Historians: Please compare the present dystopia to historic examples

[lpetrich]

Stephen Skowronek has a theory of "political time", about the types of Presidencies in reference to the political regimes that the US has had. Each regime has a dominant party and an opposition party, and the dominant party may be either strong or weak. The types:

Reconstructing: from the opposition party, dominant party weak: starts a regime that has the President's party as the dominant one.

Articulating: from the dominant party, dominant party strong: elaborates on the governing paradigm of the regime.

Preemptive: from the opposition party, dominant party strong: despite opposition to the governing paradigm, nevertheless works within it.

Disjunctive: from the dominant party, dominant party weak: prelude to the end of the regime.

 

[lpetrich]

What time is it? and skowronek-time.pdf

In Stephen Skowronek's telling, these disjunctive Presidents are succeeded by reconstructing ones:

• (No President), George Washington -- party system 1 begins (added by me for completeness) -- lib, con
• John Adams, Thomas Jefferson -- party system 1 continues -- con, lib
• John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson -- party system 2 begins -- con, lib
• Franklin Pierce & James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln -- party system 3 begins -- con, lib
• (no clear transition, Republican Party continues dominance) -- party system 4 begins -- con, lib
• Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- party system 5 begins -- con, lib
• Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan -- party system 6 begins (long transition before and after) -- lib, con

I've added which party system, and which Schlesinger phases.

Here are the Presidents over the last century:

Art Harding R, Art Coolidge R, Dis Hoover R, Rec Roosevelt D, Art Truman D, Pre Eisenhower R, Art Kennedy D, Art Johnson D, Pre Nixon R, Pre Ford R, Dis Carter D, Rec Reagan R, Art Bush I R, Pre Clinton D, Art Bush II R, Pre Obama D

Donald Trump and Joe Biden are odd cases.

 

[lpetrich]

From skowronek-time.pdf

With sections and my annotations

• (Reconstructing) jackson and roosevelt: political upheaval and the challenge of regime construction
• (Articulating) polk and kennedy: the dilemmas of interest management in an established regime
• (Disjunctive) pierce and carter: establishing credibility in an enervated regime

After discussing the emergence of Andrew Jackson from the ruins of the Democratic-Republican Party,

In the election of 1932, the collapse of the old ruling party dovetailed with and was overshadowed by the Depression. The Democratic Party of 1932 offered nothing if not hope for economic recovery, and Roosevelt’s candidacy found its special meaning in that prospect almost in spite of the candidate’s own rather conservative campaign rhetoric. The Depression had made a mockery of President Herbert Hoover’s early identification of his party with prosperity, and the challenge of formulating a response to the crisis broke the Republican ranks and threw the party into disarray. The Roosevelt appeal was grounded not in substantive proposals or even in partisan ideology but in a widespread perception of Republican incompetence, even intransigence, in the face of national economic calamity.

 

[lpetrich]

From skowronek-time.pdf - discussing Jimmy Carter: "The historical record is full of examples of presidents who have offered and conscientiously tried to rehabilitate old and battered political establishments." -- John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover -- which makes them disjunctive Presidents.

It is instructive that each of these presidents was singled out in his time and is still often treated today as a political incompetent, plain and simple. The problem, Americans like to tell themselves, is that these men lacked the political skills needed to make the presidency work and to succeed as a leader. Carter was accused of being too technocratic in his approach to policy and politics, of leading like an engineer, of having too narrow an interest in the details of government, of becoming consumed by the nation’s problems and never getting on top of them. Some observers called him “Jimmy Hoover” to dramatize his incompetence and drive home his resemblance to the last engineer to make it to the White House.

But was it really incompetence on their part? Or trying to do something almost impossibly difficult?

The technocratic approach to leadership authority—the tendency to submerge problems of substance in the mechanics and processes of government—is especially well suited to the election of a leader affiliated with a vulnerable regime.

