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President must make the case for sacrifice
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President-elect Obama has on his plate a number of serious and daunting tasks before him—and very little time to perform. Two wars, a collapsing economy verging on a depression, a health care system in shambles, a number of social issues that sill divide us, a nation that simply does not trust the federal government. It is interesting that the public’s approval rating for Congress is even lower than that of the existing president. This is not necessarily, as many social conservatives are saying, evidence that George Bush wasn’t all that disliked; it shows that, while Congress is not highly regarded, for the most part individuals think reasonably well about his or her Senators and Representative,
There is a condition precedent. The new president must convince the American public that each and every one of us must be prepared to sacrifice in the interests of the common good. No sugar coating, no making light of the sacrifice. It was the failure to make the public as participants in fighting a war, foreign or domestic, that has caused our failure in Vietnam and the less than adequate performance and success in Iraq and Afghanistan and with regard to terrorism. Not accepting reality has, also, been a major reason why our economy has crumbled. The only measure that was used was Wall Street performance and other factors were in play.
The last two conflicts in which the United States was a combatant ended (or will end) unsatisfactorily because shared and universal sacrifice was not demanded (or even suggested) by the government.
I was six years old when the United States was attacked by Japan on December 7th, 1941. On the following day Germany declared war against this country. World War II differed from the Vietnam conflict or the war in Iraq in that our country had been attacked and clearly forced into war. It was not an elective conflict or a preemptive war; we were attacked, our citizens were killed by a foreign nation and it was absolutely clear to the American public that going to war was necessary. (In retrospect, we now know that the people who attacked us on September 11th were not Iraqis; they were mostly Saudi nationals associated with al-Qaeda, trained in Afghanistan. Our real enemy was the Taliban and Osama bin Laden headquartered in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.) Those people who, on December 6th were isolationist or had doubts about becoming involved in what was, to many, a European conflict or a south-east Asian matter, rushed to enlist in the armed services and in other ways resolved to do his or her part in safeguarding our freedoms.
The then president, Franklin Roosevelt, spoke often of the need for sacrifice by everyone. With able-bodied men entering the service, jobs that were previously performed by men were taken by women. Rosie the Riveter was born. Women were enlisting in the Women's Arms Corp (WAC), Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) and a greatly expanded Nurse Corps, while those at home made parachutes and bandages.
In the United States during World War I, the use of an allotment system for food and supplies was mostly voluntary. However, World War II was another matter. The federal government set up a system utilized throughout much of the war. It was used to assure American soldiers and citizens both received a fair distribution of goods. Rubber, which was first conserved voluntarily, became scarce due to Japan's successful invasion of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. President Roosevelt instituted a "scrap drive." He asked the American people to turn in "old tires, old rubber raincoats, old garden hose, rubber shoes, bathing caps, gloves," etc. at local gas stations. The stations paid the public one cent per pound for the items and then were reimbursed by the government. This campaign instilled patriotism but did not forestall rationing. That was instituted early in 1942.
Gasoline was the next rationing target. May 14, 1942, a direct result of German U-boat attacks in the Atlantic Ocean, marked the day motorists in seventeen Eastern states had their gas usage restricted. It was expanded to the rest of the nation seven months later. Ration stamps were issued and pasted to an automobile windshield.
Food prices were monitored by the Office of Price Administration (OPA). About one third of civilian food items were rationed during a majority of the war; "ration books" were distributed by volunteer rationing boards. One member of each household registered themselves and each additional household member with the board. The person performing this task was required to list supplies on hand. They received a book for each member of the household. Coffee stamps were taken from the books of children under the age of fifteen and books required to be turned in for departing servicemen. Shoppers had to get used to reading price tags including not only a dollar and cents amount, but a figure for "points". For example, Ham would have been 51 cents and 8 points per pound, canned and bottled goods varied. A can of tomato juice was 16 points and a 14-ounce bottle of catsup was 8 points: red stamps for meat, butter, fats, cheese, canned milk, and canned fish; green, brown or blue stamps for canned vegetables, juices, baby food and dried fruit. A shopper could earn two extra red points for every pound of meat drippings and other fat turned in. This was part of a "save-fats campaign." In addition to these measures, people planted "Victory Gardens" to supplement fresh vegetables and to can or preserve for colder months.
Those living in rural areas kept chickens both for eggs and meat. And lucky was the family in possession of a cow or goat!
Taxes were increased to meet the cost of war. And people accepted this as a shared sacrifice with the troops in the European and Pacific theaters of war. The president did not pretend that less than a complete and universal effort could succeed.
Compare this approach to that of President Johnson pursuing the Vietnam War in the 1960's and the similar approach of President Bush (# 43) in Iraq.
When President Johnson made the war in Vietnam an American war in 1965, he worried about the impact of his policies on the home front. He might have rallied support for his decisions to bomb North Vietnam and assume the dominant ground combat role by explaining that the nation that it faced a crisis vital to its national security. However, he was concerned that the public would become too energized. By failing to “sell” the war, the president presented an opening to critics who asked why he was expending so much human and material treasure in such a remote conflict.
In fact, President Johnson had a more practical and "political" motive for playing down the commitment in Southeast Asia. After the Democrats won by a landslide in the 1964 election, the president believed he had a two-year window of opportunity to push through Congress legislation for his Great Society, the most ambitious set of reforms since the New Deal. He was painfully aware of what happened to Woodrow Wilson's and Franklin D. Roosevelt's comparable reform programs when they fell victim to "guns-over-butter" decisions. Escalating by stealth in Vietnam, Johnson was able to have "guns and butter" without increasing taxes to pay for both projects. This irresponsible decision had a profound impact on the American economy. Budget deficits, a creeping inflation (that would be addressed by Johnson's successor) and a deterioration of the American economic standing followed. All because President Johnson was determined to minimize "his" war, and avoid calling upon the American people to sacrifice. The anti-war movement kept growing and, in the end, Johnson's ploy to be popular by not calling for national sacrifice did him no good.
As Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times, has stated, President Bush took the same approach. By catering to his coterie of affluent supporters and corporations by reducing taxes, that president accepted and endorsed the mutually exclusive paths of asserting that "victory" in Iraq or, at least, the creation of stability in the Middle East was of vital importance to the United States and risking popularity by suggesting that sacrifice by the Unites States need not be universal and could be made wholly by the men and women serving in the armed forces and their families. In the immediate aftermath of September 11th, President Bush should have explained how fighting terrorists was a difficult task, one that required sacrifice. He needed to explain and demand that every American had to pitch in and work together; instead, he urged us all to go shopping to demonstrate that we could cope with adversity.
There was a burden to be met but instead of the public as a whole, a plan that would have brought us together, the burden was placed on the shoulders of the men and women in the armed forces and National Guard, typically minorities and the least wealthy and least influential of our citizens. The affluent made no real investment in the cause.
President Obama faces similar problems: wars, economic collapse, and a planet in jeopardy.
He cannot even start to address them without sharing the burdens with the American public.
Specifics ahead.
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