declaration of independence. and he mentions occupy wall street and perhaps he could have done with that what teddy roosevelt did with the unions by talking about john browne and lincoln. but the fact that he didn't mention it again, i think, shows that although this is an important speech in many respects, it's also a missed opportunity, i think, in some profound ways. thinking broadly, as pic >> as the gentleman's question suggested, i think there was no political percentage in barack obama talking about john browne. i think he didn't raise it. it would be fascinating. i agree with that. but i don't see how it would have advanced the argument he was trying to make. >> yeah, but i think one of obama's best speeches is the one he gave on race at the constitutional center in philadelphia where he really does invoke the declaration and tries to -- and the preamble to the constitution and talks about how the struggle for racial -- racial justice in the united

states was a struggle to establish this more perfect union that is called out for in the preamble of the constitution. and i think he could have done something very similar here but extending the argument for race and slavery to the problems caused by the massive dislocation of what he calls this innovation. >> and if he would have done that, we would be talking primarily about his speech on race and not his speech on the american economy is my suspicion. >> not to den gate his motivations on his speech, because i liked the speech, and i think the origins are great, but there is a sense that the white house sort of found this new nationalism address. look, they're talking about equality and fairness and these are things i believe in. because if you read obama's book, the second one, there's barely any mention of teddy roosevelt at all. he's never been one of his biggest inspirations. i hope they study some of the roosevelt legacy more. but his inspirations were more

on the fdr, martin luther king mode when you read his background. this is from his own book. and there's no -- there had to have been a history of president obama embracing teddy roosevelt in any way. i gu you know, is this a sustained effort to really sort of transform politics the way roosevelt and the progressive party were trying to do? or -- it's a good campaign message that will probably work in tough economic times. i think that's -- i'm not trying to be cynical because i agree with the content of the speech. but i think that's when i mention that people talk about presidential rhetoric these days, it's for these very reasons. it's not sustained dialogue about the progressive era versus the temporary -- >> i agree, but it's a little bit of both. as we know, the speech was in production for some time. perhaps peaking when the occupy movement, before it kind of started -- >> it's wall street.

>> and they kept to it. you know, they had been pushing them to take up the t.r. model, these kind of things. >> that's the white house. >> i think the more interesting question is not whether t.r. -- in particular, is does this movement back this argument, is this consistent with his argument, per se, which is as he chooses to go to the progressive speaker here as opposed to other options he would have had which i think would have been much more powerfully unifying, especially in this race. but he chose to do this. and presidential speeches aren't, you know, chosen for no good reason. and these are serious questions. and i don't think he was merely passing through the precincts of kansas looking for a place to give a speech. there was some unseriousness to it which i think we pointed to. to suggest and the way it's written suggests that this is very much in line with his own thinking. and there's a lot more there to

pull out. it's consistent with his earlier comments going back before he was president, before he comes in, talking about, you know, the transformation of american politics, you know, and his references of declaration and other court documents about the changes in how they weren't radical enough in many ways. i would argue this is actually consistent with obama rhetorically previously. >> i just wanted to give a footnote to john. i don't want to discount your cynicism, but the one time that obama did invoke roosevelt was when he was fighting for the national health care reform, pointing out that that battle began during the progressive party campaign. this speech was a great opportunity to take what is a single achievement, i think, if we weren't on c-span, i would invoke vice president biden here. this is a big deal. and as such, being a big deal, i think it needs to be defended in broader terms. what principles of progressivism do we connect this with?

is this -- is this a reasonable compromise of the right of property for essential human values that all americans believe in? this was a great opportunity to explain, to defend the most important program that has been enacted. so the john browne thing i'm curious about, but i'm astonished that he didn't mention health care. >> could i just -- a footnote, just a footnote, i happen to love doris kernes goodwin and not just because she's a red sox fan. the white house was not -- was not -- she talked about t.r., but they claim it came before that. and it just seems to me that if you are -- and this, i do not know what i'm about to say from sort of inside knowledge, but it is my assumption that if you want to make the next campaign a big argument about the role of government and the progressive tradition, you are wiser to go back to the progressive era when

this all started, than to stop at roosevelt and the new deal. and i think that it's logical that he did this. >> i completely agree. i think that that is consistent with where he's coming from. i think that's his thinking is naturally to go back to that progressive prediction. i think this e>> david cohen. picking up on javitts and ancestors, given that theodore roosevelt is a distant ancestor to president obama, there is an effort at making him an ancestor. and so i wonder if you could all comment on another missed opportunity which is theodore roosevelt laid the basis for dealing with the abuses of money and politics.

