because
1:21
I have one of these vacuums and I tell you, it's fascinating you
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that you get the thing and you start it up the first time and
1:30
it goes around the house and it scans and produces a map of the
1:35
house. And I thought, OK, that's,
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that's good. It can go around and, you know,
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like trace the walls or whatever.
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And then I noticed it was showing me on the map it
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produced. It was showing me a room I
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hadn't let it into with the correct layout of that room.
1:53
Somehow the thing had seen into it.
1:56
Now what I found as well is we, I have these, you know, we have,
2:00
you have the security cameras. I happened to look at a security
2:05
camera. I saw this weird flashing in the
2:07
middle of the night. It's the, it's the IR from this
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thing. This thing has lasers that are
2:13
constantly scanning around its environment, which you can see
2:17
on the infrared camera thing, but you can't see it when you
2:20
just look at look at the thing. But nonetheless, the vacuum
2:24
creates this, you know, accurate 3D representation of your house.
2:29
And apparently this this engineer discovered that it was
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sending this information to servers in China.
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Now, of course, mine does the same thing.
2:40
It sends the the map somewhere on where I have an account on
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the server and all of that. And you can imagine, OK, but it
2:48
needs to do that because whatever processing is going on
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is going on on their server that prevents them having to load up
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the vacuum with a whole bunch of of computer hardware.
3:00
Except the guy then went in and hacked the code in his robot
3:07
vacuum and had it stop sending the the information to the
3:13
server and the thing stops working and you would think OK
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well that confirms my suspicion that it needs those servers on
3:21
the back end to do its thinking. No, no, he goes into the code
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again and finds that when he had changed it so that it no longer
3:30
sends the information to the servers, the servers sent a kill
3:34
switch to the vacuum to shut it off to make it look like, well,
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the vacuum doesn't work if it's not communicating with the
3:41
servers. And how do we know that this is
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actually what happened? Because he went in and deleted
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the kill switch and his vacuum worked again.
3:49
Yeah. Until it recommunicated with the
3:52
servers and the server said no, no, you're not sending this
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information. Stop working.
3:56
So this I find both interesting and scary.
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But then it also leads to this follow up question.
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Why do the Chinese care what the layout of my house is?
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That is an interesting question. I suspect you have no answer.
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Oh. I have no answer yet.
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Apparently they do well. Perhaps one of them will catch
4:17
wind of this little bit on this little podcast will come along
4:22
and answer that vexing question for us.
4:25
In the meantime, we've got an election tomorrow and yes, it's
4:29
going to be an interesting thing.
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There's there's really not a lot at stake, right?
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It's a it's an off year election.
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Not a lot going on except for these two massive things.
4:44
Got a potential redistricting of California which would render
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nearly the entire state Democratic and then.
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Already. Yes, but it it has certain red
4:59
enclaves that from which Republican congressmen end up in
5:04
Washington, DC, those would be virtually wiped out.
5:08
Yeah, Orange County. And I know that because of all
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the newspapers we've published in, we've only ever been
5:15
regularly in one California paper, one with the Orange
5:18
County Register. Yeah, they were thrilled with
5:20
us. The others, not so much.
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And then, of course, in New York City, we've got the mayoral race
5:27
to see if a quote UN quote democratic socialist can, can
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win the mayor's seat in America's city.
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So I don't know how these things are going to wind up.
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I, I mean, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Californians
5:47
are going to be very happy to virtually obliterate the
5:52
Republicans in their state. And I'm pretty sure that the
5:57
nice people in New York City are going to elect Zoran Mondami.
6:03
I'm just pretty sure, although that the polls there are
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tightening a little bit unexpectedly at the end right
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now it's Mondani. Mondani with 40%, Cuomo at 34
6:17
and Curtis Sliwa ruining everything with 24.
6:20
Wow. So yeah, that.
6:22
Kind of what is Curtis? What?
6:25
What is his party? He's a Republican.
6:28
He's a Republican. Yeah, you don't remember.
6:31
Him as the founder of the Guardian Angels.
6:34
Oh really? Remember those red braid weirdos
6:37
that would go on the subway and stop people from robbing other
6:40
people? He was there from way back.
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Mm Hmm. Yep.
6:44
Yeah, when we were just young kids.
6:46
But seriously, he was still around.
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And you know, Republicans don't particularly do well in New York
6:51
City, although there are outliers.
6:53
Giuliani, for example. Yeah, but there's this weird
6:57
thing that I've been noticing since President Trump's first
7:03
election, and that is that it seems to be the case that people
7:07
who are who intend to vote Republican, regardless of what
7:11
party they are, people who tend to vote, tend to want to vote
7:14
Republican, also tend not to like to answer the polls.
7:19
It seems that that ever since Trump's election, the first time
7:24
it's been a surprise when a Republican has won.
7:28
Well, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds here, but I,
7:34
I blame the pollsters a lot more than I blame Trump.
7:36
Their biases showed through in the way they were constructing
7:40
their polls. And then it, it happened again
7:44
the second time Trump ran, they, they learned nothing.
7:48
So I'm, I'm not the, the time that people were unwilling to
7:56
tell the truth in a, in a telephone poll was when they
7:59
were supporting David Duke for various things, right?
