The Fear We Have To Fear

We’re coming up on the beginning of the Obama presidency. As I watch this happen, there are a few contrasts that come to mind, not all of them comforting.
When Franklin Roosevelt took office, the American gross national product had dropped 50% in four years, international trade was all but dead, and the possibility of a radical revolution in the United States was real. As he sat through Hoover’s lame duck period (November until March), I do not recall him ever saying anything like, “This recession could last for years. We’ve got to have a plan fully implemented by the day I take office. His situation was much worse than Obama’s.
He didn’t say, “We must pump billions into the economy NOW or this will become a catastrophe.” Roosevelt never said anything like that—before or after March 4, 1933. His inaugural address pointed out many difficulties facing the nation, but he wound up saying, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”
That was admittedly simplistic. But it showed the attitude of a man who was far from paralyzed by any fears of his own. Roosevelt was not a terribly bright man. Walter Lippmann coined the phrase: “A second class intellect; a first class temperament.”
Roosevelt shared with several other members of his class a sensible attitude toward experts and very intelligent people. He saw them as useful “tools”. He was not impressed, awed or frightened by them—and he had people among his advisors and cabinet members who could have intimidated many men.
He intuited their limits and understood that it was his job to direct them—as one might direct any useful implement. The Kennedys, Rockefellers and men like Ronald Reagan—none of them equipped with mighty intellects—intuited the same thing. They valued the brilliant, often highly, but they never lost sight of just who was boss, who had the final say.
A story about Roosevelt absolutely delights me. He landed on the president’s desk on March 5 without any real plan in view. He sat down at his desk knowing only one thing for sure—he was boss. There was a row of buttons on the desk, one of the first hints that the electronic age had dawned in the White House. Each button was wired to a different White House office. If he pushed one, that person came.
Just for the fun of it—with the entire national bank system sliding into collapse around him—Roosevelt gleefully pushed all of them. He roared with laughter as his entire staff rushed into his office.
I wish I could see more of that in Obama. At first, after Election Day, we thought he was being terribly wise in surrounding himself with teams of high powered economic advisors. Then even members of the media began to sense that he was spending a lot of time listening to some of the same people who got us into this mess in the first place.
Every so often, the president-elect would stick his nose out and tell us how dreadful things really were. When he came to Washington he had already devised an economic rescue plan that, if it were not enacted by close of business January 20, would leave us forever shipwrecked.
I rather appreciate the Democratic members of Congress who are saying: “Wait a minute, we allowed ourselves to be panicked into right now—do not think or ask questions—action last October and it hasn’t done anything useful (the Paulson bailout).
“Let’s take a moment to ask some questions this time. Let’s us do some analyzing and evaluating of what needs to be done—and whether this plan is the proper course of action.” After all, the Constitution requires Congress to have input—and mandates that money bills originate in the House.
What I sense is that, like Paulson in October, several of Obama’s chosen experts on fixing the economy are essentially scared to death. I sense also that some of their panic (the urgency to act RIGHT NOW, THIS VERY SECOND) has rubbed off on Obama himself.
(Roosevelt never took his advisors all that seriously. He listened to them, but he stayed above their fears. When he gave a speech on going off the gold standard, he had two written—one by an expert in favor, another by an expert against. Then he had a third speech writer combine them. I see nothing of that kind of detachment –from the advisors—in Obama.)
I’m concerned—and this is going to sound paradoxical—that Obama, a very bright man, has too much respect for his intellectual peers. His own intelligence makes him too self-assured to be able to allow himself to look at other, equally clever men and imagine that they could possibly be wrong.
After all, they are like me—how could they be wrong? If they are afraid, I’d better be scared. Roosevelt (or Jack Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, or Ronald Reagan) would never have fallen into that trap. Obama may not even realize that such a trap exists.
If he has absorbed their fears—then he must remember what Frank Herbert wrote in his novel, Dune, “Fear is the mind killer”.