(09-25-2016, 11:00 AM)Einzige Wrote: Part of the problem with this mode of analysis is that the pre-New Deal period is pretty muddled.
Theodore Roosevelt does look like a Prophet, and Taft looks like a Bureaucrat. On the other hand, Woodrow Wilson seems in a lot of ways to have been closer ideologically to Roosevelt than either Harding or Coolidge - who we are supposing were the Disaster to Teddy's Prophet - were. And while Herbert Hoover was a Roosevelt-supporting Progressive in the nineteen tens and his governance vaguely reflected that, supposing that Hoover alone was the Disaster leaves us without a place for Harding/Coolidge in the equation.
Moreover, the New Deal was in a lot of ways a continuation of Theodore Roosevelt's political system. We don't have the benefit of the new Prophet rejecting the legacy of the preceding one here, as we do with Reagan rejecting FDR.
Further, I have a bit of a problem with Marc Lamb's analysis of 9/11. If it were a direct analogue to the wave of anarchist terrorism in 1919/1920, we should have expected there to be some sort of equivalent to World War I under Clinton in the 1990s. But of course there was nothing of the sort.
Was Wilson really ideologically close to Teddy Roosevelt? They were from opposing parties. Roosevelt invited Booker Washington to the White House, Wilson segregated the Federal government. Roosevelt was no friend of labor, Wilson began a trend in which labor made gains during Democratic administrations that were halted or partially rolled back during intervening Republican administrations that lasted sixty years. T. Roosevelt favored breaking up business monopolies to allow the free market to work; Wilson nationalized the railroads.
I see little continuity between TR's and FDR's polices aside from their use of the word "Deal" in how they named their programs. I would say FDR rejected Teddy's libertarian approach to economics in favor of a more statist approach.
Harding and Coolidge belong with Hoover in the disaster. You must consider exactly what was the nature of the disaster? It was the response the 1929-1932 crisis. This crisis was economic. Which political actor was most responsible for economic policy making? Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon who was appointed by Harding in 1921 and served until early 1932. Mellon's policy in 1929-1932 reflected his free market beliefs, that had led him to successfully manage the post-war economy giving rise to the stellar economy of the Twenties. Mellon recommended policy following the 1929 crash that was based on his successful management of the Depression over 1920-21 that in its initial stages was more severe than after 1929. The seeds of the policy failure over 1929-32 were sown in 1921.
I think Marc was simply saying 911 was like the anarchist terror in that both occurred at a similar point in the generational constellation. Remember, he was posting only 4 years after T4T was published. People still discussed S&H's generational cycle seriously then.