“As political scientist Jacob Hacker has argued, the basic obstacle was nothing less than the government’s failure to have adopted a comprehensive health insurance plan decades earlier. As a result, the system that emerged by 1994 entailed such a crazy quilt of private interests — corporations, small firms, insurers, doctors, unions, HMOs, and so on — that moving all Americans into a new framework without worsening anyone’s situation had become virtually impossible.” Slate and Rutger University’s David Greenberg summarizes the history of health care reform, and of the epithet “socialized medicine.” “[T]he idea of government-run health care dates to the Progressive Era. Originally called ‘compulsory health insurance,’ it enjoyed favor in the 1910s among many quarters, including the American Medical Association…But as the debate heated up, doctors began to worry that it would hurt their incomes, and they banded with business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers to oppose reform. American entry into World War I tabled consideration of the issue, and the postwar Red Scare, Starr notes, ‘buried it in an avalanche of anticommunist rhetoric.’“
Category: TR to Wilson
Echoes of Aguinaldo?
“It was a war that the United States had not planned, and did not expect, to fight. It was a war in which the superiority of American civilization was supposed to bring grace to a foreign people. It was a war that the United States seemed to win quickly and with ease, but that somehow did not end.” Over at Slate, historian David Silbey ponders what the Phillippine War of 1899-1902 tells us about Iraq. Silbey’s emphasis on political counterinsurgency seems sound, but, given that the Philippines wasn’t on the verge of a sectarian civil war at the time, I’m not sure his strategy for victory plays out in Baghdad, particularly at this late date.
The Postman Always Reads Twice.
“‘The administration is playing games about warrants,’ Martin said. ‘If they are not claiming new powers, then why did they need to issue a signing statement?‘” New year, more of the same. Channeling Albert Sidney Burleson, Dubya creates consternation among civil liberties advocates with another recent signing statement reinvoking the right to read anyone’s mail. Let me know if y’all figure out what the best student loan consolidation plan is.
American Idyll.
By way of Ed Rants, and along with several quality links about early American popular music, Folded Space posts twenty mp3s (in the public domain) of Progressive Era musical hits, including “Come Josephine in my Flying Machine,” “That Haunting Melody,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” and “Over There.”
Creators, Kingfish, and consiglieres.
Some quality historicizing in today’s Washington Post Book World: Michael Kazin reviews Richard White’s new Huey Long biography, H.W. Brand’s looks at Godfrey Hodgson’s new bio of Edward House (right-hand-man to Woodrow Wilson), and novelist David Liss briefly surveys recent works on the Founders.
Swearingen to Progressivism in Two.
“Seth Bullock
Deadwood, S.D.
August 25, 1920 [Almost a year after Bullock’s death]
Dear Sir:
After careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that it is my duty as a believer in the progressive principles it was my privilege to fight for under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, as well as my duty as a citizen, to support the democratic national ticket in this campaign. I have prepared a statement giving some of my reasons for reaching this decision, a copy of which statement I enclose. If you are sufficiently interested to read this and write me, how you, personally, react in the present situation I will be obliged to you.
Harold Ickes“
Ah, the archives are great fun.
Quake II.
“‘In 1906, San Francisco was the largest city west of the Rockies. We had 400,000 people in the city,’ Eisner said. ‘Today we have 7 million in the Bay Area. And the consequences of a disaster of this magnitude in an urban area are significant.’” On the eve of tomorrow’s centennial of the great San Francisco earthquake, a new study suggests another Big One would mean a Katrina-level disaster for the Bay Area. “Seismologists generally agree that a repeat of a 1906-size earthquake is inevitable, though when and where along the fault are unknown. In 2002, the U.S. Geological Survey reported a 62 percent chance of a magnitude-6.7 earthquake or greater hitting the Bay Area within 30 years.” And, in a related story, historians look for lessons for post-Katrina New Orleans amid the rubble of 1906.
Foer the Republic.
Congrats to DC friend Franklin Foer, who was recently named to replace Peter Beinart at TNR. My advice to him would be much the same as Jack Shafer’s: “The New Republic needs revival, but Foer can’t hope to revive it by pleasing [owner Marty] Peretz.” With a long and illustrious history ranging back to Herbert Croly and Walters Lippmann and Weyl, TNR should be a flagship of progressivism, and so much more than just the “Joe Lieberman Weekly.” Godspeed, Frank.
Leo Rex.
Looks like Spielberg and Neeson’s Lincoln may have started a welcome trend. Trading in the aviator glasses for pince-nez, Leonardo di Caprio will apparently star as TR in Martin Scorsese’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, based on the Edmund Morris biography. Hmm…I can see that, provided the film doesn’t carry too far into the presidential years. Bully for him.
The Once and Future Quake.
“Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead…Americans reeling from Hurricane Katrina, and warned of scores of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling — never mind the disturbing rest of the news — of pervasive menace from things out of control. Too vague, according to Simon Winchester.” In light of the horrifying calamity in Pakistan this past weekend (as well as Katrina and the tsunami), George Will peruses Simon Winchester’s new book on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.