8:03
They people knew enough to be ashamed of wanting to vote for a
8:08
Klansman for anything. But Duke's numbers in the the
8:12
elections were always way higher than they were in the polls.
8:15
And that's telling. Anyway, we're going to get into
8:18
that kind of thinking on our next episode.
8:21
So stay tuned for that. But for now, I mean, I don't
8:26
think that you could legitimately call these two
8:29
elections a referendum on Trump in any way.
8:32
Well, right, in any, in any way is probably too strong.
8:37
But I, I do think you're seeing a bit of a reaction to Trump.
8:42
And I, I don't think these two things are going to go well for
8:46
Republicans or in the case of New York City Republicans or the
8:50
independent candidate, Andrew Cuomo.
8:55
I, I can't see a way my mom, Domi doesn't walk away with this
8:59
in the end in New York. And I think the redistricting in
9:04
California is very, very likely to happen, which will set up a
9:08
chain, a sequence of chain events that that we will sit
9:13
back and wonder about for quite some time.
9:16
But that, of course, brings us to the foolishness of the week,
9:19
and given the intro, you already know who it is, so no point in
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asking unless you're so old and feeble of mine that you've
9:29
already forgotten. Well, you talked about Mandami
9:33
and the the socialists, so you, that's the most feeble you are.
9:37
Feeble of mine, you don't remember.
9:39
I I literally told you who it was going to be and you don't
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remember. And, and and this is a good one,
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I think because I've been getting so much hate mail for
9:52
being out of the tank for for Donald J Trump, that for all of
9:59
you people out there who send me the hate mail, I enjoy most of
10:04
it. And get ready to have give your
10:06
fingers a rest for a week, because the foolishness of the
10:09
week is Barack Hussein Obama and I haven't said that for a long
10:14
time. And it feels, really.
10:16
Good to say it. Because he is a foolish, foolish
10:20
man. And at this point I think it's
10:24
fair to call him a race hustler. And that's a phrase that I've
10:27
used before and nobody seems to be too irked when I do so many
10:32
use it again with Barack Obama. Because you might recall Aunt
10:37
Barack Obama getting all up in the business of black men in the
10:42
last election, the last presidential election, saying
10:45
that they owed it to their race or something to get out and vote
10:51
for Kamala Harris. Do you remember when he he was
10:53
doing this? I, I don't recall that, but I'm
10:56
not I I wouldn't say that he didn't either.
10:59
The headline from NPR Obama, in blunt terms, tells black men to
11:04
get over their reluctance to support Harris.
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Turns out that didn't work so well.
11:10
But I mean, really, what? What in God's green earth is
11:15
wrong with him to turn it into a racial thing?
11:20
Right. Fast Fast forward to you know
11:23
today, and now Barack Obama is stumping for Virginia's lover.
11:34
Yes, Winsome. Winsome, whose name I know.
11:38
It's nice you live in Virginia, so you're right up on top of
11:40
this. Winsome Sears, Yeah.
11:42
There, there, there you go. Can you name the Well, you did
11:47
name the Lieutenant governor. Can you name the Virginia
11:50
representative who's running for the White Lady as normal?
11:54
People. No, no, I just, I just know it's
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a weird it's a black woman and a white woman and the black
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woman's Republican. The white woman is Democrat.
12:03
Breaking all conventions, the the white lady is named Abigail
12:07
Spanberger and and she's neither one of these women is going to
12:13
be invited to a Mensa meeting anytime soon.
12:17
They these are very weak candidates and the state of
12:20
Virginia is going to be stuck with a lousy governor.
12:22
Either way, it's almost certain that the the white woman
12:26
Spanberger is going to win. But, and, and why do I keep
12:29
saying white woman? Because Barack Obama is stumping
12:33
for her, Huh. Now all of a sudden he wants
12:39
black people to vote for the white person.
12:41
But at the presidential election, black people owed it
12:45
to vote, to vote for Kamala Harris.
12:47
So. So race matters, but only if it
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moves in accordance with the politics.
12:52
That's right, only when Barack Obama says so.
12:56
And, and what could be more foolish than that?
12:59
I think we have a lot of normal people in the United States who,
13:03
as I do, notice a very profound difference between black people
13:07
and white people. It's obvious.
13:09
And we also notice differences between all kinds of subgroups
13:13
of all kinds of other people, right?
13:16
We have Indians living here and, and I often refer to myself as
13:19
Irish, Italian. You're some kind of crackpot mix
13:23
of the English and the Middle East, right?
13:28
This kind of nonsense. And for all of the differences
13:32
that we have, I think they're fascinating.
13:34
I think they're often funny. What do I not think they are
13:39
definitive of our character. Race is not destiny.
13:44
Race is just. Part of the color palette in the
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end. It's no big deal, but when
13:50
people say oh, I don't even see race, they're lying.
13:52
Of course you do. People are what they are, and
13:55
they stand right in front of you.
13:57
Or blind people might not see race, but you know what?
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They can hear it because it's obvious.
14:05
Now, when Barack Obama pulls this crap, I can tell you that
14:11
he's a race hustler. He uses his race when it suits
14:15
him and ignores it when it doesn't.
14:19
Well. No, I don't take him seriously.
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Not that I ever did all that much, but I really don't take
14:24
him seriously now and I encourage everybody else to
14:27
equally not take him seriously. But he, he's a smart man.
