Recently I have been giving some thought to the way we fought wars in the past and how similar events are handled today, most specifically the existence of a censor office during World War II and the reaction creation of such an office would create today. Thinking about such an office, it struck me that, rather than a pragmatic war-time move, the creation of such an office was more of an expression of FDR's vision of an all-encompassing government. Realizing that, it is strange to consider that many on the right defend much of what FDR did during the war, though his actions, despite being excused as "war necessities" were clearly nothing but a continuation of his nationalization schemes from the 1930's. Yet, because they were justified by military needs, and occurred during a popular war, the right is often afraid to criticize them. (Similarly, the left is often afraid to criticize FDR for acts that would have them up in arms today, such as the censor's office.)

Which brings me to my topic of the day, the difficulty both sides of the political debate have in facing history honestly. I wrote about this before, mainly pointing out the dishonesty of the right. In "Place Blame Fairly, Regardless of Party" I mentioned the conservative tendency to blame all our economic woes on the Carter Community Reinvestment act, and Clinton's expansion of the same, while ignoring Bush's equally disastrous inflationary policies. And in "Lebanon and Saint Reagan" I mentioned that modern terrorism is often blamed on Carter's bungled handling of the hostage crisis*, and Clinton's flight from Somalia and insistence on handling terrorism as a "police matter", while ignoring the part played by Reagan's retreat from Lebanon. (Both sides also fail to give Ford credit for his sensible -- in approach, if not in the specifics -- handling of the Mayaguez incident, but as Ford is a moderate reviled by both conservatives and liberals, that is to be expected, I suppose.)

However, if my criticism has been mainly of the right, that is because I have high expectations of the side to which I belong, and hope to keep them honest. It is certainly not because they have a monopoly on historical distortion. In fact, twisting history seems to be a problem for almost everyone who dabbles in politics, be it the whitewashing of Reagan, ascribing the successes of the class of 1994 to Clinton, rewriting Kennedy into an exemplar of the right or left, or rewriting Nixon into an "arch-conservative" to tar the right with his misdeeds. Both the right and left have played fast and loose with historical fact, and both have done a great disservice to our understanding of the past.

Let us start with a strange tale, the many faces of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. At one time JFK was the darling of the left, they wrote glowing paeans to "Camelot" and treated JFK as a fallen hero of liberal causes. Then, at some point, the right began to take a look at this martyr of the left, and noticed that much of his agenda fit the causes of the right as well, be it his handling of the Cuban missile crisis or his reduction of FDR's crushing upper tax brackets. And so suddenly JFK became the darling of the right, which never tired of mentioning his tax cutting or his anti-communist stands.

What makes all of this so bizarre is that JFK never really did much of anything. I recall once reading a study by a political scientist -- it was long ago so the details escape me -- who evaluated each president based on the number of bills he publicly supported versus the number which passed. The results ranked JFK dead last (at least at that time, somewhere in the Reagan years), while Nixon topped the list. I can't vouch for the methodology, but I have to say that the results aren't exactly shocking. JFK was our first real celebrity president, and as a PR campaign, he was a success. But in terms of either espousing a clear vision and shaping the nation to fit that vision, he was a flop. Which makes it odd to see either side so eager to claim him as one of their own.

But, if we must assign him to either category, then JFK was a liberal, but a liberal of the early 60's, and even then, a relatively moderate liberal. One must recall that today's liberalism is largely a creation of the takeover of the Democrats by the extreme left in 1968. Even today's moderate liberals would seem extreme by the standards before 1968. To look at just one issue, there was no consistently pacifist trend in liberalism before 1968. Before that date there were pacifist, and isolationists who desired an end to foreign warfare, but there were as many on the right as left, and none held a significant place in either party. Which makes Kennedy's military activity (not just the Cuban Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs, but also sending military advisors into Vietnam**) consistent with liberalism as it was then understood.

Similarly, Kennedy's opposition to communism was not inconsistent with liberalism at the time. There had been Stalinist fronts since the 30's, but by and large mainstream liberals found groups such as Lawyer's Guild and others a threat to traditional American liberalism and eschewed them. Not until the late 60's and the rehabilitation of communism under the guise of supporting "indigenous uprisings" (eg. the Vinceremos brigades, nominally supporting the Cuban workers, but being manipulated by Castro at request of the KGB to obtain intelligence -- especially on cultural trends in the US -- for the Soviets) was communism seen as acceptable to liberals. Prior to that time both liberals and conservatives opposed communism as a threat to freedom.

The only point on which the right has some claim to accuracy is the tax cutting. In that regard JFK was a bit atypical. Even in the early 1960's tax and spend was the official policy of liberals, so in that regard JFK did deviate from traditional liberalism. Then again, FDR's insistence on crushing rates in the highest brackets was so destructive to the economy that even among liberals there was a consensus that taxes needed to be reduced, so while not in accord with official views of liberalism, JFK's tax cutting was hardly contrary to the position of many of his liberal contemporaries.

All of which is a round about way of saying JFK is probably a poor example for either side to claim. Yes, he was a liberal in terms of the time sin which he lived, but liberalism was a different beast then, making him neither a modern conservative or liberal. I suppose he could be used to illustrate the success or failure of specific policies, but given his rather mediocre track record , poor success sponsoring bills through congress , the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and a number fo other missteps, he would not be my first choice of examples were I arguing for either side.

An even larger problem looms when the political parties try to go back before 1900, or likely even the 1930's. Before 1900 presents the biggest difficulty for Democrats, as prior to the absorption of the populists in the 1890's the Democrats were the party of laissez-faire, state's rights and gold currency, positions which would put them on the far right of the Republicans today, or more likely in the libertarian party. Which means trying to compare today's Democrats with anyone prior to the end of the second Cleveland administration is going to produce wildly misleading results.

