By Mark Z. Barabak
February 12, 2011.
Reporting from
For more than half a century,
biographers have treated Franklin
Delano Roosevelt with Rushmore-like reverence, celebrating the
nation's 32nd president as a colossus who eased the agony of the Great
Depression and saved democracy from Nazi Germany.
Which never sat right with historian Burton Folsom Jr.
Growing up in
About 15 years ago, Folsom read another of those historical surveys, this one
placing
The result was "New Deal or Raw Deal?," a scathing 300-page
counter-narrative that has made Folsom a conservative hero and placed him
squarely in the midst of a roiling debate over America's past, the nature of
history and, some say, its manipulation for political ends.
It is an ancient debate spurred anew by the rise of the "tea
party" movement, which treats the Constitution as both cudgel
and sacred text; by TV commentators such as Glenn Beck,
who wrap their ideology in selective scholarship; and by a current vogue among
conservatives eager not just to revisit the past but to rewrite it.
Many tea partyers, for instance, speak as though the
Founders favored a small, circumscribed federal government, when in fact some
wanted a more powerful
Misleading or not, the revisionism represents a scramble for the high ground;
in a country that reveres its history — even as we endlessly fight over its
meaning — there are few more powerful arguments than precedent.
"We're not discussing how many economic-stimulus plans we can balance on
the head of a pin," said the University
of New Mexico's Jason Scott Smith. "There can be real-world
consequences to the lessons we attempt to take from history."
Some scholars, however, worry the debate has been poisoned by the same attitude
afflicting political discourse: the notion that truth and virtue reside on one
side, and those who disagree are not just wrong but un-American. In a new book,
Harvard's Jill Lepore condemns what she calls
"historical fundamentalism," a belief that "a particular and
quite narrowly defined past" should be worshiped, unquestioned, above all
others.
"There's an opportunity for an interesting national conversation about
what the past means to us," Lepore said.
"But it needs to be a respectful conversation."
That would seem to exclude the likes of Beck, who routinely heaps opprobrium on
FDR — "one evil son-of-a-bitch"; Woodrow
Wilson — the No. 1 "president you need to hate"; and other
demons on the left. "Trained historians try to take seriously the
complexities of the past … and not just reduce people to archvillains,"
said Randall Stephens, an
Folsom, whose book is a tea party must-read, is no armchair analyst. He holds a
doctorate in history, and he spent 10 years on research and compiled 40 pages
of footnotes that, even critics say, attest to the depth of his research.
Most historians agree the New Deal did not solve the economic crisis that began
in 1929 and lasted until the
Further, they say, the New Deal's foundation helped make the
Folsom, an avid free-marketeer, couldn't disagree
more. He says
At 63, in square, rimless glasses and an argyle sweater, Folsom is professorial
in both demeanor and dress: pleasant, unassuming and unfailingly polite. He is
not one to press his point by raising his voice or lacing his arguments with
invective.
The problem with most histories, Folsom said, is their focus on relief efforts,
without serious discussion of their financing. High tax rates, approaching 80%
of income on the wealthy, stifled entrepreneurs, he said, and were — to use a
modern phrase — "a job killer."
"That argument might resonate in today's environment," countered
Smith, but not so much in the 1930s, when only 3% of households paid income
tax.
What, he asks, of feats like Hoover Dam, the Triborough
Bridge and the span between
Those projects had merit, Folsom agreed, but all the government did was elbow
out private industry, adding layers of inefficiency, corruption and cost.
"The good things that are there would have happened and, I think, in
greater abundance without the New Deal," he said.
Folsom has not won fame or riches with his FDR indictment. But it raised
Folsom's profile on TV and the lecture circuit, affording the luxury of
teaching half a year at Michigan's Hillsdale College, a conservative citadel,
and spending winters outside Atlanta, near his adult son. He is writing a
second
Folsom knows that many dismiss his work as little more than conservative
polemic. "I think the story I tell is the right story," he said, as
soft winter light filtered into his living room. "I want to present
something that's going to endure, and to endure you have to be accurate. You
have to have something that's going to be compelling 40, 50 years from now."
In other words, he suggested, history will judge.