14:31
Oh, yeah, Yeah. I'm just trying to get my head
14:35
around what went through his head, knowing that someone was
14:39
going to say exactly what you just said.
14:41
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
14:43
It's sad. We should cut the crap, but here
14:48
we are. We're happy to announce that
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Subscribe to Civil for $5 a month or $50.00 for an annual
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subscription. This week, David Bato joins us.
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David is a research fellow at the Independent Institute,
15:43
Professor of history at the University of Alabama, and
15:47
recipient of the Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of
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American Historians for the best book length historical study.
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Professor Bato has authored several books, among them from
16:00
Mutual Aid to the Welfare State, which you can find on an earlier
16:05
episode of Words and Numbers. And you'll probably have to go
16:08
back several years to find it. But David joins us this week to
16:12
talk about his latest book, FDR, a new political Life.
16:16
David, welcome back to WORDS of NUMBERS.
16:18
Thank you for for this opportunity.
16:20
This is this is the second time we've had you on and and I have
16:25
to be admit I'm bit chagrined we haven't had you on more
16:28
frequently. We had you on some years ago
16:32
when your book on mutual aid societies had come out and we're
16:35
talking about that. And that actually ended up being
16:37
one of our more popular episodes.
16:40
So, yeah, I mean, of all the all the stuff I've done, that's the
16:43
that's the work that has persisted the most that I see
16:46
people refer to as the most, even though it's been a long
16:49
time since I wrote that. Well, we're happy to have you
16:52
back to talk about FDR and I want to get us started with with
16:57
what was eye opening to me as an economist.
17:00
I whenever the topic of FDR comes up, I spend a lot of time
17:06
debunking what were taught in high schools that the Great
17:09
Depression ended because of FDR in as I'm reading your book, I'm
17:15
seeing a whole new take. Well, I mean, that's the title a
17:18
new or no, It's it's a new take, but it's a political life, FDR
17:21
political life. But I've seen a new take on his
17:26
politics that and I'm realizing that maybe I had it backward,
17:31
that the weird thing about FDR wasn't that we think of him as
17:37
having saved the economy, when in fact I think he he laid the
17:41
groundwork for much mischief that happened in subsequent
17:45
decades. But rather the greater thing
17:48
reading your work is that he upended our politics.
17:52
You have a fabulous quote that I've written down here.
17:57
Here it is ruled by ruled by adrenaline.
18:01
That for the first time, he was it.
18:03
If I read you correctly, he's making arguments about what the
18:09
federal government should do not on the basis of the law, on the
18:13
basis of the Constitution, but rather on the basis of of
18:17
people's appetites. Yeah, FDR is.
18:21
I think it's fair to say that FDR has an ideological agenda.
18:25
Sometimes he is portrayed as this pragmatist.
18:28
People will give the quotation, Well, I, I tried, I just try
18:32
whatever works, right? I'll try something else if this
18:35
doesn't work and so forth. But I think FDR is very much
18:38
influenced by progressivism. He comes out of that background
18:45
and he's very much taking the perspective that the focus
18:52
should be on the ends, not the means, right?
18:55
If you've, if you've got a goal, go for it.
18:58
Don't worry about procedures. Don't worry about these sort of
19:02
musty constitutional requirements.
19:05
And if there's a consistent thread to FDR, that would be it.
19:08
And you know, that's his attitude towards civil liberties
19:12
as people close to him commented on.
19:14
He didn't like this criticism. He didn't like this anti war
19:19
talk. He wanted it stopped.
19:21
We see that in one of the leading scandals in FD Rs life,
19:25
although it's now forgotten, the Newport sex scandal, this whole
19:29
idea of you've got an issue, you've got a problem, you've got
19:33
to deal with, don't worry so much about the procedures.
19:37
And and so I think that that that is a consistent theme for
19:41
FDR. And again, he is a progressive.
19:44
He believes he he he's sort of anti business in a certain
19:48
sense. He he comes at it from a kind of
19:50
aristocratic standpoint. I sort of call him, you know,
19:56
kind of the thirst and thirst and howl the third of American
20:00
presidents in many ways. He comes at it from a sort of
20:04
that, that sort of paternalistic perspective, right?
20:08
That the that he's sort of like looking out for his tenants in a
20:13
way. And the government is a tool
20:15
that he's going to use to accomplish this goal.
20:18
You said something, actually, you said a number of things that
20:22
that had me drawing parallels between what you're describing
20:27
and what we're seeing now. But the one that just slapped me
20:30
was that he treated dissent as. Heresy.
20:34
Yes, very much so. FDR was, was, was very
20:38
intolerant of dissent. Give you a little bit of an
20:40
example. This was a consistent thread.
20:43
He was assistant secretary of the Navy during World War One
20:47
and there, you know, which is not a very tolerant period in a
20:51
lot of ways. Woodrow Wilson did not run a
20:54
very pro civil liberties administration.
20:56
But if anything, FDR was more intolerant than of criticism of
21:01
Ben Wilson. Was there was an interesting
21:03
example where this guy that was he was kind of AI guess you'd
21:06
sort of say a little bit of a gadfly and he this newspaper
21:11
publisher and he sort of implied that there was something funny
21:16
about the fact that FDR was in his 30s but yet was not in
21:21
uniform, right. And people would naturally draw
21:24
comparisons to his cousin Teddy, who went into uniform very
21:29
quickly once the Spanish American War began.