and apart from rhetorical flourishes, all of which i share about citizens united, where is the emphasis on finding ways of changing the system so the missed opportunity is in dealing with some of the political democracy deficits that we have for money and politics? >> just very briefly. everybody's talking about what wasn't in the speech and the omissions they cared about. that was the omission that really struck me is because t.r. had such strong language about this in the original speech and indeed, citizens united, in some ways, is a repudiation of a system that started when t.r. was president back when we passed the tillman act i think in 1907. so that there was, i thought, an opportunity for him to address this concern which also, by the way, is a concern of occupy wall street.

and so i wish he had done just what you said he should have done. >> you enact credibility on that because he's the person who killed public finance. >> yeah. >> all right. well, there's a distinction almost without a difference, but i accept your point. >> there is -- and this goes to the distinction that john was making earlier about the different strands of progressism. maybe it isn't an accident, right? that he's staying away from the kind of democratic or populist element of progressivism as embodied in notions like initiative and referendum and primaries, finance reform. he's instead emphasizing the kind of administrative state piece and fair distribution. >> it tells you a lot about where progressivism has gone. i accept e.j.'s point, i think is my point, the early progressives had a much richer

tradition. you made this point as well. one of which is this democratic argument. and i think the extent to which this speech was focused on much more the programmatic administrative aspects, rhetorically shaped into something else, but that's really what progressivism has become in the modern era which in many ways is a decline. it's really lost its mojo in a way. and this is what's left. i think it's what actually creates the great opening for a reform conservatism to step in and not only take the high ground of opportunity and arguing for these things, but also, you know, really challenging them on a day where

they're really focused on maintaining the status quo which increasingly is much less efficient. >> go ahead. >> i just wanted to say quickly, because e.j. came back at me about the public option thing, i honor the term "public." i teach at a public university, which i love. the part i didn't like was the option. that's sort of an academic bureaucratic term that embodies for me -- >> you're antioption. >> how progressivism and its reguard status which is disconnected from rank and file america. who out there understands what a public option is? that's what i meant. >> just on obama, he is a critic of citizens united. he has at various points called on reform of this system. one of the reasons people are getting out of the system is that it's structured in a way that doesn't match the political system as is. there are other ways you can reform the system. i still think quite consistent with everything he said, he could have done what david wanted him to do. and i think he should have. [ inaudible question ] >> yeah. in fact, a lot of groups on the

left have benefited immensely from citizens united, particularly environmental. >> not as much as groups on the right but that's for another day. >> that's for another day. >> yeah. [ inaudible question ] >> who has written more powerful stuff on the matter. >> that's who obama should listen to. >> having hung around john mccain when he was t.r., i'm beginning to think politics takes on the t.r. that they want. he also picked the campaign finance part of it. e.j., in particular, because you know obama so much better than the rest of us. was this a speech, or is this really going to be what he is going to -- what he is going to be for a long time now because we know consistency is not his

greatest virtue? >> first of all, i salute the point about there being many t.r.s. david brooks and i both like t.r., and he claims that i like the quasi socialist t.r., and he likes the authentically conservative and patriotic t.r. and they're all there. >> all fights are a struggle for the soul of t.r. important point. the answer is i don't know. i think your question has an assumption that's correct, which is he has not been consistent in the course of this year. this does seem to be a course correction on his part. and i think a good one. i think it's the right direction for him to go in. it is consistent with who he has been as a person and politically over time. if you go back to both the '08 campaign and what he was before the '08 campaign.

so i have a sense that this speech is part of a template that he's going to stick with. and that he believes, and i think he's probably right about this, and i think some of his opponents think he's right about this, that the bigger you make the election, the more it is about a very large choice. the easier it is for him to argue that yes, there are still problems with the economy that i haven't solved that we are still trying to solve. but you can't just make this a referendum on what you think about the economy because bigger things are at stake. so i think that the strategy that's implicit in this speech is likely to be something like the strategy he pursues in the campaign. and, you know, and it goes to matt's point about the center. i think the center, there's a whole lot of, i think, misunderstanding what the center is -- first of all, there are a lot of different people in the political center who disagree with each other. second, that the people in the political center like strong leadership and like people who

seem to have conviction. and i think one of his problems in the summertime is he thought he could win the center by being the guy who was conciliatory. but in the process, i think he undercut his image of strength. and i think this is an effort to get that back. >> i would just add, i think it points to the fact that for numerous reasons, a turn-point election that will be a watershed in terms of where liberalism goes. and as a result, you're seeing in this case president obama trying to find his place where he puts himself in that tradition. i do take it very seriously. whether he sticks to it or not. and the only thing i would add to the minutia of signals, this year's white house christmas tree ornament is teddy roosevelt. and those things don't happen. >> the question of will he be consistent i'll get to in a minute. we forget that t.r. quickly left the progressive party and became a weird imperialist and his

