Sunday, February 28, 2016

Fear Itself

Ira Katznelson. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. Liveright Publishing, 2013.

Katznelson justifies writing yet another comprehensive history of the New Deal by focusing on two facets of the era which have largely been overlooked—the degree to which fear and uncertainty, rather than optimism and energy, characterized the entire period; and the degree to which the political muscle of the Solid South dictated both the potential and the eventual limitations of New Deal liberalism. Southern Democrats were not only a powerful bloc with a shared interest in preserving the system of racial segregation in their region, they also had the benefit of seniority at the dawn of the era, given that many Northern and Western Democrats were new to Congress in the wake of FDR’s sweep into power. Their command of committee seats and parliamentary procedure further magnified their importance in the New Deal coalition. Willing to go along with populist economics, and often taking the lead on a spectrum of issues including Social Security and peacetime military buildup in the years leading up to World War II, but increasingly allying with Republicans in opposition to policies and legislation which threatened the foundations of segregation, the Southern branch of the party decisively shaped the form of modern American liberalism in ways which severely compromised the idealism and fundamental assumptions of the early New Deal.

Katznelson's argument is coherent and consistent for the first three (of four) parts, and then the first of three chapters in the final part; at that point, he takes an interesting but somewhat disorienting shift in emphasis. His time frame extends a full twenty years, from the election of FDR through the election of Dwight Eisenhower. This means that the final years of the New Deal coincided with the beginning of the Cold War. The idea that the Southern Democratic-dominated New Deal state took a leading role in crafting the essential foundations of the emerging national security state is an interesting one. But, perhaps in an effort to stress the centrality of "fear" to his interpretation, Katznelson turns the final two chapters into an extended consideration of the atomic bomb, and the effect that atomic weaponry had on the shape of the growing national security state. This is an interesting subject, but despite adding a brief discussion on how the Southern bloc supported the accelerating trend toward vesting authority and power in the executive branch, this section seems either tacked-on or rushed. The reader won't necessarily disagree with Katznelson, but might wonder how consistent the interpretive framework is in the book's conclusion.

That said, this is a thought-provoking reconsideration of the New Deal. Katznelson does succeed in forcing the reader to see something that was right there in front of us without ever being really noticed before. 

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