Rotten To The Core - Nick Penniman

Late last year, President Obama made a pilgrimage of sorts to the sleepy town of Osawatomie, Kansas, to talk about the economy. He went there because it’s where, in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt gave one of his most famous speeches, called “The New Nationalism,” which was, in part, an attempt to unite his party around a common vision of a well-managed economy.

A few minutes in, he quoted from Roosevelt’s speech: “‘Our country,’” Obama said, “‘means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy ... of an economic system under which each [person] shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him [or her].’”

But, notice those ellipses. What he omitted was an important phrase from the original quote: “the triumph of popular government.” Five words may not seem like much. Perhaps the president felt as if “real democracy” said enough, or perhaps his speechwriters felt as if it wouldn’t be politically prudent for him to speak so highly of government. But the omission also points to a larger exclusion, not just in Obama’s speech, but in his presidency and, most significantly, in our country’s priorities.

Here’s how Roosevelt defined such priorities in his Osawatomie speech:

 “At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the [people] who possess more than they have earned and the [people] who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen [and women] to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will.”

Roosevelt knew that what stood in the way of his goals—his vision of America—was the control of Washington by the lobbyists and the economic elite, and that to “advance humanity” we first had to regain “the right of self-government.” As all history students know, he sure did fight to regain that right. In fact, by 1910 Roosevelt could have been resting on his reform laurels—three years earlier, he had forced the passage of the Tillman Act, which, as the first major piece of campaign finance reform legislation in history, banned corporate contributions to campaigns.

While the problem of money in politics was bad in Roosevelt’s day, it’s much worse today. Two years ago the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision empowered corporations’ involvement in politics in unprecedented ways. But it’s unclear if President Obama understands as clearly as Roosevelt did that the fight for a better America begins with the fight to “gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests.”

The full article is available here