“Laws are like sausages, it’s better not to see them made.”—Otto von Bismarck
The US is not the same country as when it began. Lincoln expanded the definition of executive power, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt expanded the state to such an extent that it is inescapable, and several laws since have morphed the US into an empire akin to one out of a fantasy book. This thought connected me to Lord of the Rings, specifically the ring as a metaphor for the administrative state. Though previous expansions changed the United States, the American empire was fundamentally made by FDR.
FDR was elected during a time of crisis, and was given a mandate to govern, obtaining a whopping 42 states out of 48 (Alaska and Hawaii weren’t states at the time). He immediately went about transforming the state in order to fight the Great Depression. Arguably, this worsened the Great Depression, however, people felt good about it and continued to give him a mandate. These programs included taking us off of the gold standard, putting in government regulation of prices, and heightened government intervention in the economy.
One of the elements that was essential to his long tenure was the fireside chats he hosted. The radio was essentially the Twitter of the time, and people loved to hear him explain his policies. Looking at it like this, one could easily say he acted as a light dictator who was willing to expand the state in order to gain more control. This all ended up with a one-party dominance so thorough that, aside from small periods, Democrats controlled the House and Senate until the mid 1990s.
Still, there were elements of the administrative state that were beyond his reach, at least at the start. The Supreme Court had consistently ruled against him and his New Deal programs. In 1937, he attempted to pack the court, a decision that was so controversial that even members of his own party pushed against it and condemned it to failure. Still though, his attempt allowed him to gain control over the Court, as the Court ended up siding with him in the case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. Justice Owen Roberts switched to voting with the left-leaning side of the court in order to stop FDR from attempting to meddle in the Supreme Court. By the end of his terms, he had appointed 8 of the 9 justices, permanently reshaping it for decades to come.
Having acquired a monopoly on governmental, judicial, and the general public, FDR wielded absolute control, and—with that power—he forged the total administrative state. When FDR passed away, the ring exploded into different pieces—Truman didn’t have his popular appeal and his party, which previously had complete control of DC, became fiercely split on the issue of segregation. Still, certain elements stuck—the Supreme Court was as good as packed, and his Republican rivals were dead in the water.
Some would say that this isn’t accurate, as Eisenhower took power after Truman served. Eisenhower was a moderate though, and was, in fact, courted by both parties. He did not seek to tear down the administrative state, and so I would not consider him to be diametrically opposed to the administrative state he inherited. Therein laid the most insidious part of what FDR established—it was eternally tempting, and almost every politician from then on sought to take parts of the administrative state for themselves. Like Bismarck’s sausage, few wish to look too closely at how it’s made, because to see it clearly would be to recognize that the republic has long since become something else entirely.
