this occasion to say, okay, i'm one of you guys. and we can now keep this progressive sentiment within the republican channel. >> yeah. >> did you have a follow up? >> yeah. would it be possible, perhaps, that president obama intended brown analogy that would be something along the lines of for the tea party. after me, the delluge. >> there was a part of my remarks when i thought i had 20 minutes that wound up on the cutting floor which talked about his deafening silence on john brown. it would seem to me that the first african american president augt to make a statement about john brown, lincoln and the 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 brown and lincolnment. 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. thi thinking broadly as political scientists like to think. >> as the gentleman's question suggested, i think there was no political percentage in barack brown talking about john brown. and it's not in the least bit surprising. >> 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 justice in the united states was a struggle to establish this more perfect union that is call teed out for in the preamble of the constitution. and i think he could have done something very similar here. but extending the argument to race as -- and slavery -- to the problems caused by the massive

dislocations of what he calls innovation society. >> and if he had done that, we would be talking primarily about the speech on race and not his speech about the american economy is my suspicion. >> i like the speech. and i think the origins of it are great. but there is a sense that they -- the white house would have found this new nationalism address and, look, they're talking about inequality and they're talking about fairness. these are things that i believe in. if you read obama's book, the second wanly, there's barely any mention of teddy roosevelt at all in that book. i found it fascinating that they're embracing this. i hope they study some of the legacy more. but his inspirations were more in the f.d.r., martin luther king mode. this is from his own book. and there's no -- there hasn't been a history of president obama embracing teddy roosevelt in anyway. so i guess the question will be, 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 is it -- it's a good campaign message that will probably work in tough economic times. i think that's -- and 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 discount presidential rhetoric these days, it's for these very reasons. there's not a sustained dialogue about the origins versus contemporary. >> i agree. but it could have been a little bit of both. we know this was in production for some time. perhaps peeking when they had the occupy movement before it kind of started. >> it was a freudian slip. >> and they kept to it. you know, people have been pushing them to take up the t.r. model and these kinds of thingings. but i think the more interesting question is not whether he's targeting t.r. particular, does this movement and 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 the 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 presingcincf kansas. but i think it suggests and the way it's written suggests that this is very much in line with his own thinking. >> right. what would be interesting -- >> and there's a lot more there to pull out consistent with his earlier comments going back before he was president, before he comes in talking about the, you know, the transformation of american politics and his reference of the declaration and the the other documents about the changes and how they weren't radical enough in many ways.

i would argue that this is consistent with obama. >> i just wanted to give a footnote to john, not that -- i don't want to discount your cynicism, but the one time that obama did invoke teddy roosevelt is when he was fighting for the national health care reform pointing out that that battle began during the progressive party campaign. this speech, if it was going to be a big speech, was going to be a great opportunity to take a single achievement. if we weren't on cspan, i would invoke vice president biden. this is a big deal. i think it needs to be defended in broader terms. what principles do we connect this with? is this -- 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 brown thing, i'm curious about. but i'm astonished that he

didn't mention health care reform. >> just a couple of thoughts. just a footnote. i happen to love doris kearns goodwin, and not just because she's a red sox fan. >> i'm a phillies fan. >> she had 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 asuction that if you want to make the next campaign about the progressive revision, you are wiser to go back to the progressive era when this all started then to stop at roosevelt and the new deal. and i think that it's logical that he did this. >> i completely agree. but i think that is consistent with where he's coming from. that's his thinking is naturally to go back to that progressive prediction. and that just establishes that. >> yeah. good.