21:33
And FD Rs response to this was he wrote to the federal District
21:38
Attorney in Atlanta and he said, you know, you need to prosecute
21:42
this guy. He needs to be put behind bars.
21:45
And, you know, the assistant attorney, District Attorney
21:49
wrote him back and said, I'm sorry, we just don't have a case
21:53
this. We don't have a case against
21:55
this person. But it was just because the
21:57
person had sort of implied that there was something funny about
22:01
the fact that FDR was not in uniform.
22:06
And so he is very touchy about criticism.
22:10
But he's different from Trump in in some interesting ways.
22:14
FDR would never call a news conference and Attack, Attack
22:19
that to that reporter, right? He would never say we need to
22:23
get the FCC and force this person off the air.
22:28
FDR was very much the master of handling things like that from
22:33
behind the scenes, right? Going through as, as they say in
22:38
The Godfather buffers, finding people to intercede.
22:44
And that's for example, how by 1938 there was not a single anti
22:52
FDR, anti New Deal radio commentator left on the major
22:57
networks, even though the print press was primarily hostile to
23:02
FDR. Radio was very much in his corner.
23:05
And that was partly because he was able to to get these
23:09
commentators off the air through behind the scenes, quiet
23:14
methods, subterfuge. One of them was a guy named Bok
23:18
Carter, one of the more popular radio commentators at the time.
23:22
And FDR had contacts among Democratic donors who were
23:27
sponsors like a Marjorie Merriweather Post, the original
23:32
owner of Mira Lago. He had, he had the IRS
23:37
investigate Carter's taxes. He had the immigration
23:42
department investigate him. He moved on multiple fronts.
23:46
But we don't, he never said it publicly.
23:48
He said it privately. We're looking at this guy's
23:51
background. We're trying to get him off the
23:53
air. So it was quite an interesting
23:56
fact in public. He said things like, well, you
23:59
know, I, I have better things to do than worry about someone like
24:03
that. David, if if you could take a
24:05
minute and and help us think through this.
24:11
I typically date the advent of progressivism with with my, you
24:16
know, the the publication of the promise of American life in 19 O
24:19
9. There are there are other things
24:21
you could use, but that I think that kind of that, that zip code
24:24
is about right, which would put FDR as generationally the first
24:32
fully mature progressive that we see in a in the presidency.
24:38
What what is it meant? What is his legacy meant in that
24:41
respect moving forward? OK, well, you've got to
24:45
understand he's FDR is not a particularly deep thinker.
24:51
I wouldn't say he's particularly original thinker.
24:55
He doesn't read a lot of books. People comment on this.
24:57
So Raymond Moley, one of his advisors, said he didn't know of
25:00
any books that FDR ever read. I think he read things like, you
25:03
know, detective novels. He was very fascinated by spy
25:07
novels and so forth. So he is definitely a
25:11
progressive president. He brings together several
25:13
different strains. His main mentor is his cousin
25:20
Ted, who he refers to as Uncle Ted, even though he's
25:23
technically his cousin, although he becomes his uncle by marriage
25:27
because FDR marries Uncle Ted's niece Eleanor.
25:32
That is his in some ways his first ideological mentor.
25:38
He comes from a the Democratic wing in the Roosevelt family,
25:41
but he's head of the Young Republicans or whatever it's
25:46
called, the Harvard Republicans, and he campaigns for Uncle Ted.
25:51
And so he's very favorable towards him.
25:54
Then later, he is an early supporter of Woodrow Wilson.
25:59
And so he brings together these two different strains of, I
26:04
guess you'd say, progressivism and combines it into one new
26:09
package. And what is distinctive about
26:12
that package? Well, there's some things he
26:14
does borrow from Wilson. There's a lot of flowery
26:16
rhetoric about democracy and human rights, which is sort of
26:21
ironic given, you know, given his own behavior.
26:26
But there's a kind of ruthlessness attached to it,
26:29
kind of cynicism and like, I guess you could say, like Uncle
26:35
Ted, a big focus on let's get the job done right.
26:40
Let's not worry so much about these these things that are
26:44
holding us back, like legal precedents and that kind of
26:47
thing. Did he really believe in central
26:50
planning, or did he simply see that as a means to an end?
26:55
It was a means to acquire power, to achieve his his his New Deal
27:02
as a political revolution. I think his default, his
27:06
ideological default would be in favor of, of, of of of a heavy
27:12
dose of centralized governmental planning, right?
27:17
He's, he's not a communist. I don't even know if I'd call
27:20
him a socialist, but he but, but his, he is responsible for the
27:25
National Recovery Administration, which is really
27:29
one of the first examples in peacetime.
27:32
Well, the most extensive example in peacetime of an attempt to
27:35
plan of the economy, right? What the goal of the National
27:40
Recovery Administration is to impose minimum wages across the
27:44
board, minimum prices actually people actually went to jail for
27:51
charging too little to press a suit.
27:55
So he's very fascinated by that agency.
27:59
A lot of people turn have turned against it by 1934.
