When Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Democratic party won a landslide victory in the 1936 elections, the way seemed open for the New Deal to complete the restructuring of American government it had begun in 1933. But, as Alan Brinkley makes clear, no sooner were the votes counted than the New Deal began to encounter a series of crippling political and economic problems that stalled its agenda and forced an agonizing reappraisal of the liberal ideas that had shaped it - a reappraisal still in progress when the United States entered World War II. The wartime experience helped complete the transformation of New Deal liberalism. It muted Washington's hostility to the corporate world and diminished liberal faith in the capacity of government to reform capitalism.…
"It pinpoints an important shift in the liberal outlook on the economy. Brinkley argues that at the beginning of the New Deal the government adopted the notion that it should reorient the economy in a more equitable manner. But, by the middle of World War II, the notion that the structure of the economy should be altered faded away. Brinkley highlights a very important moment in the history of liberalism, a moment that plants the seeds for where we are today. For example, President Obama, whom I admire in many ways, quickly gave up the idea of actually changing the structure of our economy. Obama entered office in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. He could have said: We gotta rethink things. Or he could have said: We gotta get things back on track. He took the second option. That replays what happen in the Roosevelt administration and what Brinkley is talking about – the abandonment of the notion of structurally changing economic life. Partly because of the resurgence of Republicans and conservative Democrats. Partly because the government had to work hand-in-hand with the corporations to mobilise resources during World War II. During the depths of the Depression, in the early 1930s, the reputation of big business was at its lowest ebb. The war effort re-legitimised big business and created what came to be called a military-industrial complex. Changes in Congress and wartime conditions pushed policy in a different direction. There probably are many other factors as well. For instance, the rise of different views on the economy and particularly the influence late in World War II of Friedrich von Hayek and other critics, arguing that government should not try to direct the economy from the top."
