E-mail a friendAdam Cohen
airdate February 24, 2009
Adam Cohen joined The New York Times editorial board in '02. An assistant editorial page editor, he was previously a senior writer at Time, where his topics included the Supreme Court and Internet privacy. He's also the author of The Perfect Store: Inside eBay and Nothing to Fear, which details the first 100 days of FDR's administration. Before entering journalism, he was an education-reform lawyer and a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL. Cohen has a law degree from Harvard.
New York Times journalist and author describes the impact of the New Deal. (1:57)
Full interview. (11:26)
Adam Cohen
Tavis: Adam Cohen is a member of "The New York Times" editorial board and an assistant editorial page editor for the paper. His latest book is called "Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the 100 Days that Created Modern America." Adam, nice to have you on the program.
Adam Cohen: Oh, my pleasure.
Tavis: It's good to see you. Let me start with the obvious question, at least for me - all the comparisons between the recession that we are in now and the Great Depression, and this being the worst time since the Great Depression. Let's start with the parallels between now and then, Obama and FDR, in terms of the position the country's in.
Cohen: Sure. Got to say up front, times are not as bad now as they were then. Twenty-five percent unemployment when FDR took over in 1933. Stock market falling 85 percent. Literally in New York City, families sitting on the streets surrounded by their furniture and their belongings - had been kicked out, didn't know where to go.
So we're not there yet, but look, the stock market was down almost 50 percent last year, and a lot of joblessness. New unemployment numbers every month, looking grim. So there's a parallel - things are getting closer to 1933.
Tavis: Any sense, though I know you're not an economist, I don't mean to put you in that spot, any sense, though, that things will get that bad?
Cohen: Well, these joblessness figures are very worrisome month after month; and the instability in the banking system, which again is a parallel of 1933. When FDR took office, the banks were all closed. And here we're seeing a fundamentally unstable banking system, so yeah, these are really bad times. Not 1933 yet, but probably the worst time since then.
Tavis: Flip side of that question, if you can think of it - what's the biggest difference? I hear the parallels that are being made; what's dramatically different between then and now?
Cohen: Well, we have a much bigger, better federal government than we did then. When FDR took office, the federal budget was about $5 billion; the federal government mainly defended the country, delivered the mail. Now we have this elaborate social welfare system. Maybe not what we need - I think we need more - but we do have a welfare system, we do have Social Security, we have much higher levels of government employment. That's more stability by far than they had in '33.
Tavis: So the book really is written around these five cabinet members who helped FDR turn the situation around. Before I talk about them one at a time and get you to top line them for me, give me a sense of his cabinet and why these five persons stood out. I'm just trying to get a sense of who was around him.
Cohen: Sure. FDR really believed in bringing smart people into office, so he'd run for office with the Brains Trust in Columbia University thinking up his ideas. But he also believed in people who really cared about people, so a lot of the people around him were not businesspeople, they were social workers. They had done things like run welfare programs, they had fought for workers.
It was a very different model of government servant and certainly cabinet member than we have today.
Tavis: Let's start with the five, if we can. I don't want to give too much of the book away. And in no particular order, but since she happens to be my favorite, Frances Perkins.
Cohen: Well, Frances Perkins is the hero of the book, no question. She's a remarkable woman, and really underestimated. People may know that she was the first woman cabinet member, but in general, people don't know much more than that. In fact, she was the main driving force during the 100 days for public works, which was one of the most important things done during the New Deal.
The main driving force for relief for the unemployed. Later in her life, 1935, she chairs the committee that creates the Social Security system. A really, really important American, underestimated, underappreciated. I hope to change that a little bit with this book.
Tavis: Louis Douglas.
Cohen: Louis Douglas - he's the villain in the book. Hard to believe now, but FDR appointed a budget director - this guy Louis Douglas, former congressman from Arizona, who believed in slashing the budget 25 percent, and in fact FDR did that at the beginning of the 100 days. Didn't believe there was money for social welfare programs.
So what you got during the 100 days was Frances Perkins and Louis Douglas squaring off constantly, Perkins saying, "We need to spend money on public works, we need to spend money on relief;" Douglas saying, "There isn't enough money for it." At the beginning of the 100 days, Douglas is winning. By the end, Perkins wins.
Tavis: How did FDR navigate the distinct differences in opinion between the two of them as president?
Cohen: Well, he liked to bring everyone into his office, listen to everyone's ideas, and then Sam Rayburn said FDR was the best judge and jury he ever heard.
Somehow, when FDR heard all the possible ideas, thought about the political implications, thought about what the country needed, he got to the right answer. Not always at the beginning, because as I said he started out supporting Douglas. But by the end, he got to the right conclusions.
Tavis: What made him - what helped him make that turn, as it were?
Cohen: Well, I think one important lesson is pressure from people who had the right ideas. People like Perkins, Harry Hopkins, another hero of the book, Henry Wallace, didn't give up when they heard no. They kept saying to him, "We need these programs, we need these programs."
And that's one reason I focused on these five, because the importance of people one level below a president is often really underestimated. Presidents often need to be pushed into doing the right thing, and he had people pushing him.
Tavis: You mentioned a couple of people already in that lineup, in the five that are featured in the book. Harry Hopkins?
Cohen: Harry Hopkins, just a wonderful guy. He's born in Iowa, he graduates from college in Iowa, moves to the Lower East Side of New York City, the most immigrant-dense neighborhood in the country, and he becomes a social worker. He takes care of poor kids and people who really don't have much of a break, and he runs the first state welfare program in the country in New York State for FDR while he was governor, and then he writes the federal welfare program that becomes the law, and runs it.
