Continued: “Roots of Postwar Politics”
Preface: I hate studying politics. It is absolutely the most difficult arena for me…
During and after WWII there were recognizable changes regarding the relationship of business and government. The business sector pursued a positive image to avoid blame for the depression. Business also became more monopolistic. There were also changes in the nature of demagoguery. Whoever appealed most to the anger and frustration resulting from war experienced influence and rise in the political arena. According to Wolfe, business and military were more successful at directing “this sentiment against the New deal than New Dealers were to use it to their own advantage.” Politics in the postwar era became a process of securing business confidence in order to secure voters.
Wolfe explains the emergence of a growth coalition advocating economic expansion through policies of macroeconomics, acceptable to the monopoly sector of the economy. By using surplus, this growth coalition, planned to enable the poor and minorities to take part in the reshaping of cities through domestic policies. Regarding foreign activity, they planned to economic domination with military power to maintain American influence, while incorporating the poor into the growth through aid and developmental assistance. Wolfe states, “the growth coalition should properly be characterized by its dominant belief: the idea that growth at home and expansion abroad could unify the interests of the dominant sectors of the economy with an electoral base that would keep it in power so long as growth continued.” Eisenhower is credited with embracing such growth, therefore legitimizing it.
Wolfe also addresses the changing political vocabulary in the United States. He first defines liberals as “those who believed that the government should play a positive role in correcting the abuses of capitalism by promoting a concern with equality and social justice.” In contrast, he states, “Conservatives argued that business had made America great and that therefore as few reforms as possible should be passed that would undermine its privileges.” As with most political ideas and terminology, the meaning of both liberal and conservative shifted over time. Liberals became those that pursued rapid growth, while conservatives embraced consistent and tempered growth. According to Wolfe, liberals were willing to pursue rapid growth using government and that the result of growth would be a fiscal dividend useful to expansion of welfare benefits. The same principles of domestic expansion, advocated by liberals,were applied to foreign policy with the creation of the national security council. Conservatives were also advocates of growth, but preferred it to occur through the private sector and at a slower pace, in an effort to avoid inflation. Conservatives were also cautious with imperialistic foreign policy.
Fortunately Wolfe summarizes his liberal/conservative growth coalition debate stating the necessity of compromise. He believed the liberals and conservatives were closer on policy than either group would care to admit, stating, “the debates between the parties were real, but they concerned how fast and at what cost growth should be achieved.” To achieve success both groups had to find a middle ground to appeal to voters, therefore issue debates were more concerned with the means of achieving success, not the actual success. According to Wolfe, “the consolidation of this growth-oriented pattern of politics under Eisenhower was the most important consequence of the Republican interregnum of the 1950s.”
August 31 2005 11:56 pm | History and Ramblings
