This week we are addressing the idea of the traditional, or Constitutional, presidency and the modern presidency. While there is no doubt that the powers, influence, responsibility, and scrutiny of the president have all increased exponentially there are some issues that have confronted presidents throughout our history. The Tea Party movement, which is a loosely affiliated group of conservative Americans supporting lower taxes, reduced national debt, and smaller government (for more info on the Tea party click
here) represents a challenge that is far from new. Take a look at
this recent interesting New York Times article which focuses on the recent debt ceiling debate (again click
here for some background if needed) and compares it to similar challenges faced by Thomas Jefferson and other presidents. Then use the following prompts to start your blog discussion. To be clear you are not expected to answer each of the questions, they are meant as a way to start the conversation. You can feel free to respond generally to the article and, as always, to the other comments left by your classmates.
- What was similar about the modern situation and the ones facing earlier presidents?
- What was different?
- What does this article suggest about the changes (or lack therof) that the presidency has gone through?
Reminder: please keep your comments to one long or two short paragraphs and feel free to agree or disagree with previous comments.
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ReplyDeleteThe issue of raising revenue versus lowering taxes is an issue that has existed throughout the presidency. Like Jefferson and like Taft, recent presidents have struggled with this. Especially in the Republican party, no one WANTS to raise taxes, and Republican candidates often speak upon the platform of lowering taxes. However, it is never a simple thing, and like Jefferson and like Taft, Republican leaders often finding themselves having to raise revenue for the country, which is often done through taxes. The main difference I find between now and then is an ideological one. In the past, it was often the Republicans versus the Democrats in terms of raising taxes or lowering taxes respectively. However, both parties seemed to understand that it is sometimes easier said then done. Now it seems that there is controversy within the Republican movement itself. On the one hand, there are some Republicans maintain this view that sometimes it is necessary for the government to raise money for govt spending. But on the other hand, there are Republicans who question the legitimacy of the government in the first place. These Libertarians seem to be a faction of Republicanism who seek to reduce the power and expectations of the very government they are part of.
ReplyDeleteI think the article stressed that while there is a more intense ideological split between different political factions now, politically the economic climate has not changed. I really like the quote by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “ideologically, the American public is conservative; in practice it is liberal”, because it really sums up everything in the article. No one WANTS to raise taxes. However, most politicians understand that sometimes it is a necessity, while only a few others aren't as willing to compromise
-Tovah Silbermann
P.S. I thought it was funny how on the side of this article, the page showed an ad for the book Atlas Shrugged, which is a staple in any Libertarian's library.
Obama's presidency has come with alot of challenges and one of the biggest issues facing America today is the rise of debt and unemployment. As a democratic nation the president must sign a bill that is passed by congress that consists of two parties. Democratic and Republican.
ReplyDeleteWhile both parties want to lower taxes, it has been a battle on raising the debt ceiling..again.. This NYtimes article suggest the comparison of the challenges that Jefferson faced to the current president- Obama.
While both situations suggest a time of desperation economically, the article describes Jefferson as someone who “had undertaken to create a government which should interfere in no way with private action, and he had created one which interfered directly in the concerns of every private citizen in the land. He had come into power as the champion of States- rights, and had driven States to the verge of armed resistance. He had begun by claiming credit for stern economy, and ended by exceeding the expenditures of his predecessors"
Implying that Jefferson seeked a solution that would not interfere with one's private actions. On the flipside, Obama had to deal with a strong party resistance- with 87 freshman republicans looking to shut down any plan he suggested was not an easy start, Additionally the GOP will not allow a tax increase and will do all that they can to stop it.
Considering the strong opposition, Boehner has complained that Obama's Debt Ceiling plan is to raise taxes too high and won't make "fundamental changes" to benefit programs such as Medicare. Thus the battle for Obama has not been easy or negotiable. It is very hard to compare a republican president to a democratic president met with so much opposition.
I think that this article was insightful because it helped me to understand the Tea Party movement from a historical perspective. Jefferson and his followers supported the reduction of debt and taxes, which is the main principle to which the Tea Party adheres to. Additionally, Jefferson was wary of "entangling alliances" with foreign powers, which reminded me of the Tea Party's strong aversion to money spent on foreign aid. And just like Taft fought to curb the bargaining powers of state employees, the Tea Party consistently advocates for a smaller government.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found particularly important was that based off the article, it seemed that these changes that were advocated came more into fruition when the president supported these stances as well. When Jefferson supported these ideals, then taxes and debt were reduced and foreign interactions decreased. However, when the main advocate for minimizing government and taxes was Taft in the 1950s, the same type of change didn't emerge. I believe that since Jefferson, these Tea Party-esque movements can gain great popularity and become an undeniable pressure on the acting government, but because they are so extreme, they won't completely reform the government as they wish. The article stated that even conservative presidents since Jefferson never enacted these kinds of immense changes. Although President Obama clearly has a difficult times actualizing the stances of his own party, I don't think there is a high chance of the Tea Party seeing their goals fully achieved due to Republican's own apprehension towards their movement as well as the President's likelihood to squash their ambitions when he can.
