Category: General

Domestic Policy, General, General, Politics

100 Days of Myopia

Bob Claude |

Source: “Pictures of TR & FDR Together”, Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. 16, No.1 in Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Theodore Roosevelt Center, Dickinson State University

Nothing worth having comes without effort – Theodore Roosevelt

Since the purpose of this website was to develop a positive ideology of nationalism, I have avoided keeping up with the chaotic first three months of the second Trump administration. We have now reached the vaunted 100-day mark in his presidency, which is too often used to judge a president’s success. It leads to a temptation to focus on quick, shallow policy victories at the cost of lasting change and thus risks squandering a mandate.

Trump’s victory came amid claims that it heralded a historic realignment towards a new nationalist majority in the American electorate.  However, history shows that lasting political realignments are processes, not specific events. They begin before the election and are then fostered by the victors afterwards. The campaign doesn’t end, but continues as the victor explains their new national priorities and broadens his movement’s connection to the American public.  As Trump should have learned in his first term, he had no automatic sinecure, but was simply on probation. His support may have been a mile wide, but was only an inch thick.

The obsession with a president’s first 100 days harks back to the first administration of Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, Franklin.  In an attempt to revive the economy during the Great Depression, he used the Democratic majority in Congress to enact a wealth of legislation to stabilize the economy and create jobs.  No one knew what would work, and so it was the policy equivalent of throwing mud against the wall and seeing what stuck. The Supreme Court voided some of it as unconstitutional. Most economists now agree it had little impact and that the economy did not fully recover until the advent of World War II.

This, however, does not mean it was ineffective.  Americans may not have known much about the alphabet soup of federal agencies FDR created, but every family huddled around their radios each week to listen to his fireside chats.  In a calm avuncular manner, Roosevelt used this relatively new medium to promote his legislative program and explain his philosophy. This created the support that enabled him to eventually pass iconic liberal goals like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act in the latter two years of his first term.  It cemented a realignment that continued for almost 40 years and still is a part of our political landscape.

Trump has an opportunity to achieve a new nationalist version of the Roosevelt majority. Globalist Democrats are in disarray and their popular support has sank to historic lows. It is a golden opportunity for the kind of debate that would cement a lasting nationalist mandate. Instead, Trump 2.0 has taken the easy way out by making the same myopic mistakes as Trump 1.0, but on steroids. It has been dominated by Trump’s desire for revenge and his addiction to executive orders, many of which are futile, bombastic, unconstitutional or all three at once.

Theodore Roosevelt certainly pushed the boundaries of presidential power (see this earlier article), but as part of a coherent discussion of the policy reasons for it.  His most important political role was as a cheerleader for local Progressive reform movements. Much like FDR, he enjoyed using the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to promote his philosophy and embraced the possibilities for persuasion that the legislative process offered. It was hard work, but worth the reward. Instead, Trump’s arrogance and dictatorial methods risk reviving globalist legitimacy while justifying the use of similar tactics by a future president of that ideology.

2024 Election, Antitrust & Trade Regulation, Domestic Policy, General, Immigration, Politics

2024 American Nationalist Voting Index – The Square Deal

Bob Claude |

Score

Harris +4 Trump +2

Theodore Roosevelt campaigned against privilege primarily because he saw its corrosive effects on the average American family. A devoted family man himself, TR worked to prevent child labor and improve working conditions so that workers could fully contribute to their families and to the nation as a whole. He was realistic about the changes necessary to give those families a “square deal”, saying that  

But when I say, I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.

Today’s American workers face similar obstacles to building strong families and contributing to society. Redistribution of wealth through taxation will not solve these problems. Only changing the laws and the rules of today’s game will build the strong families and strong America necessary to meet the challenges of the future.

Immigration

The sudden arrival of over 20,000 Haitian immigrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, has become a microcosm of the nationwide impact on American citizens of the Biden-Harris open immigration policy. The issue was never about the damn cats.  It was about importing and dropping a huge community of foreign nationals on a city already struggling with unemployment and decline (see this post from X). A local plant then justified on the grounds that the Haitians were better employees. Meanwhile, rents continued to climb and the local school district had to try to integrate a large influx of students, many of which did not speak English.  

