I add that codicil because a salient characteristic of each reform generation is vigorous self-confidence to the point of cockiness. That was true in 1933. The young New Dealers, Judge Learned Hand observed, “are so conceited, so insensitive, so arrogant.” (But the conservatives, he added, “are intellectually so moribund … so stupid and emit such dreary, hollow sounds.”) And it was just as true of my own generation when we descended on Washington in 1961. We had grown up in the Great Depression; we had fought in World War II. We had survived large troubles, and we believed we could handle anything.
Do not lose that wonderful confidence in yourselves, in your own experience, instinct and outlook. Above all, don’t he intimidated by the icons of the past. Franklin Roosevelt had supreme self-assurance, but it took him a while to liberate himself from the laissez-faire orthodoxies that had plunged the nation into depression and thereafter denied it the means of extrication. John Kennedy promised new frontiers, but one of his first decisions was to keep on Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover as heads of the CIA and the FBI. After the Bay of Pigs, JFK lamented the difficulty of dealing with “legendary figures.” Both FDR and JFK learned painfully that iconoclasm is better than idolatry.
You will hear a great deal about reassuring the “money markets.” Obviously no sensible administration would go out of its way to upset Wall Street and its environs, at home and abroad. But our economic and social troubles are in large part the result of naive faith in the readiness of business to control its own propensities toward greed and fraud. (Witness the savings and loan debacle.) If the money markets had had their way, there would have been no New Deal, no SEC, no TVA, no WPA, no CCC, no Social Security, no unemployment insurance. As the money markets fought the reforms of FDR and JFK, so they will fight the reforms of Bill Clinton. Don’t go out of your way to appease them. You don’t call on Typhoid Mary to stop a typhoid epidemic. The best remedy for wails from the money markets is a reinvigorated economy.
A president is president of all the people. But this does not mean that he can please all the people all the time. “To govern,” as Pierre Mendes-France used to say, “is to choose.” Do not be afraid of doing things that those whose power is thereby threatened will criticize as “divisive.” In retrospect even Republicans concede that Franklin Roosevelt was a great president, but he was bitterly denounced-hated-in his own day. “They love him most,” it was said of Grover Cleveland, “for the enemies he has made.” Do not be afraid of earning that same encomium.
Believe in yourselves. Do not bow to the icons of the past or to the moguls of the present. But do not overestimate your capacity to remold history. The pent-up intellectual and administrative energy that reform generations brought to Washington in 1933 and 1961 generated an excessive and sometimes misguided activism. The besetting illusion of the New Deal and the New Frontier was that every problem had a solution.
Few problems can be finally solved. Many, however, can be usefully mitigated when the time is ripe. Timing is all; FDR used to exasperate his more ardent subordinates by insisting on waiting for the crucial moment to strike. The “when-in-doubt-do-something” approach may cause more trouble than benefit in an intractable world. And, while you must believe in yourselves and your own perceptions, never forget that you are custodians-and, I trust, executors-of a great tradition. Your generation comes to power in response to the well-defined rhythm of American politics, the alternation, as Emerson said, between the party of Memory and the party of Hope. In your hands now lies the 20th-century legacy of Wilson, FDR and Truman, of JFK and LBJ. New problems demand new remedies, but the spirit of concern for those Andrew Jackson called “the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers” abides. Historically this is what the Democratic Party, at its best, has been all about. Never forget this.
In foreign policy the legacy calls for the building of an international order based on collective action among nations to secure peace, prevent aggression, defend human rights and promote economic abundance. And in domestic policy you could do worse than to complete at long last the Economic Bill of Rights that Roosevelt set forth half a century ago: the right of every American to do a job, to decent housing and food and clothing and education and medical care, to protection from the fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment, to freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. What could be a more fitting conclusion of the 20th century for Americans than the fulfillment of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights at home and his Four Freedoms abroad? Do it in your own style and your own way-but do it!