>> david cowan. picking up on ancestors, even if theodore roosevelt is a distant ancestor to president obama, there is an effort at making him an ancestor. so i wonder if you could all comment on another missed opportunity, which is theodore roosevelt layed the basis for dealing with the abuses of money and politics. and apart from rhetorical flourishes, all of which i share about citizen's 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

from money and politics. >> just very briefly. this is -- 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 lacked credibility on this because he's the person who killed public financing. >> all right. yeah. >> 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 progressivism. maybe it isn't an accident, right, that he's staying away from the kind of democratic or populous element of progressivism as embodied in notions like the initiative and referendum and the primaries and campaign finance report. he's, instead, emphasizing the kind of administrative state piece and fair distribution. >> well, it tells you a lot about where progressive has gone over the course of the 20th century. i accept and agree with t.j.'s point that the early progression is 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 add min straightive aspect he torically shaped into something else.

that's really what progressive has become in the modern era, which in many ways has declined. it's really lost its mojo in a way. and this is what's left. i think it's what creates the great opening for a reform conservativism to step in and not only take the high ground of opportunity arguing for these things. but, also, you know, really challenging them in a day when they're really focused on maintaining the status quo which is increasingly not as much less efficient, though. >> go ahead. >> i just wanted to say, quickly, because e.j. came back to 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 anti-option. >> how progressivism and its rear guard status has been disconnected. who the hell out there

understands what public option is? >> i don't know, i'm glad to hear that. obama is the critic of citizen's united. he has on call for 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 you said he could have done what david wanted him to do. and i think he should have. >> yeah, yeah. in fact, a lot of groups on the left have benefitted immensely from citizens united.s ch as gr right. but that's for ootid day. >> that's for another day. >> mr. cowan? >>. >> who has written more powerful stuff. >> that's who obama should listen to.

>> having hung around john mccain when he was t.r., i'm beginning to think if politic n politicians take t.r. and pick and choose the t.r. that they want. i mean, mccain wanted to go opposite of one hill, but 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 cleanlys that i like the quasi-socialist t.r. and he likes theatotic t.r. and there's a lot. and they're all -- they're all there.

>> or fight or struggle for the soul of t.r. >> right. so i think that was a very important point.. 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 direction on his part. and i thief a good wanly. and 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 overtime. 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 sill

problems with the economy that i haven't solved that we are still trying to solve. but you can't just make this 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 pluck lyikely to be somethin the strategy he pursues in the campaign. and, you know, it goes to matt's point about the kerneder. i think the kerneder, there's a whole lot of, i think, mi misunderstanding about what the center are. there are a lot of people that disagree with each other. second, 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 is conciliatory. but i think he undercut his image of strength. and i think this is an effort to get that back. >> i just -- i would just add, i think it points to the fact that this is, for numerous reasons, a

turning-point election that will, to some extonality, be a watershed in terms of where conservativism goes, 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. so i do take it very seriously. whether he sticks with it or not. the only thing i would add to the minutia is that this year's white house christmas tree ornament is teddy roosevelt. and those things don't happen for no reason. >> well, the question of will he be consistent i'll get to in a minute. we forget he left the party and became this weird em pearlierist. so i'm a little partial to the jane adams wing. . and i bring this up because i think -- >> yeah, she left the party, too, though. >> my point is they had a consistent long-term agenda. t.r. was fairly opportunistic.

i don't think obama is anywhere near as opportunistic as t.r. he may be inconsistent. but i think obama is going to be gone at some point and progressive reformers are going to have to continue on the tradition of 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 you get out of reading sid's book. t.r. was the embodiment of a lot of social reformers prior to him. he took over that in many ways. i think that was very con sis tent, thoughtful work and much more informative. it's knowing that obama will not be around and he has not been the embodiment of progressive 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 machletts is a great abstract discussion. but what we have now is an economic crisis that was predicated on failures in both parts chlts. and the american people are saying i don't believe pure economic market tis.

