Written by David Rabin   

Certain members of the Right have accused President Obama, during the heat of this interminably long campaign season, of fomenting class warfare. He HAS called Romney's five-point economic program a "one point plan" designed "to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules." And then there's the now famous “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.”

But Obama's class rhetoric pales in comparison to President Franklin Roosevelt's in his run for a second term in 1936. There's the well known quote about welcoming the hatred of the monied elites, but there are compelling lines from his speech at the Democratic Convention as well:


“For too many of us, the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor—other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.”


In explaining this rhetorical disparity, it’s certainly the case that the 30s was a different era. The country was in far more desperate shape, with unemployment about twice as high as it is today. Revolution was in the air, although to a lesser extent than in 1932. And FDR had the wind at his back: he had knocked about 10 points off the unemployment rate, he had passed major components of the New Deal, and he had a far larger and more radical movement backing him up. Revolutionary times called for revolutionary rhetoric, and FDR grabbed it.

But it also can be argued that Obama did not seize the opportunity he had in 2009. The country was in the worst financial shape it had been in since the Great Depression, but Obama, unlike FDR, responded by surrounding himself with a relatively conservative inner circle. His Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, was the acquiescing head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the 2008 meltdown. The President’s chief economic point person, Larry Summers, was a major proponent, at the end of the Clinton Administration, of the deregulation that helped bring about the ’08 crisis. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is equally conservative.

Ironically, Emanuel espouses the idea that one should never let a good crisis go to waste. But Obama did exactly that. He got a stimulus package, financial regulation and health care bills passed, but they could have been much stronger if Obama, in addition to a more assertive bargaining strategy, had created a class narrative that clearly defined, ala FDR, who the enemy was and is.

Is it just not in Obama’s temperament to do so? Does it have something to do with not wanting to appear to be the “angry black man?” Or is the man who, in 2008, got almost twice as much money from Wall Street as his opponent, simply unwilling to alienate the 1 percent? Does he believe, unlike FDR, that one can’t both confront the rich while still negotiating with them?

If the President wins a second term, with no need to placate the “powers that be,” perhaps we’ll see a more unfettered Obama, both in word and action. If so, it could be the Right’s worse nightmare, the Left’s sweet dream.