American workers were just beginning to catch up to living costs when this hurricane of immigrants hit them. Even the Federal Reserve Chairman recognizes that this wave of over 8 million immigrants has increased the unemployment rate. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration also allows the tech industry to use the H1B program to undercut wages of STEM workers despite the fact that the STEM unemployment rate is higher than the national average.

This mass importation of foreign immigrants represents a new slavery this administration celebrates rather than fights (see this past post). Vice President Harris has taken even more extreme positions in favor of it.  Her failures and those of President Biden rate a minus 2.5 score. Unfortunately, President Trump has moved more toward the corporate globalist approach. He calls for the unrealistic goal of “mass deportation”, closing the border and E-verify while also supporting automatic green cards for foreign students. He thus earns only a plus 1 score on the issue.

Antitrust and Consumer Protection

This is an issue where the Biden – Harris administration has really shined. They reinvigorated antitrust enforcement by fully utilizing the Clayton Act to object to mergers and bringing suit against tech companies like Google and Facebook for using their market power for monopolization. The Federal Trade Commission under its Chair Lina Khan has also led on antitrust and in expanding basic consumer protections.  In particular, the ban on the abuse of non-compete clauses will free many workers to fully utilize their skills where they can be better compensated (though I worry the ban exceeds the Commission’s jurisdiction).

Unfortunately, in the rush to raise campaign funds from Silicon Valley, Vice President Harris refuses to say whether she would reappoint Khan to the Commission. Nevertheless, she has expressed support for the antitrust campaign and earns a plus 2.5 as a result. While Trump initiated the Google case during his term, he has changed his position and parroted the corporate line against these efforts. It is possible that RFKJr will be able to turn him back to a more active antitrust role, but for now, he rates a minus 1.

Child Tax Credit

American families have historically struggled to raise their children with little help from federal and state governments. During the COVID pandemic, the Biden Administration’s COVID stimulus plan expanded the child tax credit to as much as $3,600 a year and included low income families who were previously ineligible for the credit because they were not paying taxes (see this past post). This halved the child poverty rate, which then rose when the program ended in 2022.

Both Harris and Trump support expanding the credit.  Harris proposes a $6,000 annual credit while Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance has filed legislation to expand it to $5,000 per year. As this article relates, the most likely difference between the two plans is that Harris may limit the credit to low-income families, which would reduce the impact on the federal deficit. Both campaigns deserve credit for supporting families by expanding the credit, with Harris earning a 2.5 score and Trump a score of 2.

Housing

Home is where the heart of a family resides, but more and more families are unable to realize that dream because of lack of affordable housing.  There are many causes – high building costs, local zoning regulations, private equity purchases of local housing for investment and high mortgage rates, among others.  It is a national crisis that needs a comprehensive response.

Vice President Harris has proposed a plan that would give first time home buyers a $25,000 tax credit, create incentives for home builders and control the purchases of single-family homes for investment. She also said she would challenge regulations that limit the construction of homes.  Here in the West, we are unfortunately familiar with the environmental restrictions on logging that have significantly reduced lumber supply. Color me skeptical that Harris will actually break with environmental groups on these restrictions. However, the plan is a good start and merits at least a 1.5 rating.

Trump’s plan is less comprehensive and relies on lowering corporate tax rates, cutting federal regulations and reducing demand by deporting immigrants.  It is not clear how much this would impact the problem and so it only rates a zero score.

Conclusion

While both candidates score positively on achieving a square deal for America’s families, the differences in method matter.  Vice President Harris appears to believe she can ameliorate the socioeconomic crisis of open immigration with federal regulations and dollars. Her proposals would help but would be more effective and cheaper if immigration was controlled. Trump understands that immigration is an underlying cause of many of American worker’s problems. However, except for the child tax credit, he opposes further federal help to solve them. A nationalist like TR would recognize we need progress on both fronts if we are to truly reduce wealth inequality and give American families the hope, stability and square deal they deserve.

Domestic Policy, General, Nationalist Theory, Politics, The Crisis of the American Spirit

The Crisis of the American Spirit – The Rise of Identity Politics

Bob Claude |

“We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put plans into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and nothing else. Moreover, we have as little use for people who carry religious prejudices into our politics as for those who carry prejudices of caste or nationality.”

Theodore Roosevelt, “True Americanism”, The Forum Magazine, April 1894

This is the fifth article in my series “The Crisis of the American Spirit”. Please click on the “Politics – Nationalist Theory” tab in menu above to read the previous four, filed in reverse chronological order.

