One key issue in American political history, dating back to the founding of the country, has been this: How extensive should the national government be, compared with the states, and how extensive a role should it play over the daily life of citizens?
There has been some give and take over the centuries, much like football teams battle over field position. The trend, however, has been towards a more centralized (Washington-focused) political system, with a national government that gains more and more power over both state governments and citizens.
The first 90 years of American life saw some tussles over the role of the national government, to be sure, such as the Louisiana Purchase, the Alien and Sedition Act, and the Bank of the United States.
The Civil War, though, was the first big move towards a powerful national government. After all the dead had been buried, it established the principle that state secession as a response to dissatisfaction with national policy is not an option.
Theodore Roosevelt, through his progressive activism, played a small role in nationalizing the country, but World War I did even more. Before the war, states had armies. After the war, the army was a national creature.
FDR’s initial moves in the New Deal were important, but blocked by the Supreme Court. The “switch in time that saved 9,” in which the Court reversed itself to allow FDR’s programs through, was the second most important event in U.S. history. It eviscerated many restrictions that up to that point the Constitution had placed on the national government, especially in economic matters. By contrast, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and other new agencies of the New Deal were relatively unimportant.
It’s been said that “war is the health of the state,” and the prospects of a centralized, national government got even stronger during World War II. Actually, there was a centralized, nationalized government, with ration coupons signaling the replacement of freely choosing individuals with the dictates of central planners. Wage and price controls also signaled the start of life managed by the administrative state. The controls led to the widespread deployment of employer-paid health insurance–a development that would ultimately be given full flower (perhaps a stinkweed!) in ObamaCare.
While FDR enlarged the scope of the national government, he had nothing on LBJ. Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society created an “army” of people with a professional and personal interest in having government, and especially the federal government, manage important aspects of our daily lives. Medicare, by the way, is one factor that contributed to the later development of ObamaCare, by establishing an extensive presence of the federal government into health care.
Government grew more after LBJ, though less grandiose measures. When Richard Nixon created the EPA, he gave a green glow to the cause of government regulation of life. (It is arguably, the one agency that is the least accountable and most disrespectful of personal rights.) Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education as payback for the endorsement of the teachers union, but that was in the long view, a small-potatoes move. Ronald Reagan offered some rhetorical pushback against centralized politics, and his firing of the striking air traffic controllers set back the power of government unions for a generation. But still, the federal government spent more after his tenure than before.
In their own ways, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush (especially Bush father and son) grew the federal government, but in comparison with FDR, LBJ, and even Nixon, they were supporting players, not the most important ones.
Then came Barack Obama, whose two major accomplishments have been to enact a spending program that has left us with crippling debt, and and a health care reform that bears his name. While ObamaCare is not socialized medicine in the strictest sense of the term (it is not, for example, a single-payer system), it establishes some principles that will get us there. The federal government further inserted itself into one-sixth of the U.S. economy, with regulations that affect everyday life–and death. The law’s individual mandate created an unprecedented tax–one on NOT buying something. It trampled on religious convictions of various employers by mandating contraceptive and abortion coverage in insurance policies. Most importantly, it guarantees that future political debates will not be over whether to expand government, but how. To use a football analogy, the ball has been moved from one end of the field (in 1776) to midfield (the Civil War) to the other end. Today, it’s first and goal from the 10 for the team that wants America to be a country with an extensive government in which every election matters.
From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=5769#ixzz2Hgjm41Xo