28:04
But Roosevelt is very much, you know, he wants to to keep it
28:07
going. He after the NRA is struck down
28:11
by the US Supreme Court. He even writes to his secretary
28:15
of the Treasury, Morgenthau, that that idea was a good idea.
28:18
We need to bring it back, maybe in international form.
28:22
So I guess I would call that economic planning.
28:25
But again, Roosevelt is a pragmatist as well.
28:27
He'll back off if he has to. And we see examples like of this
28:33
repeatedly, like probably the most leftist vice president in
28:37
American history is Henry Wallace.
28:40
Roosevelt likes Wallace. I think he would prefer that
28:43
Wallace continue to be his vice president.
28:46
But he was also told by leading advisors that Wallace was a drag
28:50
on the ticket, so he let him go. So I think he is ideologically
28:59
on the left. But again, he is a very
29:01
pragmatic person as well in the sense that politically, you
29:06
know, if something's going to be cost him, he will people back
29:09
off it. It it's interesting hearing you
29:12
describe him like that, because when I think about the
29:16
presidents of my lifetime as opposed to presidents broadly,
29:20
it it sounds like you're most describing somebody like Bill
29:24
Clinton. Yeah.
29:26
I, I think that that's, I think that that's a fair comparison.
29:31
You know, a certain degree of triangulation, I guess you'd
29:34
call it. Like, for example, in 1940,
29:38
Roosevelt, you know, appointed 2 Republicans to his cabinet.
29:43
And it, it, he sort of, you know, the Republican candidate,
29:48
Wilkie was, was right from the beginning fighting a kind of
29:51
uphill battle because Roosevelt right before the Republican
29:54
convention announced that he was appointing 2 Republicans to
29:58
cabinet positions, one secretary of war and one of them secretary
30:02
of Navy. So there is a certain
30:04
triangulation. We could also look back to 1932.
30:09
A lot of people seem to assume we take it for granted that the
30:14
New Deal people voted for the New Deal in 1932.
30:18
Well, if you look at what Roosevelt was saying during that
30:21
campaign, some of his speeches, one of the earliest ones
30:25
memorialized on audio, he sounds almost like Ronald Reagan.
30:29
He's endorsing the Democratic platform, saying we need to cut
30:33
government spending by 25%, we need sound currency.
30:38
You know, he's attacking Hoover as a spendthrift.
30:41
But then at the same time he's signaling to others that, well,
30:44
maybe, you know, I'm going to this guy, I'm going to pursue
30:48
much more of a progressive agenda than that.
30:51
So that sounds in a way like that does sound in a way like
30:54
Clinton. And I just think Roosevelt's
30:59
views though were probably, I don't know.
31:01
I mean, I think it's not a bad comparison.
31:04
I think Roosevelt would have been to the would be to the left
31:07
of a Clinton, But there's some there's some interesting.
31:10
Similarities. FDR of course is is elected four
31:13
times, the first and only president to be elected four
31:18
times. In fact we did never even had a
31:20
three time president. It was either 2 or then you get
31:25
Roosevelt four and then it becomes unconstitutional.
31:27
So here's what I've always wondered, given the trajectory,
31:32
given his trajectory, what would have happened had he not died?
31:37
Had he lived through that fourth term and maybe stood for 1/5,
31:40
what would our government have ended up looking like?
31:44
Before I answer that, I might just sort of throw out you can
31:48
you can do this sort of alternative history in other
31:51
ways too. Like for example, what if he had
31:54
retired after 2 terms? How would he be regarded now,
31:58
right? He would have left office at a
31:59
time when we had double digit unemployment, for example.
32:04
Would he be regarded in the same way now had he looked?
32:10
That's awfully hard to say what would have happened.
32:13
I think he had. He was certainly very close to,
32:19
he would he, he was certainly very close to the, to the Soviet
32:22
Union, to, to Stalin. I mean, there's some signs of
32:27
tension by the time he died. But but I don't think he would
32:30
have pursued the kind of policy that Truman did towards the
32:36
Soviet Union. I think he would have dropped, I
32:42
think he would have dropped the atomic bomb.
32:44
So I think that there would have been that similarity.
32:48
He would have been limited in some ways, though.
32:51
This is important to remember because he in the 1944 election,
32:57
the Democrats do not have a major overwhelming majority in
33:01
Congress. Roosevelt has to kind of
33:04
abandoned Wallace. Wallace after, you know,
33:08
secretary of Commerce, still after he's vice president.
33:11
He, FDR basically promised Wallace, well, we're going to
33:15
have a really radical term, right?
33:18
But he did. He but Wallace, the Congress
33:21
hated Wallace and they refused to give him the kind of power
33:25
that that FDR had promised him. So he would have been limited in
33:30
a lot of ways by the Congress, which was much more conservative
33:33
than he was. So he talked to radical game.
33:37
He in some ways he, he's pushing this idea of the economic Bill
33:41
of Rights, for example. But could he pulled it off?
33:45
Yeah, I think he would have been limited in a lot of ways.
33:49
He was already, you know, even before he died.
33:53
He was. He was just not the FDR he'd
33:56
he'd been before. He couldn't focus on things very
33:58
well. He didn't have the kind of
34:01
energy he used to have. He gave the shortest inaugural
34:06
address on record. I think it was something like 5
34:09
minutes in 1945. Now he had he kind of.