The problem is even worse for Republicans. Though today Republicans venerate Lincoln, the fact is the party he headed is nothing like modern conservative thought, which largely came into being in the 1960's with Goldwater.  For most of its history, the Republican party was precisely what the modern "paleo-cons" hope to shape the Republican party into, a party supporting protectionism, soft money, intrusive moralism, and strong central government. (See "The Political Spectrum",  "Protectionism Right and Left" and  "Misplaced Blame and A Power Play".) This can be seen most clearly between 1898 and 1932, when the two parties were both in agreement over most issues. I know many on the left, and some on the right, pretend that the Republicans of the 1920's were big-business plutocrats opposed to populist Democrats, but excepting their positions on immigration, unions and prohibition, the two parties were indistinguishable. Both supported government intervention into the economy (recall Teddy Roosevelt was the "trust buster", and that Sherman of the Sherman Antitrust Act was a Republican as well), protectionism and largely mercantilist policies. Even on the topic of unions and immigration it was largely a matter of degree which separated the two***. Only prohibition truly divided them. 

If you doubt this, look without partisan bias at how Hoover handled the depression and how FDR did, except for degree, tell me what differences there are. Hoover created subsidies to "stimulate the economy", raised tariffs and tinkered with wages. FDR's first response was, in essence "the same, but bigger". Granted, over time, FDR grew more ambitious and proposed ever more intrusive measures, expanding the power of the state tremendously, but his early solutions were almost identical to those attempted by Hoover. ("History Repeating Itself", "A Few Questions for Proponents of ANY Stimulus Bill", "A Passing Thought")

Which, once again, makes historical analysis rather misleading. The left likes to use caricatures of Hoover to criticize laissez-faire, but that is akin to using Michael Jackson to criticize gangster rap. Prior to the 1960's there was nothing even remotely resembling a laissez-faire Republican, at least not at the national level. And certainly none at all in the 1920's. Nor were the liberals of the past even remotely similar to those today. Granted, FDR was something of an anachronism, much more comfortable with big government than his contemporaries, more in line with the trends in Europe at the time than American politics. Still, the amount of authoritarian policy accepted by both parties would in some ways offend both liberals and conservatives of today, while policies of today they would find unacceptable would also stun us.

And that is the basic problem with trying to use historical evidence to argue a point. At least when trying to use past labels as analogues to labels used today. You can certainly point to past tax cuts or tax increases to argue about the effects of those specific policies. But trying to point to past liberals or conservatives, Democrat and Republicans and drawing any conclusions about today is a fool's game.

Not only that, but it distorts  our understanding of the past, a past we already have enough trouble understanding.

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* On the other hand, the left tends to forget how strongly Carter once opposed an independent peace between Egypt and Israel, as opposed to a comprehensive regional pact. Because he later jumped on already existing negotiations to claim credit for the Camp David accords, his original position is often forgotten. See "My (Informal) Nobel Peace Prize Nomination" and the items linked in that post.

** As the left used to love to play "who's to blame for Vietnam", though it seems less popular today as the flower children slowly drift into senility,  it is worth mentioning that one could credibly blame Kennedy for the war. Yes, Eisenhower sent in advisors as well, but he withdrew them as well. The missions sent in by Kennedy laid the groundwork for the eventual escalation under Johnson. Of course, one could just as easily blame Eisenhower or Johnson, and by and large there is no "right" answer, but I do find it amusing that at one time the left both decried the war in Vietnam and idolized a man responsible for some of the earliest escalation. But, as I will argue in this essay, that sort of intentional blindness is rather common.

*** Recall that the first national restrictions on immigration were passed under the Wilson administration. In fact, during the period from 1898 -1932 it is almost impossible to distinguish the party behind any given piece of legislation. Thanks to progressives in the Democrat party and "reform Republicans", as well as traditional mercantilist Republicans and protectionist Democrats, it is almost impossible to distinguish the two parties. The Democrats were generally "pro-immigrant" and "pro-union" but only to a degree, while the Republicans were slightly more likely to promote a nativist, anti-union line, but the distinction is small in practice. Once the Democrats abandoned their hard-money, lasissez-faire position, they became largely indistinguishable from the Republicans. One might have favored tariffs to help unions and the other to help merchants, or one may have favored cheap money to help poor farmers and the other to help indebted manufacturers, but in practice the laws produced the same results, making the differences difficult to detect in practice.

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POSTSCRIPT

Before anyone objects to my description of the parties in the early 20th century, I admit that I painted with a slightly broad brush, and there were clear exceptions. I also realize that this is a bit ironic in an essay arguing against painting with such a broad brush. However, in this case, I think it is a justifiable distortion, as by emphasizing the lack of commonality with the present it may just inspire those interested to go find out the facts for themselves. On the other hand, those who paint the past as being just like today tend to dampen any interest in the past. So, if my distortion is contrary to my explicit message, can we at least dub it a lie undertaken in a noble cause and remove a little bit of the onus form me?

POSTSCRIPT II

I have noticed a similar error, one against which I argued early in this essay, the tendency to overlook many uncomfortable facts about "great men". Republicans overlook Reagan's retreat form Lebanon and overspending. Liberals detest internment of the Japanese, but somehow never tie it to FDR, as well as overlook his many attacks on individual freedoms outside of the economic sphere. And in a similar fashion, dislikable politicians are pushed into the opposing camp regardless of ideology and desirable ones are pulled into their own. (Eg. Very liberal Republican Nixon is deemed conservative.) Some of this is as I described in "Clinton and Bush Killed the Center", those on the other side of the aisle simply can't see the opposition as centrist, but in many other cases it is less honest. Whatever the cause, it is just as damaging as any other falsification of history, both hampering our understanding of the past and of the present.