waning years were quite bad. so i'm a little partial to the jane adams wing of the progressive party. and i bring this up because i think -- >> she left the party, too, though. >> the point is that the social reformers had a consistent long-term agenda to try and create social and industrial democracy. t.r. was fairly opportunistic. i don't think obama is anywhere near as opportunistic as t.r. he may be inconsistent. obama's going to be gone at some point and progressive reformers will have to continue on the tradition of building -- either defending the old new nationalism or creating some kind of new version of it. so i think it's going to transcend obama in many ways. i think that's the most important lesson that you get out of reading sid's book is that t.r. basically was the embodiment of a lot of work from social reformers prior to him. and he took over that in many ways. and i think that was very consistent and much more transformative in ways. it's the job of the progressive movement today to do the same thing, knowing that obama will not be around, and he has not been the embodiment of progressivism as good as he's been in a constrained

environment. the other thing i would say is that this conversation about the proper division between government and markets is a great abstract discussion. but what we have now is an economic crisis that was predicated on failures in both parts. and the american people are now saying, i don't believe fair market economics. i don't believe the government can take care of this. both sides now have to figure out within a two-party structure outside of it how they'll be able to address declining median wages which have obviously gone down, the loss of savings, loss of job security. these are real issues, and the american people are not getting the answers they want from the two main political parties now. and so there really is movement. whether it's the tea party one or an occupy wall street or some amalgam of things. how do we keep the good incentives of the market economy but have the social protections that the teddy roosevelt style

state has been able to, you know, at least endorse and provide over a platform of time. >> we have time for one more question. please, right there. again, we need name and affiliation. >> john soliday, independent economist. it seems that president obama's speech may have sort of been leading us to chase a red herring with crony capitalism. and the same thing on the side of the conservatives of attacking crony unionism. and the question i think this was professor caesar's core of his point. well, aren't we really missing the issue. and that is a sense of well, you know is this a fair place? you know, t.r. had his square deal, and obama's fair deal. what kind of place do we live in? is it north korea? cuba? some sweat factories in industrial revolution europe?

and so the question comes back to this thing, what size of government? and isn't government -- and all these crime scenes with crony capitalism, crony unionism, there's one common denominator. government is in every one of those scenes. and i'm wondering if some of this isn't getting us off on the wrong track. if indeed professor caesar didn't hit this right on the head that there's a politics of evasion. any comment is this? >> well, there is the core you could say of obama's speech which we didn't pay all that much attention to was the statistics that we now have that the distribution of income has been changing over the last, say, 30 or 40 years, very much. the rich are getting richer. there's more difficulty getting

into the middle class and less social mobility. these are facts. i don't know anyone, after stating the facts, knows exactly why it's happened. i suppose you could say maybe the exception was the period from the '50s and '60s when it didn't occur. economic history will have to answer this. but more importantly than the cause would be the solution. what is the solution to this issue? is there a solution at all? and if the solution means taking from the rich and giving to the poor, i don't think that's where the american people want to go. we know that we can solve the problem of inequality in income tomorrow. they did it in the soviet union. they did it in scheck slovakia. take from the rich and give to the poor. that's not where americans want to go. personally if you ask would i like to see the income belt flalten out a little, yes, but it's not in my power. i can't wish it so. and merely by mentioning it as so many people do, they can't make it so. so when it comes to the question of what's going to happen, i'd much rather put up with money going into private hands than have the government take it as its primary obligation to begin

distributing wealth in the country i don't think that's where i want to go. i lived in the period where there was good distribution of income according to the current statistics. the '60s. i can tell you this. i was no more happy personally -- less happy than i am now. yeah. the rich don't impress me -- the rich don't impress me today. i don't mind that the rich are not -- they don't impress me one bit. i have no envy towards them. i like their nice houses. i like their nice houses. i like what they do to in philanthropy, but basically it hasn't changed my life. the idea would be you can only begin to make this case against the wealthy in a legitimate way. if you can show what the wealthy is doing is systematically harming the country. they aren't harming the country. that, i think, is the main point. what's happening in the unfortunate, but the rich are not harming this country. >> i'd just like to offer one

last comment, which is the choice here is not between north korea and iran's paradox. and on no one on the progressive side has talked about confiscating the wealth of the rich. i'm sorry? >> clinton-era tax breaks. that's what obama proposed. >> -- between, what, a 15% and 20% capital gains, 35 -- 35 or, you know, 41% top rate on the income tax. and so, you know, this is about -- and that if you look at our own history, we have succeeded in using government to do a whole lot of things that we are happy government did. whether it was and some of it -- whether it was building the roads and the canals that henry clay wanted to build that really did help create wealth in