34:14
He'd lost his fighting edge long before he died.
34:18
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34:55
If we could take a minute to talk about the, that economic
34:58
Bill of Rights or the the second Bill of Rights, as it's
35:01
sometimes called it. It's fascinating when you look
35:04
at it because it's filled with these positive rights and he,
35:09
he's obviously telling the American people you love the
35:14
Bill of Rights. I understand.
35:16
I love it too. I think deeply debatable.
35:19
But here's the second Bill of Rights, and you should think of
35:22
it in largely the same way. Except it's completely.
35:26
Different. And it it reorients citizens
35:32
relationship to government. And I'm wondering if you'd give
35:35
us any insight into the compiling of that economic Bill
35:40
of Rights. How did it come about?
35:43
Who was in on it? What was the end game?
35:47
Well, he, it doesn't just spring out of the blue because
35:50
Roosevelt was the, the, the president who gives the four
35:53
freedoms. And among those was he just sort
35:57
of says, well, we have these traditional constitutional
36:00
rights, but we also have freedom.
36:02
Freedom from what? Well, what does that mean?
36:04
So he's sort of foreshadowing that in a certain sense.
36:08
Now again, it depends on which Roosevelt you you quote.
36:12
Shortly before he gave the bill the the economic Bill of Rights,
36:17
he gave another speech where he said, well, I'm doctor win the
36:22
war now, not Dr. New Deal. And a lot of people say that,
36:26
well, he'd abandoned the New Deal.
36:28
No, he just a few weeks later, he comes up with the Economic
36:32
Bill of Rights, which is promising farmers, you know,
36:36
making all these promises to farmers that they'll have a
36:40
price sufficient to whatever to, to make a profit.
36:47
He's promising a business people are included in the economic
36:51
Bill of Rights that they're going to make a, a fair profit,
36:54
etcetera, etcetera. He goes down this long list
36:57
promising this litany of rights. And of course, a lot of these
37:00
rights are not like the Bill of Rights is that you need they,
37:04
they entail an affirmative obligation from the taxpayers.
37:08
Although, again, he never puts it that way.
37:12
I think this is something that FDR wanted.
37:16
I think it fits with things he said earlier, like the, like the
37:20
four freedoms. It's, it's an expansion to that.
37:23
It's where he's coming from ideologically and the iron.
37:27
There's of course a lot of irony attached to this.
37:29
As I said, at the same time he is pushing the economic Bill of
37:33
Rights. There are calls from the within
37:37
the administration and the public.
37:39
Well, why don't you close down the internment camps for
37:43
Japanese Americans, right? The Japanese are getting all
37:46
kinds of Japanese, Americans all getting kinds of good PR because
37:51
they're fighting in, in Europe, American troops, Japanese units.
37:59
And there's, there's no longer the hysteria that there had been
38:02
in 1942 to the extent that was ever an excuse.
38:06
But here, if you're a Japanese American at the time of the
38:10
Economic Bill of Rights, what are your economic rights?
38:14
Right to sleep in a cot and a Quonset Hut.
38:17
You know, right, You don't. If you have a job in the camps,
38:22
you're paid much less than the whites are who do those same
38:26
jobs. So this is sort of laced with
38:28
irony. And of course, you could say the
38:30
same thing for African Americans because Roosevelt really doesn't
38:34
do much for them as well. So I sort of point this out.
38:37
It's a lot of vague language. He would have had to have gotten
38:41
congressional backing for this. That might have been a challenge
38:44
for him, but it's vague. What does this mean exactly?
38:48
How do you accomplish it? He just sort of throws it out
38:50
there. You have these rights.
38:53
Well, how do you guarantee these rights?
38:55
We can guarantee freedom of speech.
38:58
You know, we can guarantee freedom of assembly.
39:01
We can guarantee the Second Amendment right.
39:03
All those are negative rights. He's introducing all these
39:06
positive rights. That means that somehow you're
39:10
going to have to find the resources.
39:12
But it's all very vague on that issue.
39:14
Now, taxes on the wealthy are like over, you know, the top
39:19
rate is, you know, over 90%, the top marginal rate.
39:24
Congress, it even Congress is saying, well, we can't do any
39:28
more than this. This is, this isn't, and we've
39:31
done about all we can to squeeze money out of the out of the
39:35
taxpayers. And of course, at that time, the
39:38
war is ending. People are sick and tired of the
39:41
wartime controls. He would have had that he would
39:45
have had to have deal with deal with that as well, I think.
39:48
So he's making a lot of promises.
39:50
He's putting down an ideological marker.
39:52
But actually getting this implemented would have been a
39:54
challenge because what it would, what would have it have meant?
39:58
You know, the natural question to ask in terms of details.
40:03
We had a couple of years ago a friend of ours, Steve Horwitz on
40:10
to talk about the the economics at the time of of FDR and one of
40:18
the things that he pointed out. Was that?
40:21
The depression ended pretty much everywhere else on the planet
40:27
within months or a year. Only in the US did it persist
40:31
for 10 years. Did people notice, Did Americans
40:35
not say at the time business would have been early,
40:38
relatively early in, in FD RS4 terms?
40:42
Do people not notice and say, look, what are you?
40:45
What are you doing to our economy?