I think that the last point that Tanenhouse makes is very relevant to the basic principles of governance, some of which seem to be on occasion forgotten by current hard-liners on both ends of the spectrum. Tanenhouse underscores the importance of the pursuit of stability by quoting Taft: “A government’s integrity and stability in domestic affairs should be its principle virtue”. I think that this timeless phrase is especially important in the turbulent waters of current American politics, especially given the financial instability of recent months and certainly the debt-ceiling crisis. I think that there is an important middle line that is important to tow when governing such a large and varied country, especially in a time of crisis. This by default necessitates compromise, as Tanenhouse shows through Taft’s success in bringing the United States through the Cold War and even helping it to thrive in such troubled times, despite the fact that certain policies of the time were not necessarily to his political taste. Like Tova brought up, the line that “ideologically, the American public is conservative; in practice, it is liberal” is very important in acknowledging the truth of the disparity between what people say and what they want. To be annoying and make a chemistry analogy, there is some sort of equilibrium between the desire to keep government small and yet to provide services and spend, but when one of these components gets to be too much the whole system gets “out of whack”, not unlike what happened this summer. While the Tea Party contributes important ideas to the political canvas, perhaps (to make an oversimplification) they should have taken a leaf out of Taft’s book during the debt crisis and compromised to ensure ultimate stability rather than taking an unyielding stance, even if that stance may be the more financially responsible one.
ReplyDeleteI think that Tovah makes an important point by noting the fact that no President wants to raise taxes. Of course, the American nation would rather not have money taken out of their salary. It is not even clear what is actually being done with the tax money and that makes people more cynical than anything. I think it is very difficult for Democrats to admit that they will need to raise taxes in order to help the economy but they believe that the end justifies the means. There is a massive debt that America must pay and there seem to be very little options other than taxing the people.
ReplyDeleteHaving to deal with debts is not anything new to America, as Adams stated in "History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson" one of the most important things they wanted to do was to get rid of the debt but they also wanted to reduce the taxes. Unfortunately "the revenue was not sufficient to satisfy both demands.” There is no easy solution to the debt crisis and if there was, it would not be a recurrent issue. What we have to do now as voters is look at the different candidates and determine who seem to have a strong policy. The candidates who affiliate with the Tea Party generally support no tax increases. The debate between Republicans and Democrats concerning the debt ceiling is ongoing. Looking at the big picture, the debt debate is just another example where we see, as is stated in the NYT article, "a broader clash between the two parties over the size and role of government."
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ReplyDeletePresident Obama faces many challenges that are similar to his predecessors. In this Presidency there are many similarities and also differences between the modern situation, which Obama faces nowadays, and the ones facing the earlier Presidents. Presidents from both the Republican and Democratic parties have historically tended to tell the people that they are going to cut taxes, lower the debt ceiling and lower social spending. Once they are in office though the reality of the fact that people want material things change and the President’s promises into a new reality of spending.
ReplyDeleteThe wheel has not stopped turning and the US continues to borrow and issue new debt. President Obama came into office as a middle of the road Democrat who campaigned for smaller government and fairness to the middle class. Due to the tremendous spending that he enacted at the beginning of his term and the size of the US debt he is being forced to change his game plan. He is now doing the same as previous Presidents. He is looking to raise taxes and cut spending.
What is different now is both the power of the President and the nature of the opposition. The President in the past was allowed Legislate laws and he was able to change them. Now the President has to go through the Executive Branch to get a law legislated. Before the House of Representative and the Senate were considered one and ruled together and made decisions together. Nowadays, they are split and they don’t compromise with each other. This is most represented not only by the division of the Senate and the House between two different parties, but by the new Tea Party which has stood for a lack of compromise. Similar to Taft, who believed in a smaller government which is anti union, without debt and with low taxes, the Tea Party believes in a conservative model with no compromise. This lack of compromise makes these times much more difficult than ever before. Government is not seen working together for the people, but working only for itself.
