How did the party of Lincoln degenerate into the party of Trump? Trump who was born rich and presided over years of peace and prosperity punctuated by a dozen angry tweets every day. The man who claimed to be the most persecuted politician in our nation’s history. Lincoln who was born poor and was engaged in civil war for the entirety of his presidency but left us with some of the most inspiring and hopeful words of any president. Who became the first president to be assassinated. The stark contrast between them and the parties they led may point to a coalition of groups alienated by the transformative policies of three of America’s most influential presidents.
Thomas Jefferson was probably a deist and was (quietly) dismissive of Christianity. Jefferson’s University of Virginia was the first university in the West that was not initially founded as a school of divinity. He was in France as the American ambassador while the constitution was being written and approved. Coming in late to the debate, he argued that the constitution needed a Bill of Rights. The first of these ten amendments, inspired by a similar provision penned by Jefferson himself for Virginia's constitution, ensured the separation of church and state. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Fast forward to the era of Reagan, and we find a stark contrast. Reagan appealed to religious conservatives by pushing for an amendment endorsing prayer in public schools, thus inserting religion into public education, a domain which Jefferson fought to keep distinct.
Abraham Lincoln was an advocate for a new kind of industrial economy. Despite his lack of formal education, Lincoln’s fascination with the potential of machinery to revolutionize the economy led him to promote industrialization. But he didn’t see investments and their returns as something to be limited to private citizens and corporations. Lincoln championed the importance of government investment in both capital and education, leading to the establishment of the transcontinental railroad and Land-Grant colleges. The transcontinental railroad he authorized was completed in 1869 and it created a national economy that stretched from coast to coast. Before 1870, the American economy grew about 0.45 percent a year. After 1870, it began to grow about 2.1 percent a year – a stunning difference. (How stunning? At 0.45%, GDP takes about 160 years to double. At 2.1%, it takes only 34 years to double.)
To finance these initiatives, Lincoln instituted the IRS to administer the country’s first tax on income. The narrative of government investing in its citizens through taxation - particularly of those with higher incomes - has faced opposition in the last generation of Republicans, who have promised to reduce government spending and investment on initiatives aimed at poverty alleviation, public schools, and infrastructure. And modern Republicans continue to enact cuts to the IRS that make it more difficult to accomplish the goal of tax collection that Lincoln first defined.
No president experimented more boldly with initiatives to create jobs and to enhance the value of labor than FDR. He gave labor unions more power. He invested huge sums in R&D and education. He made workers more secure with unemployment insurance and social security. He strengthened capital markets but not at the expense of workers. In the few decades after FDR’s presidency, the new policies he’d instituted fed economic growth even more dramatic than the incredible growth that followed Lincoln’s presidency. LBJ took these policies even further, working to give equal opportunity to women, minorities and immigrants whose inclusion made America’s workforce a leader in diversity, productivity, and innovation.
Eisenhower, the first Republican president after FDR, largely continued with FDR’s policies. He wrote “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. … Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
Since Nixon, though, the Republican Party increasingly aligns itself against the socioeconomic reforms introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The policies of Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR each led to an era of unprecedented economic growth, each time creating a level of prosperity unseen before in human history. Yet, the pushback against their policies has not disappeared. The religious conservatives, who were skeptical of Jefferson's clear separation of church and state, have found a home in today's Republican Party. The fiscal conservatives, resistant to Lincoln's vision of the government as a significant investor in public projects, are – weirdly – now a prominent and vocal part of the GOP. Social conservatives, disgruntled by the increasingly multicultural fabric of a society and economy dependent on not just men but women, minorities, and immigrants, were drawn to Trump's unapologetic rhetoric.
So, how did the party of Lincoln - arguably the most progressive political force of its time - transform into the party of Trump? It seems to come from a coalition of those resentful of Jefferson's secularism, Lincoln's faith in public investment, and FDR's commitment to empowering labor. These three presidents led us away from a past that many conservatives now idealize. The GOP that first emerged as a party able to create a new, prosperous future has become a coalition of those yearning for a return to a perceived golden past, wishing to unravel the legacy of America’s three most influential presidents.