 

[lpetrich]

How does Donald Trump fit in? Is he some technocrat trying to do the impossible? Or something completely different?

skowronek-time.pdf

Jimmy Carter, heir to an aging liberal establishment, told the American people that there were “no easy answers” to the problems of the day and that the issues plaguing liberalism had to be addressed by getting into the government smart people who could deal with those issues in all their complexity.

Consider Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech, though he nowhere used the word "malaise" in it: Crisis of Confidence | American Experience | Official Site | PBS

Carter malaise speech: The decadeslong backlash explains why Biden won’t talk about overconsumption when addressing the supply chain crisis.

That’s because the Biden administration’s struggle to frame the supply chain crisis recalls another besieged presidency from our past: that of Jimmy Carter. Remember Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech, as it came to be known (though the word malaise appears nowhere in the actual speech)? Amid an energy crisis, Carter went on national television on July 15, 1979, and called for America to return to a sense of civic republicanism (lower case) that would unify citizens through a call to shared sacrifice for a common good.

Jimmy Carter seemed hapless and pessimistic, resigned to the prospect of national decline. The Iran hostage crisis didn't help very much either.

What time is it?

Two pertinent historical patterns help bring this curious situation into sharper relief. First is that, with each new iteration of a presidency opposed to reigning political orthodoxy, the mobilizing energy behind its critique of those priorities strengthens and expectations of a political breakthrough are heightened. Consider the sequence of Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt: each successive Democrat delivered a more direct and potent punch to the Republican orthodoxy of the period. The sequence of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan follows the same pattern: each more forcefully challenged the New Deal orthodoxy before Reagan reset the clock. A comparison of the relatively restrained Clinton to the more-aggressive Obama fits that pattern, suggesting that a third iteration of Democratic leadership against the reigning conservative orthodoxy harbors the potential for a decisive breakthrough and reordering.

Joe Biden doesn't seem like such a President. He sometimes seems like some caretaker President who was appointed until some real leader can come in, a sort of Laphonza Butler President.

 

[lpetrich]

But the second pattern to consider cuts the other way: it reminds us that that these breakthrough moments were always immediately proceeded by a disgraced exemplar of the old regime’s incompetence, never by a fellow opposition leader. The decisive breakthrough under Franklin Roosevelt was more directly energized by the implosion of the Hoover administration than by the foreshadowing of Wilson; the decisive breakthrough under Reagan was energized more directly by the implosion of the Carter administration than by the foreshadowing of Nixon. It is hard to imagine a political reconstruction without the prior political implosion.

Or even earlier, the failures of John Quincy Adams and Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.

Donald Trump is much like Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter: an outsider who claims technical expertise, except as a business leader rather than as an engineer. "Only I can fix it", he said in his campaign.

But he is very different in one way: most other national Republican politicians adore him, or at least make a big fuss about how much they adore him. They are also very willing to bail him out, even after he organized a coup to continue in power.

 

[lpetrich]

The Cycle of Regimes | The Cycles of Constitutional Time | Oxford Academic

American political history has featured a series of successive governing regimes in which political parties compete. During each regime one of the parties tends to dominate politics practically and ideologically. The regime rises and falls. We are at the end of the Reagan regime, which began in the 1980s. Stephen Skowronek’s model of presidential leadership in political time suggests that Donald Trump is probably a disjunctive president who brings the Reagan regime to a close. Politics during the last years of a regime are often confusing and dysfunctional, and this period is no exception. Trump may avoid disjunction and give the Reagan regime a second wind, like William McKinley did in 1896. Although this possibility is very real, it runs counter to long-term demographic trends. The next regime is more likely to feature the Democrats as the dominant party.

For 4 years I've written that Trump was a disjunctive leader. Now I'm not so sure.

I’ve written before that while Trump seems to best fit in the disjunctive category, as the leader who comes at the end of a political era, his presidency has some hallmarks of the other leadership types. His norm-breaking, dominance of the political environment, and influence over his party looks more like reconstructive politics. Impeachments and individualist claims are associated with preemptive leaders.

Back in 2016, author Julia Azari wrote Trump's presidency signals the end of the Reagan era - Vox on Donald Trump as a disjunctive President, but JA now thinks that he is also preemptive-like. She then discusses preemptive Presidents.