The modern day Tea Party, which supports lowering taxes, reducing national debt, and a smaller government, does not hold “new” ideals for solving the countries debt crisis. Dating back to Thomas Jefferson these same extreme measures were hoped to be carried out. Jefferson had the goals of running a government that could tax less and involve less government officials, but due to this belief sacrifices needed to be taken. But even then they had to give in from their lofty goals and needed to borrow and somehow come up with the money to keep our country safe. During this time finances were taken out of the army and navy until pirates attacked and Jefferson needed to come up with the money to create a strong army. Jefferson similarly to the Tea Party had hopes to eliminate taxes to save the economy, however, as seen during his presidency he was not able to fully integrate into our country.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Adena that in fact no candidate would want to raise taxes but considering our recent debts we are left with very few options other than collecting more money to pay off the existent debts. If these ideals were possible and we could get rid of taxes all together, every candidate would gladly present the nation with such a pitch! It seems that history is continuing to repeat itself since Jefferson’s ideas in improving the way the government ran are being manipulated through the Tea Party. Today we are still in hopes to solve our countries debt problems but we are faced with difficulties because our two political parties have opposing views on what steps should be taken and how to solve this crisis.
Although the article compares the debt ceiling debate with similar situations past presidents dealt with, I think the modern situation/modern Tea Party movement should be compared to the original Boston Tea Party (which the current party is a reference to). In early 2009, many conservative and libertarians were terribly upset about the 7 billion dollar bailout of banks and auto companies at the expense of tax payers. Almost immediately, newly elected Obama began working with the House of Representatives and the Senate to dedicate more than 7 billion dollars of federal funds in order to prevent an even worse economic catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteI think that the Boston tea party was also somewhat of a response to government bailout. A little history about the Boston Tea party: Britain’s East India tea company made its revenue from selling tea from India to Britain, but many Americans smuggled tea from the Dutch. The East India tea company was in a lot of financial trouble, so King George III passed the Tea Act which allowed sales directly from India to the American colonies. Bostonians objected greatly to this, because they had no said whatsoever in the parliament, and in the act that was made. There line was “taxation without representation”. Just like Bostonians did not benefit from the London based East India Tea Company, how many Americans reap the benefits of today’s Wall Street firms? However, the situation today is not exactly the same as the one during the Boston Tea Party. While they protested about lack of involvement governmental decisions, this is not the case in modern America. Whether or not individuals agree with every decision made by government representatives, these representatives were elected into office, and policies are signed off by a president who was voted into office. We cannot claim to have “taxation without representation”, when a new election is just a year away.
-Miriam Barth
Something interesting to note from the history of the article is that even though Jefferson was all about eliminating the debt without increasing taxes, that did not mean that he cut all spending short. When he had the once in a lifetime opportunity to buy France's holdings in the Louisiana territory, he accepted the offer despite it being costly. I think this just emphasizes even more that it is nearly impossible to have a single unmoving opinion about policy, because any pressing issue at hand always has to be weighed against the long term effects of the increased debt.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways, I think that the debt ceiling was instituted to help establish that balance -- if the debt reaches a certain point, then no issue can be considered pressing enough to raise the debt even higher. Nevertheless, if we cannot agree on what that ceiling is and are constantly raising it, then the existence of a "debt ceiling" is essentially meaningless. We end up digging ourselves deeper into debt by continuing to deal with the immediate (and important) costly issues without instituting any plans to ultimately lower the debt.
I was thinking the same thing as Sarina. Jefferson had a clear opinion on eliminating the debt and stuck by it when it was beneficial for the country, but when other opportunities arose that proved to be more valuable than keeping federal spending low, he did things a little differently. I think it's important to remember that a change in policy or opinion for individual situations is vital in keeping up with a country that is constantly changing. Today's Tea Party movement is missing that piece of flexibility and compromise so I don't think they will be as successful as they would hope to be.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, although it is obvious that the country has been battling debt for centuries, I think the article reminds us to keep in mind that the debt issue is clearly not so simple and each presidency has its own difficulties in taking care of debt. Currently, with the Senate and the House split between two parties, it is not easy, or even feasible, for Obama to come up with a plan that will suit everyone.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Jen that Jefferson showed a lot of flexibility when he made decisions that clearly went against the policies he had crafted to lower the debt and reduce the size of government. Ultimately he did what he thought was best for the American people by sacrificing his ideal for a smaller government with a lower debt. Jefferson seems to have set a precedent for future conservative Presidents who have also promised to limit the size of government and ended up, like the article said, "time and again, [enlarging] the government they fervently meant to starve". Knowing this, and that history tends to repeat itself, I am skeptical as to how the Tea Party would be able accomplish what so many other politicians have striven to do for centuries and failed at.
ReplyDeleteI do think there are a couple of differences between the situation today and the situation in Jefferson's time. From the little I know about economics, it seems to me that the debt situation today is more serious than it ever has been in the past. Each year a good percentage of the national budget goes to paying just the interest on the debt, and that percentage is only going to go up with time. While in the past the public may have cared less about lowering the debt, I think today many Americans are more concerned, if only because lately the press has been painting a bleak picture for the future if something isn't done soon. We mentioned in class a couple of times that most Americans today think that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction and I feel like the debt is a big part of it. If past governments were able to ignore the debt problem, I think sooner or later the issue will become too big to ignore any longer and the government will be forced to take action, even if that means significantly raising taxes which like many of you said nobody wants to do.
