After World War II

This chapter considers three impulses of the post-World War II era. Two of them deal with the economy, bracketing its course from an inspiration flowing out of the war through an ideological and policy retake a generation later. The other impulse covers one of the major developments of American, not to mention transnational, history—the civil rights revolution of those times. In the three impulses detailed here, economic planning devices, energy supply, the cities, travel, infrastructure, the tax code, industrial structure, the workplace, immigration, demographic patterns, the electorate, rights standards, and relations among the races, gained lasting imprints from U.S. government participation, among others.

Depression and the Welfare State

This chapter navigates the 1930s and groups two impulses into it: responding to the Great Depression and building a welfare state equipped with instruments of social provision. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats blended these two impulses when they executed their New Deal in the 1930s. However, on current inspection, the blend is confusing and sometimes contradictory, and there is a difference in time span. Responding to the Great Depression was clearly a 1930s drive; whereas the Social Security Act of 1935 still enjoys its high place at the top of the American welfare state. The chapter shows how the timeline on building U.S. social provision runs a lot longer before and afterward.

Building a State and a Nation

This chapter analyzes three U.S. performances: the launch of a new nation, continental expansion, and national consolidation. The mid-nineteenth century, notably the 1860s, seems to have brought a spasm of special character across much of the developed or developing world. Centralizing states swung into place offering strong nationalisms, new constitutional formulas, a spirit of reform in state and economy, and a bent for commodifying property and homogenizing the rights of citizenship across entire populations. In these respects, the 1860s seem to have brought a transnational ideological high. Ensuing years brought a recession from it, as the promises and commitments of the decade wore down. In the United States, the thrusts of rights expansion lost force in the 1870s.

Introduction

This introductory chapter talks about Congress's imprint on American society and life as driven by the aches, anxieties and headlines of the day. But instead of dwelling on aspirations, processes, and optics, it looks at the effects or results of congressional activities. Going as far back as 1789, the chapter examines Congress's distinctive imprint on American society from those of the presidency, cradling the analysis in the experience of peer countries. These congressionl imprints include the launching of the country in the 1790s, the coming of the regulatory state, the rise of the United States to world power, the onsetof economic neoliberalism, and the management of federal debt and deficits.

The Climate and the Debt

This chapter examines two major impulses of transnational incidence that have action blotters extending back decades: climate change and long-run deficit. Current evidence shows how it is not clear that peer countries are actually digging their teeth much deeper into climate change than the Americans. In a 2014 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report, the U.S. ranked fifteenth in climate-control progress. Meanwhile, American remedial action regarding debt/deficit has apparently stood up well as compared to others. As of 2011, the United States ranked thirteenth in public debt as a percentage of GDP in a comparison set of thirty-one peer countries. Given the trends, this American near-averageness does not point to a carefree future.

Legitimacy, Messiness, and Reflections

This chapter presents transnational comparisons so as to show how the United States has performed distinctively. U.S. economic growth and foreign policy success have profited from its helpful size, natural wealth, and location, as well as an absence of powerful, aggressive nations next door. In many cases, however, the U.S. performance has been transnationally generic or close to that, offering little help for upside or downside readings of American distinctiveness or exceptionalism. As for Congress, it is difficult to capture it in isolation if one's concern is the performance of the whole U.S. government versus the performances of governments elsewhere. What cries out for comparison is the end result of complex complementarities between Congress and the presidency.

Surges and Their Constraints

This chapter turns to three American “impulses” of post-Civil War times: building an industrial economy, taming the corporations, and the rise to world hegemony. In general, Congress, when it has differed with the presidency on foreign policy, has leaned toward inaction, often accompanied by cacophonous talk. Congress has often resisted or footdragged on White House aims for expansions, invasions, intrusions, annexations, and commitments abroad. “Insularity” is a decent tagline for this bent—it entails constraint on action. This idea applies to participation in multilateral agreements and commitments, not just to unilateral U.S. moves abroad.

Impulses and Imprints

This chapter traces the performance of Congress in a transnational perspective, which requires U.S. comparisons with peer countries. It explores patches of performance that have entailed large considerations of regime legitimacy, order, responsiveness, welfare, prosperity, fairness, state-building, and national survival or expansion in an often hostile international world. U.S. participation in large political or intellectual impulses has been occurring transnationally since 1789. Resorting to transnational focus has two uses: it guides the selection of realms of performance to look at, and it paves the way to appraisals. It can offer clues to relative performance—the United States versus the rest—albeit not clues of a quality that would admit to score-keeping or quantification.