Preemptive leaders, on the other hand, come in from the non-majority party, often by accident. These are presidents like conservative (Bourbon) Democrat Grover Cleveland, “third way” Bill Clinton and “modern Republican” Dwight Eisenhower. They come to office in three-candidate contests, with a plurality of the vote, or – as with Eisenhower – by way of personal popularity. They borrow ideas and policies from the other party, never quite establishing ideological authenticity either way.

A key feature of preemptive presidents is that they are, as a result of their hybrid ideologies, usually understood in individual terms. These, importantly, also have been the presidents who got impeached or came close: Clinton, Nixon, the party-less Andrew Johnson.

 

[lpetrich]

Here are types of reforms in each Schlesinger liberal era.

Era	Gov	Reg	Wfr	Env	Lab	Rac	Fem
Revolution	X
Jefferson
Jackson	X
Civil War	X		X			X
Progressive	X	X		X	X		X
New Deal		X	X	X	X
Sixties	X	X	X	X		X	X

What's what:

• Gov: government structure
• Reg: government regulation
• Wfr: welfare-state measures
• Env: environmentalist measures
• Lab: labor issues: unions, regulation
• Rac: race-relations issues
• Fem: feminist issues

What types of reforms are coming up? Looking at what I've seen proposed, they fall into all of these categories.

 

[lpetrich]

Frank J. Klingberg has a similar sort of cyclic theory of history, but about foreign policy. He proposes an alternation between extroversion, willing to challenge other great powers, and introversion, being isolationist.

From	To	Length	Type	What
1776	1798	22	Int	Revolution, establishment of government
1798	1824	26	Ext	French naval war, Louisiana Purchase, War of 1812
1824	1844	20	Int	Nullification crisis, Texas question, non-assistance of Canada revolt
1844	1871	27	Ext	Texas and Oregon annexations, Mexican War
1871	1891	20	Int	Non-participation in the Europeans' Scramble for Africa
1891	1919	18	Ext	Spanish-American War, World War I
1919	1940	21	Int	League of Nations rejection, Neutrality Acts
1940	1967	27	Ext	World War II, Cold War, Korean and Vietnam Wars
1967	1987	20	Int	Vietnamization, détente, end of the Cold War
1987			Ext	Post-Cold-War assertion, Gulf War, War on Terror

Introverted phases end because of challenges from other great powers, whether real or perceived. Extroverted phases end because of burnout from fighting some big war. The War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, the Vietnam War.

Where are we now? I think that we may be starting a new introverted era, and I conclude that from feeling burned out from the War on Terror, especially the long occupation of Afghanistan.

A notable feature of the Klingberg cycles are that it is out of sync with the internal cycles that I've discussed. I've tested that claim by finding out the overlap of each type of period between the Schlesinger and the Klingberg cycles. I found them to be essentially uncorrelated, meaning that they run separately from each other.

 

[lpetrich]

The internal cycles have various correlations. The Schlesinger cycles are the most fine-grained ones, with the others typically spanning more than one Schlesinger period.

The First Party System was the only one to start early in a conservative phase, but that was because there were no parties before it. The next four party systems started either at the beginning of a liberal period or late in the previous conservative period. The Sixth Party System is an oddball with its slow transition from the Fifth one. It started in the early 1960's and ended in the early 1990's.

All the creedal-passion periods, Revolution-Constitution, the Jackson Era, the Progressive Era, and the Sixties Era, were liberal periods, with a separation of roughly 60 - 70 years. However, some liberal periods were not creedal-passion ones, like the Civil War Era and the New Deal Era.

Both race-relations upheavals happened in liberal periods: the Civil War Era and the Sixties Era. Both of them were followed by exceptionally long conservative periods, Gilded Ages I and II.

Multiple Constitutional amendments happen mostly in liberal periods: Revolution-Constitution (the Bill of Rights), the Civil War Era, the Progressive Era, and the Sixties Era. However, the Jackson Era and the New Deal Era were short on Constitutional amendments.

