"The program for better jobs and income": welfare reform, liberalism, and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter.

• Author: Bloodworth, Jeff

For a failed president, Jimmy Carter has been well-treated by historians, political scientists, and journalists. Though most observers judged his presidency a failure in the years immediately following Carter's ignominious defeat in 1980, (1) revisionist studies now hail the thirty-ninth U.S. president for his far-sighted and misunderstood leadership. Led by Erwin Hargrove, Charles O. Jones, and John Dumbrell, (2) the revisionists' positive appraisal largely ignores the milieu in which Carter governed. Overseeing a bad economy plagued by spiraling inflation and high unemployment, coupled with the Iranian hostage crisis and a poorly defined relationship with the Soviets, Carter's domestic and foreign policies were in shambles by the end of his tenure in the White House. If his record was the only criteria for evaluating his performance as president, this friendly assessment of Carter offered by revisionists would be inexplicable.

Though conservative scholars, like Steven Hayward, believe this friendly historiography to he evidence of the left-liberal slant of academics, (3) revisionist treatments are more influenced by Carter's admirable post-presidential career than political agendas. Using the Carter Center as an organizational base, Carter's post-presidential career consists of observing elections and negotiating with regional and world leaders to promote democracy and peace. A diplomat of international renown, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his body of diplomatic work. In addition, Carter has authored a number of best-selling books on topics ranging from Middle East diplomacy (The Blood of Abraham, 1985) to Revolutionary War fiction (The Hornet's Nest, 2003). The former president's benevolent activities have seemingly placed him above the political fray and almost beyond reproach. (4)

The first wave of revisionist scholarship positively appraised the Carter administration by using a different criterion of evaluation. Rather than adhere to political scientist Richard Neustadt's orthodox definition of presidential ability as the "power to persuade," or historian Fred Greenstein's "hidden-hand" paradigm of presidential leadership, (5) these scholars have re-interpreted presidential success. Hargrove and Jones, for example, assert that Carter should be viewed as a "non-political politician" or a "trustee president," respectively. In this way, Carter's leadership represented a departure among modern presidents. To Jones, Carter's "trusteeship presidency" meant that he saw it as his duty to promote the national interest at the expense of his own political survival. Likewise, Hargrove argues that Carter was not the inept politician as his critics have claimed. Instead, he was a "public goods" president who practiced a high-minded politics that went unrecognized while in office. (6) Undoubtedly, Carter's post-presidential record is admirable, but his presidency should only be evaluated by criteria by which most other presidents are judged. By this measure, Carter's presidency was, at best, below average because he failed to enact his agenda or significantly shape events in accordance with his national vision. (7)

The time for post-revisionist interpretations of the Carter presidency is due. By evaluating Carter's failure to enact his comprehensive welfare reform plan, the Program for Better Jobs and Income (PBJI), one can understand the roots of the administration's domestic policy failures. Equally important, the formulation of and the debate surrounding PBJI reflected the confused nature of liberalism during the 1970s. As such, the legislation not only demonstrated Carter's poor political instincts but it also revealed the different impulses, New Deal versus Entitlement liberalism, tearing liberalism and the liberal consensus apart.

Past treatments of PBJI, while thorough and sound, have not employed welfare reform as a barometer of Carter's overall presidential leadership and liberalism during the 1970s. Economist Gordon Weil offers a broad overview of the history of welfare policy and gives Carter credit for delineating the overall contours of any future debate on welfare. Weil neatly summarizes Carter's legislation and the political obstacles facing his administration, but his technocratic tone and style completely ignores the political environment and its impact on Carter's welfare reform proposal. (8) Political scientist Laurence Lynn and journalist David Whitman rightly argue that Carter's limited experience in national politics and concomitant failures in leadership best explain the fate of PBJI. These authors, however, are more concerned with comparing White House leadership with past administrations than evaluating the Carter presidency and liberalism. As a consequence, they ignore the larger political milieu in which Carter operated. (9) Historian James Patterson correctly sees PBJI as a "dying gasp of enthusiasm for guaranteed income plans" but fails to offer a critical assessment of Carter's role in the legislation's demise. (10)