40:47
Nobody else has this problem, but we do.
40:49
People noticed people. Pointed it out, but FDR has a
40:54
lot of luck, right? Things sort of break his way at
40:57
crucial points. And I think that we, he was,
41:01
he's created the modern welfare state and there is, there is a,
41:05
there is a kind of dependency that has occurred there, you
41:13
know, and he uses that, he used that quite effectively.
41:17
He also uses money quite effectively.
41:20
The, the, the, the, the money from the welfare state.
41:23
We have the beginning of what some people have called the
41:26
political economic cycle. And that is, you know, during
41:32
off years government spending would often decline, would often
41:37
slack it. But during the election years,
41:40
FDR would ramp up the spending. But he did it in a very
41:44
interesting way. He made effective use of
41:48
pulling. So for example, he hired the
41:50
very best pollsters and they would say to him, well, they
41:53
would say basically, look, Mr. President, this is a swing state
41:59
time. New Jersey was a swing state.
42:01
Sink money in here, sink money into these counties.
42:05
We can defeat this congressperson, right, if we
42:09
sink enough money into this particular area.
42:11
So there's an interesting situation where areas that FDR
42:14
had locked down, like the South got starved of money.
42:18
They they did not get this kind of money because they were safe
42:23
areas that were Republican there, you know, reliably
42:27
Republican. They wouldn't necessarily get
42:28
the money, but a lot of money was put into place like
42:32
Pennsylvania and 10 and not Tennessee.
42:35
Pennsylvania was was 1. New Jersey was one these spate
42:39
the swing state. So that was a that was a big
42:42
part of it. But FDR was just a hit
42:45
tremendous charisma. And I think that this is this is
42:49
very important is in his success.
42:53
And he would attack opponents, but he would do in this kind of
43:00
way that you almost like being attacked by him, right?
43:05
There was just nobody like him quite.
43:07
But it's a it's an interesting question is to to how he's able
43:11
to succeed. But I think he's just a master
43:14
at at manipulating the levers of political power, right?
43:19
The the levers of patronage and again attached to that is is
43:25
incredible charisma. I'm wondering what your your
43:28
broad take on it is when we situate Roosevelt into the
43:33
history of the presidency. Clearly he's a bit of a turning
43:37
point and things are are never going to be the same again.
43:41
So how does he ripple? How does his influence ripple
43:45
forward through through the presidencies of both parties?
43:49
Well, FDR is the surveillance state really begins under FDR
43:57
and this is this is a tool that's been used by by every
44:01
every president since then. FD Rs own son said that that his
44:06
father had invented the political weaponization of the
44:12
of the tax code of the Internal Revenue Service.
44:16
You know, as his own son said this about him, that he was a
44:18
pioneer in doing that, using it against people such as William
44:23
Randolph Hearst, who'd originally been been a supporter
44:27
of FTR, people like Huey Long and other critics of the
44:31
administration, politicized investigations that we would
44:38
associate, I guess, was with certain administrations, right,
44:42
Congressional investigations. FDR is very effective at doing
44:46
that kind of thing as well. We have a congressional
44:49
committee called the Black Committee, which is calling in
44:53
political opponents, reading their private communications,
45:00
auditing their taxes, raking them over the coals, basically.
45:06
So the surveillance state is an example of that.
45:09
The weaponization of, of the, the federal bureaucracy, you
45:15
know, is an example of that. Manipulation of the press is
45:21
quite effective in that. So I think you could say that
45:24
there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of things that you
45:28
see occur in various administrations after, after
45:32
World War 2 in those areas. I'm listening to you say this,
45:37
David. I'm wondering, do I find it
45:39
comforting or disturbing that so many of the things that we see
45:44
going on today apparently aren't new at all?
45:47
I think it's all it's comforting in the case of Donald Trump,
45:51
that Donald Trump, as I said before, is uses such a blunt
45:55
edge, right? He goes after Jimmy Kimmel, he
45:58
threatens with the FCC and what happens, Kimmel stays on the
46:01
air, right? Roosevelt would have, would have
46:04
laughed at that amateur, right? So they, so I think in, in some
46:09
sense, Trump is a guy that he shows you your hand and
46:12
Roosevelt didn't really show you your hand.
46:14
So I'd be comforted by that in some ways.
46:17
One thing that I see that it's positive during this period and
46:20
maybe maybe we're getting a comeback of this, I don't know,
46:23
is you have a lot of people that oppose Roosevelt's excesses on
46:29
both the right and the left. Because I say you have a kind of
46:32
right left pro civil liberties coalition.
46:36
And during World War 2, Roosevelt wanted to do a lot
46:41
more than he was able to do. He wanted to prosecute leading
46:46
newspaper publishers, you know, big metropolitan newspapers like
46:50
the Chicago Tribune. He wanted to go after them.
46:54
He wanted to, in turn, Japanese Americans in Hawaii, he wanted
46:58
to send them to one of the smaller islands.
47:01
But he gets pushback from, I guess you'd say in a certain
47:05
sense, a deep state pushback from, from some of his advisors
47:10
who drag their feet, who, who try to slow him down.
47:15
And he's not able to get a lot of the things that he wanted.
47:18
So he he has constraints because there is a kind of civil
47:23
liberties consciousness that has grown up, came out of World War
47:27
One. A lot of people were very upset
47:28
about that experience, but also prohibition.