america all the way down to the g.i. bill or social security. and so the question is not an absolutely equal distribution of income or a wildly unequal distribution of income like we have now, but something more moderate, if i may use the word "moderate." and it seems to me that people who are progressive are fundamentally in favor of moderation. which is they do not like the extremes of inequality that we have today. and that's where the argument is. and so i don't think the argument is fundamentally -- and this is just a political disagreement with the gentleman who asked the question. i don't think it's about the size of government. i don't long for a government of a particular size. i don't think most progressives do. they do want government to do certain things which leads to a government of a certain size. and it's more tested by what do you want government actually to accomplish than by some abstract sense of, gee, it would be much better if government took 52.6% of gdp. i don't think that's what we, on

the progressive side, are fight gting for. >> isn't there something in t.r.'s original formulation in kansas? isn't there something pretty radical about the notion that, you know, people should have the right to earn what they can so long as it is of benefit to the community? which is a fairly -- >> he's john rawles. >> inequalities are justified if they lead to a generally increase in wealth. so no one has a problem with lots of people getting very rich as long as this increases the wealth of every else. when it stops increasing the wealth of society as a whole, you have to ask questions about the nature of the system. that's different from -- >> but he didn't just mean wealth. he said the public welfare. and that meant that this pursuit of material wealth had to take a back seat in certain respects if america was going to become a great country. and that's why he defended conservation.

i wouldn't call it necessarily -- weird imperialism is a little bit jargon. i would say america has an important place to play in the world is a more positive way of putting it. and conservatives have embraced that part of t.r. and that original part of progressivism. i just want to add to that very quickly that there's plenty of room for invasiveness on both sides. two wars were initiated in the bush administration. and for the first time in our history, there was no attention to the revenue that was required to fight those wars. t.r. went for responsible government and he may have believed in a weird imperialism, but you had to pay for that weird imperialism. >> last comment. >> i was struck by e.j.'s claim of moderation. fight over who's the most moderate here. the problem is that the progressive model assumes the determination of moderation or who is doing good for the whole

is to be made by government. the state. i'd rather have the market do that than democratically decide it. i think moderate progressives have clung themselves too much i think to this administrative model. and if they don't reinvent themselves, i think they're going to be on the decline. and if they continue to go on the path they're going, unfortunately i think we're going to be their sweden or greece. >> two very different -- >> sweden. >> we are out of time. last absolutely urgent comment? no? let's thank the panel for a terrific conversation. [ applause ]

you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of people and events that help document the american story. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. hosted by our time warner cable partner, american history tv recently visited beaumont, texas, to explore the history and literary culture of a city where the oil industry in texas got its start. for more information on our tour of six south central cities this year, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> we're standing on forsyth street in downtown bbeaumont, texas. forsyth street was one of the center points during the race riot of 1943. this is the homefront town where there was much business activity

being produced for goods, for the world war ii effort. the homefront industries created these new jobs. and they also created new tensions that in some cases resulted in race riots. and there were race riots in detroit and in harlem and i think mobile and in beaumont, texas. in june of 1943, there was this very sad tragic episode in beaumont, a race riot broke out here june the 15th, 1943. there was a story about a black man having raped a white woman. and when this story spread into the shipyard, several thousand of the shipyard workers, some say at least 2,000 shipyard workers came down to city hall

and to the police department to try to find the person who had allegedly committed this crime. and they found no one. and then from there, they broke up into groups. and they roamed through black parts of the town including forsyth street where we're standing here. forsyth was a very vibrant black business community with lawyers and doctors and pharmacists and insurance agents, retail stores. there was a movie theater here. so it was a vibrant black business community. and some of these men in the mob attacked this neighborhood. they attacked some of the people. they had tore up some of the automobiles. and they attacked some of the businesses. there were three lives lost. two black people and one white person. so there were three deaths.

and the beaumont police department energized itself quickly. mobilized, and the texas rangers came to town also. so the worst of the violence was over within 24 hours. and the town was put under martial law. and so it was a brief, ugly episode in a time for the town when it was doing very well and when many people had new jobs, and there was no money and new prosperity. it was a tragic thing for beaumont in a time of growth and development. >> l jindal is scheduled to reveal his proposal for balancing the state budget for the next fiscal year to date. a budget $900 million in the red. it's mostly cloudy and 37 degrees at the airport. 38 at marksdale and 38 in minden.