Carter's presidency was undermined by his failures in leadership. The demise of liberalism largely contributed to those failures. Specifically, the split in welfare policy between Entitlement and New Deal liberals undermined Carter's welfare reform plan and revealed profound schisms within liberalism that ultimately doomed his presidency. Embraced by policy elites, Entitlement liberals ignored the dominant political ideology of individualism and opportunity and endorsed guaranteed income plans as a centerpiece of their welfare policy. In contrast, New Deal liberals adhered to the individualist tradition in America, and believed that the real cures for poverty were economic growth, jobs, and education, not welfare. (11)

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal shaped Democratic welfare policy well into the 1970s. (12) In his 1944 State of the Union address, which established the basic parameters of postwar domestic liberalism, Roosevelt held one right above all others, claiming "the most fundamental right [was] to a useful and remunerative job." Born out of the economic uncertainty of the Great Depression, FDR's "economic bill of rights" was enormously popular with liberals. It shaped postwar liberalism and institutionalized "full employment" as basic Democratic policy for decades. (13)

Though full employment legislation had been proposed before FDR's "economic bill of rights" address, after his death proponents wrapped themselves in the president's mantle rendering opposition to that policy tantamount to opposing Roosevelt. For instance, Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace published Sixty, Million Jobs (1945) to build support for the program. Employing Keynesian economics to its fullest logical extension, Wallace argued for massive federal spending to preserve American democracy and the free enterprise system by placing an artificial ceiling above which unemployment could never rise. In so doing, Wallace pressured President Harry S. Truman to make his predecessor's "economic bill of rights" and full employment a reality. (14)

Truman, who had co-sponsored full employment legislation while in the Senate, eventually backed the Employment Act of 1946. Though this legislation proved a disappointment to many liberals because it merely institutionalized the fuzzy goal of "maximum employment as national policy," it established the Council of Economic Advisors whose members became the president's key economic advisers. (15) Leon Keyserling, chair of the council from 1950 to 1953 and a student of FDR Brain Trust economist Rexford Tugwell, became a leading voice for full employment. Like nearly all economists of his time, Keyserling thought that the Great Depression was triggered by a collapse in consumers' purchasing power and believed that maintaining "high buying power" and employment would prevent a similar economic calamity. (16) Fearful of another depression, Keyserling and his liberal allies institutionalized full employment as a Democratic party shibboleth well into the 1970s.

Though the official definition of "full employment" varied, the 1974-75 recession and the joblessness rates that accompanied it were intolerable in almost all political circles and reignited liberal cries for FDR's "most fundamental right." (17) In the face of spiraling unemployment, New Deal liberals, such as Senator Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) and Representative Augustus Hawkins (D-CA), aligned with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), urged the adoption of full employment legislation. Through federally funded public service jobs and comprehensive youth employment programs, advocates of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Bill claimed they could reach a benchmark of three percent unemployment. (18)

While liberals' support of full employment resonated with voters, by the 1970s their advocacy of welfare spending on the non-working poor was met with substantial opposition. Whether it took the form of Food Stamps or cash assistance, state aid to the nonworking poor had become a lightening rod for criticism. Many Americans disdained welfare and believed, as one constituent wrote in a letter to Representative Al Ullman (D-OR), "People should be made to hold down a job ... [t]hey have it to[o] easy on Welfare, better than those that work." (19)

America's individualistic political culture has always produced popular antipathy toward a welfare state. The flaccid economy of the 1970s rendered Americans even more hostile toward liberal welfare policies. Sparked by the 1974 Arab oil embargo, stagflation meant that unemployment reached 8.5 percent and inflation hit 11 percent. In addition, during the 1970s American workers saw the buying power of their dollar cut in half. Many blamed their economic distress on liberal social programs such as welfare. (20)

Urban myths about "welfare queens" living extravagantly on the...