47:32
So all the rights that were violated to enforce prohibition.
47:35
And so those things come together where a lot of young
47:38
lawyers, a lot of young lawyers in the Justice Department have
47:43
certain civil liberties consciousness and they're going
47:46
to drag their feet. They're going to push back.
47:48
And they do. Even Roosevelt's own attorney
47:50
general pushes back. Who would oppose Japanese and
47:55
German? He ended up going along with it.
47:57
But he, he, he, he has an effect.
48:01
And J Edgar Hoover is also against Japanese determent, for
48:05
example. So a lot of these excesses there
48:08
are brakes put on Roosevelt. They're not the similar brakes
48:11
put on Wilson before that. Maybe this is a a good place to
48:15
throw out the last question. We are a day by the time this
48:21
episode comes out, hours away from the Supreme Court hearing
48:26
the case on tariffs. The argument being that the
48:30
president has misused emergency powers, that is using powers,
48:35
using emergency powers in a situation that is not an
48:38
emergency. And here you in your book, you
48:42
describe Roosevelt as doing the same thing.
48:46
And if I, unless I'm misremembering, it went to at
48:50
least it went to some some level of court where the court had to
48:53
now deal with this question of when, when does an emergency
48:57
stop? Yeah, this is this is an area
49:00
where Roosevelt, the Democratic Party was traditionally the
49:06
freer trade party. But Roosevelt really kind of
49:10
straddle that. I think in a lot of ways he was
49:13
sort of a head protectionist tendencies and part of that was
49:17
when the New deal came, what does he want?
49:19
He wants to raise prices and he wants to, he wants to raise
49:23
wages. He wants to force them up.
49:26
So his initial attitude and some of his advisors have this
49:30
attitude that well, what we need to do is essentially seal off
49:36
the United States and the rest of the world.
49:38
We need high tariff walls. Hoover had put them in.
49:41
Well, we need, we need that right to force up prices, force
49:46
up wages in the United States. But Roosevelt had a secretary of
49:53
the of, of, of State Hull, who is much more kind of a free
49:59
trader. And he sort of let's Hall go out
50:04
there and Hall negotiates these kind of free trade agreements,
50:07
reciprocal tariffs. But then he has other advisors
50:11
that really believe in this idea of this big tariff wall.
50:15
And it was kind of a crucial showdown, I think occurred
50:17
around 1935 where one of his high tariff advisors negotiated
50:24
a barter deal with Germany. It was sort of like something
50:27
Trump would have liked. It's like, well, we won't ease
50:31
up, but we'll, we'll, we'll do an exchange right, of goods with
50:38
Germany, kind of a barter system.
50:41
Well, the Brazilians were very upset because they had their own
50:45
deal that they just signed with Hall, which was reciprocal
50:48
tariffs, meaning, you know, we will sign on to lowering
50:52
tariffs. And Roosevelt had to choose.
50:56
And I guess to his credit, he ended up initially agreeing with
51:01
this, this high tariff law with Germany.
51:05
But I, I think Hull pressed him and said, look, these two
51:08
positions are inconsistent, right?
51:11
Because our whole regime of lowering tariffs in Latin
51:15
America will collapse, right? And so he sort of had to choose
51:20
in a certain sense. But so in that sense, I think
51:23
Roosevelt ended up eventually going in a more lower tariff
51:29
direction, but in the meantime he done a lot of damage because
51:34
during a crucial time, 193319341935 he had pursued
51:39
protectionist policies and that was it, precisely the time that
51:43
Hitler's coming to power. The international economy is
51:47
collapsing, but he is pursuing these high tariff policies.
51:51
Initially Roosevelt though liked this legislation that that he
51:56
got reciprocal trade legislation because you could use that to
52:01
raise tariffs or you could lose use it to lower them.
52:05
And ultimately he agrees with Hall and they move away from
52:10
protectionism. But initially that is his bias,
52:14
and I think he does that necessity to a great extent
52:17
because the international economy is still in terrible
52:19
shape and it needs some sort of revival.
52:22
Hitler is waging economic warfare.
52:26
So he gets a little bit more pragmatic on that issue
52:28
eventually. David, if you would tell our our
52:31
our audience the name of your book once more and where they
52:34
might get it. Well, it's called FDRA, New
52:37
Political Life, and you can get it on Amazon.
52:41
It's published by Karis Books and it's it's affordable.
52:46
So I think this is a full scale biography of FDR. I've done some
52:53
other work before that, but this is looks at foreign policy.
52:57
It looks at his his political rise, it looks at his economic
53:02
policy and it looks at a lot of issues that maybe people haven't
53:06
heard of before, such as a very famous sex scandal involving
53:11
attempts to go after same sex marriage in the Navy that almost
53:16
brings down his career. David, this has been great.
53:19
Thank you for joining us again. And let's not make it 4 years
53:23
before we have you A. Third time, yeah, we'll sit.
53:26
We'll see you sooner this time. All right, Good, good.
53:29
I'll, I'll count on that then. Thank you very much.
53:31
Thank you, David. At Words and Numbers we spend a
53:34
lot of time talking about what's going on in the economy and
53:37
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53:41
thing. The greatest threat facing
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