Based on the article in September’s American Prospect by Rick Perlstein
In order to achieve action on climate change, we need a strong leader who is not afraid to act as fast as the science demands. The next US President must move our country from a position of static non-action into a new, clean industrial revolution. According to NASA’s James Hansen, to hold warming to the ‘manageable end’ of 3-4 degrees F., he must do it within the next year.
This election season, there is an uncanny similarity between the language being used by Mr. Hansen and that of political journalists writing about national progressive politics and our Constitutional system. They are making the case for aggressive, immediate action to be taken by a strong administration on a number of critical issues. Why? History tells us that that is how progressive, lasting change happens in this country.
Some presidents understood this, and seized their opportunity. These men include Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B Johnson. The difference between a president who understands the political opportunity that can mark the First 100 Days of a new administration and one who doesn’t might be the difference between one who can stabilize global warming, and one who cannot.
This argument is laid out artfully in “A Liberal Shock Doctrine” by Rick Perlstein in this month’s American Prospect:
“The Oval Office’s most effective inhabitants have always understood…that progressive political change in America is rarely incremental.” “Franklin D. Roosevelt hurled down executive orders and legislative proposals like thunderbolts during his First 100 Days…Lyndon Johnson, aided by John F. Kennedy’s martyrdom and the landslide of 1964, legislated at such breakneck pace his aides were in awe. Both presidents understood that there are too many choke-points-our minority-enabling constitutional system, our national tendency toward individualism, and our concentration of vested interests-to make change possible any other way.”
By way of example, Perlstein notes how LBJ’s aggressive First 100 Days strategy succeeded where Kennedy had failed. “The House Rules Committee, dominated by reactionary Southerners, kept Kennedy from passing even an increase in the minimum wage, let alone his campaign promise-the cornerstone of his legislative agenda-to extend Social Security to cover medical care for the elderly.” By contrast, Lyndon B Johnson unflinchingly took the opportunity from Kennedy’s death to convene a joint session of Congress. Soon came Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act. None of these steps were accomplished by LBJ alone, but they would not have been possible without a clear legislative agenda in place well before the honeymoon period began to elapse.
Will the next president grasp that “…unless all the monuments of lasting, structural change in the American state-banking regulation, public-power generation, Social Security, the minimum wage, the right to join a union, federal funding of education, Medicare, desegregation, Southern voting rights-had happened fast, they wouldn’t have happened at all?” Will he understand not only the pressing need to stabilize our climate, but also the need to act on it within his First 100 Days in office? Will he listen to scientists and policy wonks when they providentially speak the same (or similar) words?
How to most effectively collaborate is the critical question that organizations, leaders, and citizens are wrestling with right now. We literally have to make these decisions now so that we are ready to come out swinging during the First 100 Days of the new administration. Let us be prepared to take 100 Days of Action.
Nothing can withstand millions of voices calling for change. It is our responsibility to make sure that the first bullet point on the incoming President’s legislative agenda is a stable climate, THE lynch-pin to the welfare of life on this planet. We can have it either in the First 100 Days in counting from January 20…or never. Take your pick.
Inauguration, January 20 –First 100 Days– Earth Day, April 20
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This is an excellent post, and one that more of us should read as the election nears and we find time to start thinking beyond.
We know we need to be bold in addressing climate change, but how bold? We know we need to radically change the country, and I hope that we haven’t gotten so used to things being the way they are that we can imagine the sweeping change that these two presidents enacted.
When the labor movement approached FDR in the early part of his presidency, they asked for certain things and he said he didn’t have the political pull to make them happen, and they needed to go out and organize and force him to do it. They did, and the political will they exerted on him led to some of the stronger and longer lasting pieces of the new deal. There is no doubt that a progressive majority or super-majority in this country will demand a huge amount of organizing. Delicate, strategic and hard organizing, but we’ll need to organize against coal, organize against waste and organize for people.
Also in history movements often join together to gain the necessary numbers (e.g. sufferage and temperance). The recent call for “green jobs” may be an opportunity to bring enough folks together to pressure the politicians during this time of financial turmoil.