politicalcivility.com Blog

FDR made the “forgotten man” idea popular.  What most people don’t realize is that FDR used the idea incorrectly.  The father of the idea of the forgotten man was a Yale professor named William Graham Sumner.  Sumner’s forgotten man was a part of an algebra equation that goes as follows: Person A and Person B want to help Person X.  This equation describes a true charitable impulse.  The forgotten man appears when we change the equation to look like this: Person A and Person B join together to pass a law that forces Person C into co-funding their project for Person X.  In this equation the forgotten man is Person C.

Person C is the common or forgotten man, not Person X.  Person C does not take from the government or others; he only contributes and because he does not need or want the government’s help, he is soon forgotten for he cannot be purchased with a program. 

FDR twisted the concept to refer to Person X and in so doing became the first president on a large scale to essentially buy voting blocks of forgotten men.  Under this scenario the floodgates of government spending have ballooned, because special interest groups under the guise of the forgotten man are pleading for ever increasing dollars for their particular forgotten man.  A most recent example is the current SCHIP bill being debated, which now says that the vast middle class America is now a forgotten man.  Forgive my cynicism here, but the middle class is not forgotten man, though this is the forgotten man that surprisingly enough was the group of forgotten men that benefitted most from FDR’s welfare policies and not the poor. 

As we look at our current battles in the US Legislature over porkbarrel politics and earmarking, perhaps we may find our answer or counter in bringing back to the minds of voters the true concept of the forgotten man as espoused by Sumner and by adding this new forgotten man to the debate: our children and grandchildren who will be paying for our excess.

In closing let me share some comments from Amity Shlaes, a Bloomberg columnist and the author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

“The overall lesson of this is that we can continue to respect many aspects of Roosevelt’s presidency today.  But we shouldn’t have false nostalgia about it.  After all, it was Roosevelt’s political machinations in the 1936 campaign…that gave us the ‘earmarks’ that bedevil Congress today…the new forgotten men are the grandchildren who will pay if we do not give up some of that costly nostalgia.”  (”The Legacy of the 1936 Election”, Amity Shlaes, Imprimis, September 2007, v. 36, No.9)

While presenting at a conference not to long ago, the question was posed about what can be done with respect to campaign finance or other reform.  Obviously any reform that comes out of Washington should be looked at with a skeptical eye, because those proposing the reform if they did it right would potentially put their jobs in greater jeopardy.  I don’t think, as saintly as these folks are, would be that altruistic.

So what’s the answer, since this blog is about solutions, not just finding problems.

1. Term limits: I have wrestled with this issue for some time and have gone back and forth regarding term limits.  Bottom line is that I am not sure that this is the best alternative, though it may prove necessary.  If this is ultimately the path we must take it is a sad commentary on us as a voting public that we can’t do enough homework and be well enough informed and active to get rid of politicians who are not doing their job.
2. Spending reform: Any spending reform will help the incumbent.  They have two things their opponent does not have a) a bully pulpit and b) 2-6 years of significant press coverage.  To dislodge an incumbent usually requires the challenger to spend 2:1 over the incumbent, thus any spending “limits” or reform will ultimately give incumbents the edge, which makes you question again the McCain-Fiengold legislation as reform or job security legislation.
3. Divine Right Culture Shift: I think this is the only long-term real answer.  The culture shift I am referring to is that an incumbent has the “divine right” of his/her party’s endorsement.  While helping a friend run for US Senate in Ohio, I ran into this very dilemma.  Mike DeWine was the current senator and in the general public was unpopular, but every Republican dinner we went to it was as if he was already the candidate and that there was no need for a primary.  All the skids were greased; all the endorsements were lined up; all the fundraisers were taken care of by the party.  DeWine had to earn nothing even though he’d dumped on his own party multiple times during his tenure.  If parties, both democrats and republicans, can get away from making it easy for an incumbent to get his/her party’s endorsement; when politicians know that each primary election will be a battle, they will stop taking for granted their party and start sticking to principle.

Accountability in politics, what a novel concept.

Private Property (Ownership)

I think one of the best philosophical summaries of this principle came from former P&G CEO, William Cooper Procter, when he explained the rationale of the profit sharing program he implemented in the late 1800’s.  Procter felt that in making the employees owners of the company that the “interests of the company and employee” would be inseparably connected.  So as they became owners they would be less likely to cut corners, cheat or do unethical things because they would be damaging their “property.”  With this “ownership” philosophy P&G has become one of the largest companies in the world, and I can tell you from having worked there that I’ve never worked for a company where people watched the stock so closely or talked more about how what they were doing was going to help the company and mean it.

Obviously Procter understood something about human nature.  By creating ownership, Procter created a keen sense of stewardship amongst employees.  Waste, corruption, etc. wouldn’t be tolerated because employees had a vested interest to maximize and take care of company resources.  Employees policed themselves.

The flipside of this is government ownership (socialism, communism, etc.) where we as citizens are essentially renters.  In this scenario there is no incentive to conserve, protect, etc. because I have no vested interest.  Living in Russia for two years really opened my eyes to the evils to business, the environment, the individual and to the country when government was the sole proprietor versus millions of individual owners.

Here’s an interesting question in closing: if you were buying a used car and had the choice between two cars, which were exactly the same make, model, color, price, etc., where one was from a rental agency (budget, avis, enterprise, etc.) or one from your meticulous next door neighbor, which one do you buy?  If you chose the second, congratulations you understand the value of private property.  If you chose the first, remind me not to drive in the same car with you. 

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An interesting side note here is that those pushing global warming energy policies should be extending ownership and private property if they’re really serious about making the earth more eco friendly.

Sorry to jump off on that, but it just had to come out. 

Let’s cut through all the garbage in the education debate and let’s focus on one factor: parental involvement.  This is the only variable we can consistently point to as a means to improve educational achievement.  More money is not the answer.  Better student teacher ratios are not the answer.  Fancy computers, facilities and brand new books are not the answer either.  But year after year the educational establishment trots out these issues as the cure all for what ails public education, and year after year they get what they want, by in large. 

It’s time to stop the madness.  It is time to put parents back in charge of education.  It is time to trust parents again. 

This is going to take more than an effort at the legislature.  There needs to be a change of direction from the men in black robes, who in the 9th circuit court recently ruled that parental rights stop at the school gates.  This verbage is in reference to a group of parents attempting to influence cirriculum at their school, which they found objectionable. 

This type of mentality is also pervasive among education experts, in Utah and elsewhere.  Parents are often a necessary evil and are tolerated but not accepted.  Is it any wonder that parents are removing themselves, and where funds permit, their children from the system.  Public schools have a bias toward parental exclusion and toward blanket prescription.  This type of activity breeds cynicism and parental inactivity, the very tool that will help government funded schools achieve successful results.

While vouchers are not the end all be all, they help in turning government funded education back to parents and to treating them as partners and consumers rather than the people who babysit the schools’ children from 3:00 in the afternoon until 8:00 in the morning.