The American System

You know that you are listening to PBS News Hour when one of the commentators is enthusiastic about the Biden infrastructure proposal as he finds it comparable to the Whigs' American System economic policy.

Henry Clay, one of the founders of the Whig Party and the chief spokesman for its American System.

I had to look that up.

It turns out that I was slightly, and I do mean slightly, familiar with the American System, but not by that name and mostly in the form of its lingering influence on the GOP during the 1860s, 70s and 80s. And I really know nothing about Henry Clay, its chief proponent, other than that he was well known at the time. According to the Congressional website on such topics:

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."

Clay delivered a famous speech on the topic, which we won't set out here as its of epic length. You can read it, however, here:  The American System.

The American System was the main economic platform of the Whigs and it was ardently, and now ironically, opposed by the Democrats.  The Democrats were pretty much a laissez-faire party at the time and opposed to government having much of any kid of role in the economy.

The Congressional summation of the American System doesn't appear to be a fair one. The breadth of Whig support for a government role in the economy was pretty wide.  For instance, it reached down to supporting public primary education, something that wasn't universal at the time.

It was ultimately the economic policies, and the overarching issue of slavery, that did the Whigs in, causing them to collapse in the 1850s. By that time the Southern faction of the party was no longer supportive of an expansive Federal role in the economy, where as the northern "National Republican" faction was.  Slavery, of course, became a massive issue in the party.  By the mid 1850s the party was flying apart and a collection of new parties rose up to contest for its former members.  In the north the Republican Party soon emerged.  In the South, Whigs remained without a structure, but opposed succession and then went on to loosely start to form an emerging party in the Southern Congress that never fully formed due to the war ending before that could occur.  The Confederacy was, of course, nearly a one party state.

People often discuss the legacy of the Whigs, but one early legacy was that the GOP was, initially, pretty proactive in using Federal money and Federal assets in the economy. The most prominent example of that was the Transcontinental Railroad which would not have come about without a degree of government planning, favoritism, spending and intervention.  So, PBS isn't out to a left wing lunch when its commentator makes this comparison.

It's interesting too, in that may in fact be a much closer analogy to what Biden is attempting to do than the New Deal.

That doesn't mean its a good idea, or that all of it is.  But it's a very interesting historical analogy.