From the Washington Monthly
THEY'VE BEEN WRONG FOR A VERY LONG TIME.... The benefits of hindsight can make opponents of popular measures look quite silly years later. Republican arguments against Medicare seem ridiculous now, but were intense at the time. Republican arguments against Clinton's economic policies are almost laughable now, but were widely believed at the time.
And Republican arguments against Social Security, as Nancy Altman explained today, seem awfully familiar 74 years later.
Though no one was talking about "death panels" back then, opponents claimed that Social Security would result in massive government control. A Republican congressman from New York, for example, charged: "The lash of the dictator will be felt, and 25 million free American citizens will for the first time submit themselves to a fingerprint test."
Another New York congressman put it this way: "The bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants." A Republican senator from Delaware claimed that Social Security would "end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European."
Today, opponents of a public health insurance option claim that it would drive private health insurance out of business and put a bureaucrat between doctors and patients. Back then, opponents of Social Security warned that it would "establish a bureaucracy in the field of insurance in competition with private business" that would "destroy" private pensions.
Then as now, opponents played the socialism card.
It wasn't just Social Security. When FDR tackled health care reform, the right condemned "the socialization of medicine," and the AMA said Roosevelt's plans were "un-American."
The difference, of course, is that most Americans rejected the nonsense, and welcomed FDR's reforms. Republicans of that era, similar to the Republicans of the current era, had failed so spectacularly at governing, their ideas had been thoroughly discredited. The conservative activists of the time struggled to convince the public to reject Roosevelt's agenda.
Altman recommends that Obama follow FDR's example. The problem is, Obama already has. Roosevelt anticipated Republican attacks, and told Americans the truth is speeches and fire-side chats. Obama has done the same thing. The difference is, FDR didn't have to overcome a Republican Propaganda Machine.
