It is 1937 all over again.<\/p>\n
In his second inaugural address yesterday, Barack Obama channeled the style, structure and substance of Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s second inaugural with all but unprecedented fidelity.<\/p>\n
Each president employed a comparable rhetorical device to identify himself with his audience and with the programs of his first term. \u00a0For FDR it was \u201cWe of the Republic\u201d at the start one paragraph after another; for Mr. Obama, it was \u201cWe the People.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each described a dichotomy in society and identified his agenda not just as helping those in need but against the supposedly small-in-number well off. \u00a0As Roosevelt said, \u201cThe test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Obama echoed, \u201cFor we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most importantly, the central theme of the two speeches was identical. \u00a0Each was an argument for big, all-but-unlimited government. Larger government powers, each said, were not just an emergency measure for responding to a current economic crisis, but a permanent adjustment to enduring national changes.<\/p>\n
In 1937, FDR argued:
\n\u201cWe of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable\u2026. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yesterday, President Obama said:
\n\u201cFor the American people can no more meet the demands of today\u2019s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. \u00a0No single person can train all the math and science teachers we\u2019ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. \u00a0Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people. \u201c<\/p>\n
Of course, some particulars were different. \u00a0It is hard to imagine FDR thinking for a moment about anything resembling gay rights or climate change. \u00a0And Roosevelt\u2019s address was entirely devoted to domestic concerns, while Mr. Obama\u2019s touched on Iraq and Afghanistan, suggesting a retreat from world engagement in his second term. \u00a0FDR moved the U.S. away from isolationism his second four years in office. \u00a0But excepting those sections, the Obama address was clearly intended as a kind of updating of Mr. Roosevelt.<\/p>\n