When President Bill Clinton declared “The era of big government is over”, he threw the modern-day Democratic Party into one of the greatest ideological crises in it’s history. Thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, it had abandoned the Jefferson-Jackson philosophy of states rights and small government in favor of Theodore Roosevelt’s call for a strong national government dedicated to effective regulation.  Now, one of its own said it had to find a new ideological anchor. It found it a new form of political division that rejected Theodore Roosevelt’s call to unity above and, instead, echoed its old platform – identity politics.  

The need to reconcile American diversity was recognized early in our nation’s history. The first major identity groups were sectional or state based.  People identified as New Yorkers or Virginians and the Constitution was crafted to recognize the validity of those identities and preserve them while trying to build a cohesive national government at the same time.  The inevitable tension between these two goals led to sectional based political clashes between West and East and eventually North and South.  Back then, the Democratic Party championed state’s rights against those who favored a strong federal government. Their approach dominated American public policy for most of the first 70 years of our history.

Meanwhile, the seeds of our current identity group politics were being sown by our failure to address the stain of black slavery.  Attempts to reconcile the moral contradiction of slavery within the state’s rights framework failed miserably.  Even the Southern slave states eventually rejected this approach and imposed their own version of a national solution for slavery in the form of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The backlash against it led to the founding of the Republicans, which became the new party advocating a strong national government. The victory of the North in the bloody Civil War that followed enshrined the dominance of the national government. People no longer said “The United States are”. They said “ The United States is”.

Despite it’s new power, the national government was unable to prevent the re-subjugation of black Americans, mainly because it remained a federalist system dependent on at least state acquiescence to national policies.  The 1960’s civil rights movement offered a glimmer of hope for real racial socioeconomic integration. However, as I mentioned earlier in this series, the blue collar jobs that enabled the early immigrants to achieve the American Dream moved overseas and the education system was allowed to deteriorate, thus making it difficult to for blacks to compete in the new economy.

Black Americans’ isolation eventually forced them into a form of nationalism, which became their main source of identity. Meanwhile, the 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of the women’s liberation, gay rights and disability rights movements. They also emphasized the importance of group identity and solidarity, each believing they were special victims suffering unique discrimination and oppression despite laws designed to prevent discrimination and integrate them into broader American society. Instead, these groups focused on their different American histories and pinned their primary loyalty to their particular group rather than their country, which they believed was an enemy.

Sadly, instead of challenging this mindset, the Republican Party of Donald Trump doubled down on it by fostering a new identity group.  The MAGA ideology claims to preserve America, but in fact teaches its adherents to think of themselves as victims and members of a white Christian subgroup who are under attack by other groups.  This kind of victimhood is fundamentally unAmerican whether it occurs on the left or right and Theodore Roosevelt would have condemned it as such.

Nevertheless, our current political class stokes these identity group divisions for their own political benefit. They do so by engaging in rhetoric that inflames a group’s grievances and feelings of victimhood without developing a sustainable solution. They then try to assemble winning coalitions by piling up monolithic voting groups like building blocks. This cynical strategy conveniently masks the fact that many of those group’s grievances stem from the same elitist exploitation and that, in the end, each group has more in common than they think.

A bridge leader like TR would have recognized the danger this kind of politics posed to American strength.  He would have reminded Americans of Lincoln’s maxim that “A house divided against itself cannot stand” and urged all groups toward tolerance of their differences.  He would have called all Americans to unify to address inequalities, while reminding blacks, gay and other minorities that their progress to this point came because they were Americans and benefited from our shared beliefs in justice and equality. 

Thankfully, voters have started to wise up to this cynical manipulation.  The overwhelming support Democrats enjoyed among blacks and working-class voters has suffered significant inroads from Republicans while higher income voters are increasingly Democratic. Despite the best efforts of the political class, Americans are starting to think for themselves and explore new, less divisive and more relevant political groupings.

Usually, such breakdowns of historic voting blocs herald a major realignment of American politics toward a more relevant ideological debate. If this new politics is to succeed, it must challenge the forces that have weakened the American community spirit and unify us to face the realistic limits of today’s multipolar world.  It starts with presenting the American people with clear and relevant choices, hopefully through a bridge leader like TR. My next series of articles will set forth why these new choices will be between the ideologies of globalism and American nationalism.