Eldon J. Eisenach
![The Lost Promise of Progressivism (American Political Thought) Eldon J. Eisenach]( "The Lost Promise of Progressivism (American Political Thought) Eldon J. Eisenach")
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Eldon Eisenach, now a retired professor of political science, published this book in 1994 as Bill Clinton was in his first term. What Eisenach wrote then may not have had much resonance, because the Clinton presidency represented an ideological mish-mash without any central focus. Moreover, the Clinton presidency itself can be called, from a theoretical political basis, a continuation of the mish-mash approach to governing that has prevailed from the 1930s onward. (The second George Bush turned the nation to a war footing, and made domestic issues subservient to "winning" the "war on terror," while Ronald Reagan was . . . well, Ronald Reagan.)
But along comes Sen. Barack Obama, and suddenly the book by Prof. Eisenach snaps into focus. There are startling (at least to me) insights on just about every page, as he carefully reviews the works of nineteen American intellectuals, men and women born between 1840 and 1866, whom he selected as forming the intellectual construct for the rise of the Progressive Movement in the United States. Their writings began to appear in the 1880s and their contributions pretty much were done by 1910. They were all Republicans, many of them were from evangelical Protestant backgrounds, all but one had college degrees, many of them traveled to Europe (mostly Germany) for graduate work, and they were all hyperactive and confident in their persuasions, even by American standards.
To quote Eisenach: These intellectuals "largely created the standards by which we now measure 'modern' or 'advanced' training or thinking." (The word "created" is in italics in the original.) Surprising to me, the mid-West was the epicenter of this political movement, particularly Chicago. Harvard had nothing to do with it, but Yale and Columbia did. Its accomplishments included (by 1915): direct democracy; ballot initiatives and referenda; government regulation of political parties; new forms of municipal governance (city managers); professionalization of public employees (civil service); coordinated regulation of railroads; coordinated international trade policy; and a new emphasis on government oversight of corporations. In so doing, the progressives killed off the old political parties and their (conservative) power structures.
There were large elements of strong persuasion (read coercion) in the rhetoric of these reformers. Nothing should stand in the way of building a better America, based on national, rather than state or local, themes. (In a footnote, Eisenach notes that a woman was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 1915 for circulating a pamphlet that criticized Woodrow Wilson. The "fairness doctrine" and beyond was alive and well.) The reformers coopted the churches, academia, public servants, and the media into a powerful new grouping in the service of "modernization." (The various Protestant denominations were urged to get with the program, and most did.)
Somehow in his trajectory across the intellectual political landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Eisenach avoids mention of even one politician--other than the obvious ones, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Yet there were a number, pre-eminently Bob LaFollette of Wisconsin, who embodied the values of the Progressives. I understand his reasoning in this matter, and his book is certainly a success without their being brought in for discussion. Readers will have to look elsewhere to fill in this historical gap. (Prominent mention of Prof. John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin is as close as Eisenach gets to LaFollette.) As an intellectual history of Progressivism, however, this book stands alone IMHO.
Also, as a long ago graduate of the University of Notre Dame, I found it easy to place the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, the long-time ND President, in the context of the intellectual legacy of these mid-Western intellectuals. Father Hesburgh led the way in separating Catholic universities in the U.S. from control of the Catholic bishops, making the schools effectively secular in an action that the Progressives would have praised mightily. Now there are yearly performances of "The Vagina Monologues" on the ND campus--unthinkable in an earlier era but certainly in keeping with today's concepts of modernity.
President-elect Obama comes out of the mid-West Progressives' intellectual tradition, and I am sure he is well aware of it. If true to form, he will try to resurrect the idealism and values of his Progressive forbears and apply them to national needs as he and his appointees perceive them: forcing the use of smaller cars, funding alternative electric generation facilities, higher taxes, lower consumption, federal pump-priming of the economy with consequent explosions in employment within federal and state bureaucracies, and enlargement of union power. As always, there will be battles fought by "conservatives" against these actions, but my sense is that the political winds are behind Obama's back.
I see, therefore, Sen. Obama embodying the Progressive, rather than the Wilsonian or New Deal, versions of economic/political reform. In other words, he could well be as radical as were his 19th century forebears, not inclined to compromise, retreat or dither--as FDR was.
Editorial Review:
Analyses how and why progressive political ideas dominated so much of American cultural and intellectual thinking for the three decades before World War I. This text argues that those ideas are still a part of US politics, in current calls for national service and civic responsibility.