both sides now have to figure out within a two-party structure outside of it how they're going to be able to address declining medium wages, the loss of savings, the 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. so there really is movement. whether it's the tea party one or an occupy wall street or some amall gam of things to answer these questions. about what twitype of reform we have. have the social protections, the economic opportunity that the teddy roosevelt style state has been able to, you know, at least endorse and provide a platform for over time. >> yeah. >> we have time for one more question. yeah, please, right there. >> and, again, we need name and affiliation, please. >> john soliday, independent

economist. it seems that president obama's speech may have been leading us to chase a red herring with croney capitalism. and the same thing on the side of the conservatives. of attacking croney unionism. and the question i think this was professor ceasar's core of his point. well, aren't we really missing the issue? and thatwe, is this a fair place, you know? t.r. had his square deal and obama is fair deal. what kind of place do we live in? is it north korea? is it cuba? what is it? 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 of these crime scenes with croney capitalism, croney 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 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 comments? >> well, there is this decor, you could say, of obama's speech which we didn't pay all that much attention to. is that the statistics that we now have, the drags istribution income has been changing. the rich are getting richer. there's more difficulty get untying the middle class and less specially mobility. these are facts. i don't know that 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 important than the causes would be the solutions. 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 could solve the problem of inequality and income tomorrow. they did it in the soviet union. they did it in czechoslovakia. just 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 flatten out a little bit? 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 to private hands than have the government take it as its private obligation to begin redistributing wealth in the country. i don't think that's where i want to go. i lived -- well, live in a period when 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. the rich don't impress me -- the

rich don't impress me today. i don't mind if they're rich or not. they don't impress me one bit. i have no envy towards theaism. 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 systematically is harming the country. they aren't harming the country. that i think is the main point. what's happen ning the distribution of income may be 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 paradise. and no more on the progressive side is as talked about sort of confiscated the wealth of the rich. what the argument is -- >> and their tax rates. >> the clinton era tax rates. that's what obama propose does.

>> a 15 and 25% capital gains. 35 or, you know, 41% top rate on the income tax. and, so, you know, this is about -- and if you look at our own history, we have succeeded in using government to do some -- a whole lot of things that we were 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 didn't really help create wealth in america, all the way down to the gi 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, i don't think it's about the size of government. i don't long for a government of 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 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 fighting for. >> isn't there something in t.r.'s original formulation, isn't there something pretty radical about the notion that, you know, people shamed 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. >> yes. >> inequalities are justified if they lead to a general increase in wealth. so no one has a problem with lots of people getting very rich as long as this increases the wealth of everyone else. when it stops increasing the wealth of society as a whole, you have to ask questions about the nature of the system. >> but he didn't -- he didn't just mean wealth. he said the public welfare. and that meant that this pursuit of material wealth had to take a backseat in certain respects in a great -- if america was going to become a great country. and that's why he defended conservation. >> i wouldn't call it -- weird emperialism. i would say it's america that 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. in that original part of progressive. i just want to add to that very quickly that there's plenty of

room for evasiveness 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., for all of its faults, stood for responsible giveer nance. you had to pay for that weird emperialism. >> last comment. >> i'm still struck by e.j.'s claim of moderation. but the final, who's the most moderate here? the probody lem is who is doing good for the whole is made by government. the state -- >> it's the democratically decided. >> and i think the modern progression has really kind of abandoned that. and they've really now 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 going the path they're going, unfortunately, that means we're

going to sweden or greece and the problems that -- >> yeah, sweden is doing quite well right now. >> we are out of time. unless someone has a last, absolutely urgent comment? no? [ applause ] >> you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of people and events that helped document the american story. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3.

hosted by our time warner cable partner, american history tv recently visited beuamont, texas to visit a culture. for more information on our tour of six south central city this is year, visit c-span.org/local content. >> we're standing on fourth side street in downtown texas. fourth side street was one of the center points of the violence during the race riot of 1943. this was the world war ii home front town where there was much business activity being produced for goods for the world war ii everett. the home front 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 inharlem and i

think mobile and in beaumont, texas. and in june of 1943, there was this very sad, tragic episode in beaumont, a race riot broke out here june 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 out of the shipyard and came downtown to the city hall and to the police department and 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 fourth side street where we're standing here.

foresight was a very vibrant, black business community with lawyers and doctors and pharmacists, 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 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. the national guard was mobilized and texas rangers came to town, also. so the worst of the violence was over within 24 hours.