We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable...
In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book of self-government . -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937
In his State of the Union address, President Obama challenged the Congress and the American people to join him in a common effort to make the United States a better nation; to recognize that while we "may do different jobs, and wear different uniforms" we are all "citizens" imbued with the rights and responsibility "to be the authors of the next great chapter in our American story."
Certainly, the president's call for "investments" in setting up universal preschool, increasing access to higher education, promoting research and development, fixing our broken infrastructure, and establishing a higher minimum wage so that in "the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty," is a welcome development. So too is the president's acknowledgment that there are still communities in this country where, thanks to inescapable pockets of rural and urban poverty, young adults find it virtually impossible to find their first job. "America," he insisted, should "not [be] a place where chance of birth or circumstance should decide our destiny."
And yet, if we examine the state of our union honestly, it not only becomes apparent that we are indeed a society where "chance of birth or circumstance" decides our destiny, but also a society that has fallen far behind the rest of the world in education, health care, infrastructure, and a host of other indicators that determine the overall quality of life.
In study after study, for example, Americans are found to be far less economically mobile than their counterparts in Canada and Europe. In education, the U.S. now ranks 17 in the developed world overall, while we are ranked 25 in math, 17 in science, and 14 in reading, well behind our Asian and European counterparts. For decades the U.S, was ranked number 1 in college graduation, but we now stand at number 12, and even more shocking, we are now ranked 79 in primary school enrollment. This is no way to sustain or build a competitive edge in a global economy.
Other statistics tell a similar tale. How many Americans, for example, are aware that out of the 35 most economically advanced countries in the world, the U.S. now holds the dubious distinction of ranking 34 in terms of child poverty, second only to Romania? In infant mortality, the U.S. ranks 48. As for overall health and life expectancy, a recent report by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council found that among the 17 advanced nations it surveyed, the U.S.--which in the 1950s was ranked at the top for life expectancy and disease--has declined steadily since the 1980s. Today, "U.S. men rank last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study and US women rank second to last." In infrastructure, the World Economic Forum recently ranked the U.S. 25 in the world, behind virtually all other advanced industrialized nations and even some in the developing world.
Still, there are some categories where the United States ranks number one: we have the highest incarceration rate in the world--far higher than countries like Russia, China, or Iran. We have the highest obesity rate in the world and we use more energy per capita than any other nation. And while the U.S. does not possess the highest homicide rate in the world--that distinction goes to Honduras--the rate of death from firearms in the U.S. is nearly 20 times higher than it is among our economic counterparts. And on a city-by-city basis, we would find that if New Orleans were a country, for example, its homicide rate would rank number 2 in the world.
Eighty years ago, when the United States found itself in an even more precarious state than it does today, Franklin Roosevelt used the occasion of his first inaugural address to say to the American people that "this is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly," to avoid the temptation "to shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today." The president then went on to implore the American people to reject the fear and apprehension that had paralyzed the nation by reminding them that "in every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people" which is essential to overcoming the challenges we face.
Four years later, in the first State of the Union address of his second term, President Roosevelt observed that "the deeper purpose of democratic government is to assist as many of its citizens as possible, especially those who need it most, to improve their conditions of life..." But, he went on, even with the "present recovery," the United States was "far from the goal of that deeper purpose, for there were still "far-reaching problems... for which democracy must find solutions if it is to consider itself successful."
President Obama certainly echoed these sentiments when he spoke about the meaning of citizenship and "the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations; that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others." But the president said little about the role of government in ensuring that these obligations are met, and he qualified his remarks by opening his speech with his oft-repeated maxim that the American people do not expect government "to solve every problem."
FDR took a different tack. For him government was the instrument of the common people, and as such its primary responsibility was not to serve as an arbiter between the demands of the rich and the needs of the poor, but rather as the vehicle through which the hopes and aspirations of all Americans could be met. In this he argued that:
The defeats and victories of these years have given to us as a people a new understanding of our government and of ourselves...It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle.
We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization...
We seek not merely to make government a mechanical implement, but to give it the vibrant personal character that is the very embodiment of human charity.
We are poor indeed if this nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.
In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.
To bring about a government guided by the "spirit of charity," FDR initiated the most far-reaching social and economic reforms in our nation's history; reforms designed to provide the average American with a measure of economic security; reforms that reduced the vast, unjust, and unsustainable economic inequality that had brought the country to ruin just a few short years before.
If we are going to "honestly" face "conditions in our country today," then we need to recognize that the steady abandonment of the principles of governance put in place by Franklin Roosevelt in the past three decades have done enormous harm to the state of the union. In light of this, rather than repeat the conservative mantra that government cannot solve every problem, perhaps President Obama should follow the example of President Roosevelt by reminding the Congress and the American people that even though
Governments can err, [and] presidents do make mistakes... the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Cross-posted from Next New Deal.