So when we think about the federal welfare program that exists, of federal government helping the states to run welfare programs, that was Harry Hopkins. He did it because he really believed in helping people who were down and out.
Tavis: You mentioned Henry Wallace as well.
Cohen: Yeah, an amazing guy also. A brilliant scientist, farmer, journalist, he came to Washington; he said he was going there to help the farmers, and the condition in the farm belt was terrible. He said, "If I can't help them, I'm going to go back to Iowa." He did help them. He was the one who wrote the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a major, major agriculture bill, paid farmers not to grow crops, propped up the crop prices, really saved farmers around the country - another amazing character.
Tavis: And fifth is Moley - Raymond Moley.
Cohen: Raymond Moley - kind of behind the scenes. He had run the Brains Trust during the 1932 campaign, was a major speechwriter. He was the guy in the inner circle who was making sure that all the trains ran on time. He was writing the congressional messages, writing the speeches, and he was more of a pragmatist.
He didn't really take sides in this clash between the liberals and conservatives; he just wanted to make sure that the government was running properly.
Tavis: You know what's fascinating in terms of my take on the book, and I want to get your read on this, without casting aspersion on any cabinet secretary in this administration or any previous administration in a contemporary sense, they really had, these persons that you highlight in the book, had some public policy legislation writing, implementation flexibility, if I can use that word, in terms of helping the president.
What I'm trying to get at is that nowadays we see so much of what happens in the departments, that policy comes from the White House, that policy is shaped by - am I making sense?
Cohen: Absolutely.
Tavis: I get the sense that these persons really had some leeway to actually do some things to help FDR turn this around, not necessarily being directed by, crafted by, the White House.
Cohen: Absolutely right. They really were a brains trust. Henry Wallace really showed up at the White House with an agricultural adjustment plan. That was something that he and his department came up with. Frances Perkins was in on the meetings where they came up with the public works programs.
These were people who weren't just implementers; they weren't just sitting around the cabinet table. They were a brains trust who were bringing the best ideas to FDR. And in fact, Frances Perkins met with Harry Hopkins. Hopkins had a great program for a federal welfare system. Perkins brings it to FDR, says, "This is the plan we need." FDR says, "Yes, you're right, I'm going to make this law."
So these really were people who were bubbling over with great ideas, and yeah, I don't know if we have that right now.
Tavis: Mm-hmm. There's been so much debate over the years, and this debate's going to kick up again - it already has, as you well know, working at "The New York Times," about whether or not FDR's public works programs were overrated, whether or not doing that again now in the Obama administration is really a stimulus to the economy. Help me compare and contrast these two moments, and whether or not we can, once and for all, settle this debate about whether FDR was really all that, so to speak.
Cohen: Sure, no, great question. There is a right wing effort right now to deny that the New Deal made a difference, and they're not playing with the right numbers. In fact, if you look at the unemployment numbers, employment went up steadily from 1933, '34, '35, '36. The GDP went up steadily.
They play with numbers. They don't count people who were employed in public works programs as being employed; they choose the years that they compare very carefully. But there's no question, the New Deal was making the economy stronger, it was putting people back to work. And just as important, the right wing critique of the New Deal doesn't acknowledge the difference that these programs made in people's lives.
People really had no food. They didn't have any way to pay their rent. The New Deal comes along, puts the fathers and mothers of these families to work, gives them salaries. This really saved people from destitution. That's an important, important legacy, and the right wing is really not acknowledging that.
Now, the reason, as you say, they have a current agenda. They don't like the stimulus package, they're afraid that President Obama is going to create a new WPA, that the government will put people to work. They want to say it didn't work in the '30s. It did work in the '30s, and I think it would be a very good thing to do right now.
Tavis: I was about to ask you whether or not you think President Obama, then, is on the right track.
Cohen: Well, I think he's on the right track. We all worry - I worry - that he's giving a little too much over to the Republicans. The stimulus package has tax cuts that the Republicans want. I would like to see, first of all, a larger stimulus package, and I would like to see more of that money going to actually putting people to work.
And also just bolder thinking in general. My colleague, Thomas Friedman, had a column on Sunday in which he said just bailing out GM isn't the answer. GM has been a money-losing machine for a long time. We need bolder visions. There are better things to do, more creative, that would really, I think, help more people, and we need that kind of thinking going on now.
Tavis: His cabinet, for the most part, is filled out, but we all know President Obama's had some issues trying to get this cabinet thing worked out in just the right way. We've seen him have issues trying to be bipartisan with regard to the cabinet, and for that matter passing the stimulus package. What can President Obama learn from reading FDR about assembling the cabinet?
Cohen: Yeah. Well, as I mentioned, FDR brought in such a unique group of people who really cared about people - again, social workers, people who worked with farmers, who their focus was on how to make the lives of ordinary Americans better. I'm not sure we're seeing that as much right now.
Tavis: There's a lot of careerists in this administration.
Cohen: There's a lot of careerists, yeah. And FDR, there was a guy who was almost chosen to be Treasury secretary in 1933 - Carter Glass. He wanted to make his undersecretary of the Treasury someone who worked for J. P. Morgan. FDR said, "No, we're not going to have an undersecretary who worked for J. P. Morgan."
FDR really was a populist in that way, and some of us worry that the economic team in particular maybe is a little too close to the J. P. Morgans of the world, not close enough to the people. So I'd like to see more people like that in the cabinet.
Tavis: The new book from Adam Cohen is "Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the 100 Days that Created Modern America." We are in Mr. Obama's 100 days. We'll continue to track these issues in the coming days and weeks. Adam, thanks for the text. Glad to have you on.
Cohen: My pleasure.
Tavis: Glad to have you here.
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