I joined the class last week and have little background in politics. With the little preexisting knowledge that I have though, I will attempt to comment on the article. Thomas Jefferson was the president of an America that was in infant form; he needed to prevent the country from allowing itself to be drowned by a debt so deep it would die before it could take its first steps. America is now a strong established country but still faces the same issue of needing to prevent and pay off debt. One fact that has remained true about Americans since Jefferson's time though is that they are never fond of tax raises. In other words, if a president wants to maintain some sort of fan backing, he needs to find a way to pay the country’s bills without choking its citizens with astronomical tax rates. To eliminate debt in his time, Jefferson attempted to reduce the size of the largest government organizations: the army and the navy. He found though that he needed to issue a new federal fund because the United States had to be able to afford to fight off the piracy that threatened American merchant ships back then. Jefferson also tried to keep a healthy financial situation by focusing on America’s problems only and trying to avoid involvement in international politics. Nowadays though, America‘s number one concern is not piracy and America is known as the ’superhero of the world’. Instead of piracy we are now concerned with things like terrorism which have become not just national but also global problems. We are involved in different wars and cannot cut back on things like the army at this time. America also takes pride in being the ‘superhero of the world’. We have set a standard that we must get involved in foreign policy and we believe that part of what makes us such a great nation is that we show concern for other nations. While I think it is important to constantly analyze history to see what lessons can be drawn from stories of our forefathers, I think the situations faced in Jefferson’s time contrast too much with our current situation for us to be able to gain a resolution or conclusion from that era. One thing I do know though is that we are no longer a young nation struggling to find its way but rather a nation 'spread too thin'. We have involved ourselves so much in the problems of others yet we cannot seem to help ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated this article because it put the idea of the US debt into a historical context. Its interesting to see the similarities in "Jeffersons Tea Party" and the Tea Party of today. It is clear that striking a balance between "spending and saving" is a common problem and difficult to solve. Jefferson and the Tea Part alike attempted to effectuate a change in the economy while cutting, or atleast not raising, taxes. This article shows that change is dependent on the leader. Jefferson and Taft had very different success rates. As Talya mentioned above The Tea Party movement is one that caters to an extreme viewpoint, which will affect its popularity.
ReplyDeleteWhile as the article says there may be that as Americans we have an ideological divide at the end of the day the debt affects all of us and therefore should not be a matter of party but rather an issue dealt with across the board.
While I believe that comparing the Tea Party of yesterday to the Tea Party of today is difficult due to the difference in sociological and economical changes, the issue of debt and taxes needs to be dealt with in the same way; by a leader who can effectuate a positive change on our economy.
According to the NYTimes article, Jefferson said "the general principle that payment of debt should take precedence of all other expenditure" however when the time came to purchase lousianna that was not the case and he found something more important which would only raise the nations debt. This made me wonder of how much we can trust what the president says because Jefferson said one thing but obviously did another. Although we see and understand that a good thing came up so where do we draw the line that something is worth or not worth raising the nations debt? We see though that every presidency is different since different things or situations come up that they need to deal with and theres no way of controlling that.
ReplyDeleteNobody wants to raise taxes as we can see from the article, and Jefferson himself said he didn't want to do that but he had no choice. At this point, how can we not? the debt is so high and yes we can cut spending but then again we say that until something else happens and we need to spend more, like we saw with Jefferson.
The article was very interesting in that it represents the famous saying that “history repeats itself.” Thomas Jefferson was the Democratic-Republican Party leader, one who firmly believed in tax cuts, spending cuts, and to essentially stay as much as possible out of the life of the individual American. And even though, as the article states, that Jefferson was not able to hold true to all of his ideals and goals that he set out for himself, he still became the one known as the originator of the anti-statist movement. He was still respected by the people as a whole.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, President Obama and his Democratic Party, are not trusted. A major cause of this mistrust is based on the debt ceiling debate, one that took way too long for the American Public to ignore. The stock market is in a frenzy now, with days of immense volatility that America has not seen in years. There are days when the market has hundreds of points of moves up and down, and many have blamed the debt-ceiling debate as the main cause of this. Two political parties debated and argued over how to fix a $14.2 trillion debt ceiling, and ended up just causing more uncertainty and uneasiness among the public. What I believe is so unique about the U.S. government in 2011 is that America does not have trust in them, and in order for them to regain their trust, Obama and the rest of his administration must come together to solve issues such as the debt debate with more unity and professionalism.