Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics

Chapter 14: Rebuilding America’s Civic Infrastructure

Chapter 14 Rebuilding America’s Civic Infrastructure HISTORICALLY, civic realignments have led to the renewal and expansion of American governmental institutions. The first civic restructuring that occurred during what Strauss and Howe call the Revolutionary generational cycle was led by America’s first civic generation , born between 1742 and 1766, and included Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Paul Jones, and Abigail Adams among its members. After providing much of the leadership during the American Revolution, the voices of this republican generation were the key to the ratification of the Constitution. And their service in the nation’s first cabinet turned that visionary document into living proof of the power and practicality of a democratic system of government. Strauss and Howe maintain that there was no actual civic generation in the Civil War generational cycle that followed the Revolutionary cycle—the only incomplete cycle in our history. Nevertheless, the first two decades that followed the Civil War had many of the attributes of a true civic era: a major economic expansion accompanied by substantial economic equality, acceptance of large-scale immigration, and a lessening of concern with social issues such as women’s rights and substance abuse. Unfortunately, there was no large civic generation in place to restrain the tendencies of the next generation, who came into power with the largest generational landslide victory in U.S. history. In the congressional elections of 1868, the generation of Ulysses S. Grant defeated onethird of the incumbent members of Lincoln’s generation (Strauss and Howe 1997).The ultimate result of this generational transfer of power was the political compromise of 1877, which formally ended Reconstruction with the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and set back the 233 Chap-14.qxd 11/20/07 1:53 PM Page 233 cause of racial equality for more than a century. Even so, it wasn’t until the next idealist era of the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century that Jim Crow laws were firmly established and lynching reached its historical peak. Despite this major mistake, by saving the Union and firmly establishing the United States as a centralized nation rather than a loose collection of states, the Civil War-era civic realignment did lead to the revitalization of existing governmental institutions and the establishment of new ones. Republican programs designed to win the political allegiance of western states overturned the prohibition against federal economic intervention that had been the dominant political philosophy since the Jackson administration in the previous idealist era. The Great Depression provided America’s next civic generation, the GI generation, with the opportunity to reshape the U.S. government to fit the realities of the modern industrial age. The civic ideas of the Progressives , which were not fully acceptable during the previous idealist era, were welcomed and embraced in the 1930s by a Democratic president, who had the full support of the large, new GI Generation. Progressives argued for the introduction of industrial-age planning and expertise into government. This meant establishing a strong, centralized federal government to house the nation’s best experts, who would decide the best course for public policy to take, based upon an objective examination of the available data.The desired result of this new approach to governance would be a predictable outcome that workers and investors alike could rely upon. Based on this philosophy, FDR created a multitude of new agencies, each designed to bring national purpose to the major commercial activities of the country. With the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent Cold War, those same concepts of centralized expertise exercising full command and control over the enterprise were used to successfully execute a global war and then a foreign policy designed to contain Communist expansion. And when the men of the GI Generation traded their military khakis for gray flannel suits and marched off to jobs that were designed to limit any deviation on their part from practices dictated from on high, these concepts became embedded in American corporate enterprise. Today’s corporate world searches for ways to undo this industrial-age legacy by flattening its layers of management, encouraging innovation and Th e N e w A m e r i ca n P o l i t i ca l L a n d s ca p e 234 Chap-14.qxd 11/20/07 1:53 PM Page 234 individual enterprise...