 

[lpetrich]

The US tried to conquer Canada twice, once in the American Revolutionary War, and once in the War of 1812, and failing both times. So it's significant that the US passed on assisting the Canadian rebels of the early 1830's.

Some people seem to think that cyclic theories of history involve cycles that are somehow independent of human volition, but these cycles are collective effects that are the result of human volition.


I like the term "Gilded Age II" for our current era, because it has a lot in common with the original Gilded Age. From  Gilded Age,

The Gilded Age, the term for the period of economic boom which began after the American Civil War and ended at the turn of the century was applied to the era by historians in the 1920s, who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser-known novels, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The book (co-written with Charles Dudley Warner) satirized the promised "golden age" after the Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion.

For the current era,  Reagan era is a common name, also "neoliberal era".

 

[lpetrich]

I think that there are several signs that the US is struggling toward a new progressive era, though I'm not ready to declare the end of Gilded Age II.

• Election and almost-election of unabashedly progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC
• Small-dollar financing as an alternative to big-money donors
• Progressive policies in places like Minnesota
• Increased labor-union activism

But there are disquieting signs that the US is starting to resemble its pre-Civil-War years.

The US had been divided about slavery for all of its earlier years, and that is evident in the original Constitution, which referred to enslaved inhabitants of states as "other Persons", and compromised on counting them as 3/5 of free people for determining Congressional representation. But in the early days, many slaveowners seemed half-regretful about slavery, not enjoying being masters, but then again, not wanting to give up the lifestyles that that their slaves' labors had made possible. Something like some alcoholic who cannot get him/herself to stop drinking CH3CH2OH.

But by the early 19th cy., slavery had become very profitable, with assistance from Eli Whitney's cotton gin ("cotton engine"), a machine that separates seeds and cotton fibers. That machine made it unnecessary to remove cotton seeds by hand, and that helped make cotton growing a major industry in the Southern states.

Slavery apologists defended slavery as a great thing, with some slavery apologists making slavery seem like benevolent feudalism, and with some of them proposing the  Mudsill theory of society, that higher civilization depends on having a class of people who do all the menial labor to support it.

Northerners chafed under the "slave power" or "slaveocracy", what they considered domination of national politics by the slave states. Many northerners didn't like the idea of having to compete with enslaved workers, or at least that's the theory that I've often seen.

In 1820, the free states and the slave states agreed to the Missouri Compromise, that new states were to be admitted in pairs, one free state and one slave state. That helped preserve the balance of power between the two blocs of states for the next three decades, but it broke down in the 1850's, where pro-free-state and pro-slave-state factions physically fought each other in the Kansas Territory, making it "Bleeding Kansas".

In 1857 was the  Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court decision, often called the worst one ever.

• Persons of African descent cannot be and were never intended to be citizens under the U.S. Constitution. Plaintiff is without standing to file a suit.
• The Property Clause is applicable only to lands possessed at the time of the Constitution's ratification (1787). As such, Congress cannot ban slavery in the territories. The Missouri Compromise is unconstitutional.
• The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits the federal government from freeing slaves brought into federal territories.

Also in the 1850's, the Whig Party broke up, split by the slavery issue. The party formed in the 1830's from opponents of President Andrew Jackson, and it spanned both North and South. But that ended up to be the party's undoing.

The Republican Party emerged as its successor, with many ex-Whigs and the Free Soil Party joining it. Among the ex-Whigs was Abraham Lincoln, the party's first President.

 Party divisions of United States Congresses

 

[lpetrich]

 Cyclical theory (United States history) - mentions historian Samuel Huntington's bursts of "creedal passion", wanting to restore US governance to the "American Creed" -- "In terms of American beliefs, government is supposed to be egalitarian, participatory, open, noncoercive, and responsive to the demands of individuals and groups. Yet no government can be all these things and still remain a government."

I've seen an effort to argue that the Green New Deal is a way of getting governance back to this ideal, an effort that seems rather weak to me. But IMO, the GND is intended to invoke something more recent, FDR's New Deal. So it represents a different sort of creedal passion.