We Can Solve Any Problem With Democracy
If we didn’t need an autocrat then, why would we turn to one now?
I joined The Union to help preserve democracy for my descendants.
Because of the recent outburst of media attention on Project 2025 and its emphasis on giving the President unprecedented power, I thought it would be good to shed light on a time when Americans seriously considered autocracy. Bear with me as we travel back to the Depression era.
In 1930, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 20% on imports resulted in counter-tariffs by 25 nations against the United States and helped make things worse during the Great Depression.
During 1932, America suffered 26% unemployment, the Stock Market had lost 80% of its value, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had plunged dramatically, and the entire banking system collapsed, taking people’s savings with it. There was no inflation, because many Americans could barely purchase any necessities or they had to barter for them. Civil unrest and riots were not uncommon.
Conditions were so awful that influential people began to think that a dictatorship was the only answer.
Governor Landon of Kansas asserted that “the iron hand of a dictator is in preference to a paralytic stroke.” Al Smith, former governor of New York and presidential candidate in 1928, said the Constitution should be “placed on the shelf” until the economy improved. Republican Senator David Reed of Missouri argued that America needed its own “Mussolini”.
To be sure, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as President in 1933, he was given enormous latitude. The Banking Act he proposed was passed by both the House and Senate without them reading it! In his first hundred days, he pushed 13 major pieces of legislation, the bulk of his New Deal, through Congress.
FDR had thought of sending Congress home after the Banking Act was passed and simply using executive powers to drive change. He would most likely have gotten away with it, because the country was so scared and needy at the time. The author John Gunther claimed that the “overwhelming authority granted FDR by an enthusiastically willing Congress” came close to what the Reichstag had given Hitler.
But he preferred to work within the Constitution. When the Supreme Court later claimed some of his programs were unconstitutional, he did not threaten or bully them. His attempt to expand the Supreme Court from nine to fifteen failed, and he acceded. FDR managed to be a strong leader without turning into an autocrat, and the country was much the better for it.
If we didn’t need an autocrat then, why would we turn to one now?
Unemployment is at 4% and 2.6 million jobs have been added since we climbed back to the pre-Covid job totals of 2022. Inflation hovers between 3 and 4%, GDP is growing slowly but steadily, and the stock market has just topped 40,000. Many economists argue that the 10% tariff proposed at the Republican National Convention would only end up hurting consumers financially.
There are many reasons why Project 2025 and the threat it poses to democracy are a bad idea, but certainly the thought that an autocratic executive would be necessary to solve today’s economic issues has to be the most egregious, and the one that is least justified, by American tradition and the present state of the country.
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Post submitted by William Riley, a volunteer with The Union
Note: The views and opinions expressed by volunteer contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of The Union, a single-issue organization that welcomes all and is dedicated to protecting democracy.
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