I don’t like to be put into a position of defending Wilson but both statements are nonsense.
There were people then who advocated central management by experts - see The Engineers and the Price System by Thorstein Veblen, a classic published in 1919 - but Wilson can hardly be said to be one of them. Just to fend off a series of “but I don’t mean what my words actually said” posts, Wilson was a proponent of what was at the time called scientific management, but a) that’s not at all the same thing; and b) was a standard principle of progressive (small p) thinking already instituted in the government in minor ways by Roosevelt and Taft. As with most things radically progressive, this is so much the norm today that not even conservative thinkers would argue against it.
What the U.S. did during WWI was exactly what every other country of whatever political system has done during times of total war: put the country’s resources under government control and subordinate everyday life to war concerns. You can compile a long list of what we would term abuses today because of this, and FDR backed off of some of the worst practices because we had this experience. No matter. Calling the country fascist for that period is an abuse itself. It dumbs down the term to utter meaninglessness.
It was indeed unfortunate that Wilson caved to business interests when he agreed to subordinate US industrial and educational production to titans of industry during WWI. David Noble tells this story in America By Design. You’d certainly hate his politics, but it is hard to find fault with his research.
I just realized it’s still 2013. Why are we even talking about the 2016 presidential race? It’s pointless to talk about it until after the 2014 midterms; they will shape the context. And it’s too soon to talk about the 2014 midterms. November, maybe.
And yet, neither Paul has ever governed a state and somehow THEY are suited. Not to mention that the GOP President Who Shall Not Be Named (i.e., George W Bush) did run a state but turned out to be a pretty bad President (which even the GOP admits - mostly by refusing to be associated with him).
Funny how the rules change when you’re talking about the Democrats…Do you even take yourself seriously anymore?
You need to brush up on your right-wing code words. Obama was an academic. (One who never went to college because he didn’t release his transcripts. But right-wing code is always oxymoronic.)
I do think Rand Paul should prove he can govern before running for President. I might have even said it in this very thread, although it’s possible I said it in the Republican nominee thread.
Career legislators with no experience running an organization should simply not run for President. It’s not a job for newbies.
and Barack Obama doesn’t even make a pretense of trying to run the organization he’s responsible for. The solution of liberals on this board has been to claim that the President is not responsible for the federal government.
Simple practicality says no individual could possibly be responsible for (or aware of all the activities of) an organization the size of the U.S. Federal Government.
While that may be true, it also is an admission that the federal government is not accountable to the voters, since the voters have no one to hold accountable for its performance.
That’s not really winning, it’s whining about the rules of the game. By the same logic (term used loosely), no Republican administration can be accountable to the voters, either.
As an afterthought, when has any recent Republican administration reduced the size of the federal government to “accountable” levels, or even tried to? Reagan?
True, but Democrats have never before had a problem with holding Republican Presidents accountable, even for things not in their job description(like the economy).
Although frankly, I believe that a President can be accountable for the federal government, at least as accountable as a general is of his army or a CEO is of his corporation.
It’s oxymoronic. Note the recent application of it to independent regulatory bodies and to the IRS, which is required by law to be non-political.
In the real world, it’s obviously true that the President appoints heads and commissioners to these bodies and only the most naive would believe that no political interference ever happens. That’s a delicious condition because it allows the screamers to scream if a politician does interfere and to scream if anything happens that the politician doesn’t control. Everybody inside the Beltway knows this, which is why the IRS non-scandal died so quickly. Their standards are lower than a professional’s limbo bar and they still couldn’t lower themselves far enough to seriously blame Obama.
How do you get around this? By removing all government from government. Small enough to drown in a bathtub. Anyone who is not ROFL at this point is a conservative.
Not really. As the Republicans at the time kept reminding us, none of Texas’ many failures counted against Bush, because the governor of Texas is really just a figurehead with no real power, and it’s the Lieutenant Governor who really runs things.
And it’s occurred to me that maybe what the Republicans really want, and what they’re really trying to get, is a government that literally is small enough that it could be drowned in a bathtub. That is to say, a government consisting entirely of one person. Their beef with Obama, then, is that he’s not trying to act like an absolute dictator, despite their repeated efforts to foist off more power onto the Presidency.
Most of the executive branch is supposed to be non-political. Actually, screw it, nearly all of the executive branch is non-political. If you disagree, I’d be interested in which parts you think are: the military? Energy? Education? SSA?
That does not mean the President isn’t responsible for running these things. It’s actually in the law. Congress gave the President these responsibilities, and the Presidents that asked for these responsibilities assured America that they could handle it.
If a President wants a bigger government than he can run, then he is also accountable for that.
A better alternative is more elected officials in the executive branch. Since most Dopers do not hold the President responsible for what his underlings do, then he doesn’t need to be in charge of appointing them. The reason we give him the power to appoint them is becuase he’s supposed to be responsible for them. But if we’re jettisoning that, we need to restore electoral accountability to government somehow.
Alternatively, liberals could just come out and admit that they support an anti-democratic bureaucracy, unaccountable to the public or elected officials.
Actually, the public has always treated the President as accountable for the performance of the executive branch, and furthermore many Presidents have done their basic duty just fine.
The President’s job is written down pretty clearly: he shall faithfully execute the laws. If there are too many for him to execute, then he shouldn’t ask Congress for more laws.
Wow. Let’s take a step back here. Do you really not understand the differences, legal and otherwise, between the departments under the Cabinet and independent agencies? Do you really not understand the differences in accountability between the two? Do you really not notice that it has been a right-wing position for years that certain Cabinet positions and their departments should be abolished, making them intensely political?
If we need to start with these basics, say so.
But we both know that you do understand the difference and are mashing them together because otherwise you can’t justify the nonsensical position of making the President personally responsible for the behavior of the IRS. Why? Because it’s “actually in the law” that he keeps his hands off.
So which is it? Are you that totally ignorant of the way the government works? Or are you deliberately reversing reality to sneak in a badly made point?
