Zelizer's Corner: Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement From the New Deal to Reagan

It takes money to build a political movement. But progressive Democrats are not always comfortable with this reality. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama's campaign was able to raise massive amounts of cash -- funds that proved pivotal to fending off the Republican attacks in the final month of the race.

Democrats have been more willing to boast about their huge data base of small donors upon whom Obama relied. Using computer and telephone technology, as well as a motivated army of volunteers, Democrats did extremely well at raising small amounts of cash from donors who saw the possibility in his presidency.

In contrast, Democrats have not figured out how they feel about the wealthy individuals who have poured their money into the Obama campaign, as well as the efforts in recent years to create a vibrant infrastructure of progressive media and Internet outlets. The Campaign Finance Institute reported that Obama's base of small donors was roughly equivalent to George W. Bush's base in 2004. But large donors were extremely important. A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that there were approximately one hundred families and couples who donated $100,000 or more in 2007 and 2008 to Obama's campaigns. George Soros and Sheldon Adelson, the most talked about donors, have often been the focus of conservative attacks. Liberals have also come under fire from the right with questions about who provided the funds for the Center for American Progress, whose president John Podesta is in charge of Obama's transition and which is providing much of the intellectual firepower and personnel for the new administration.

Kim Phillips-Fein's new book, Invisible Hands provides a fascinating account of how important wealthy donors were to the rise and success of conservatism. She traces a network of wealthy business leaders who, starting in the 1940s and continuing through the 1980s, poured their funds and energy into making conservatism a viable and powerful political force. While many historians have focused on the role of ideas, activists, and politicians, this work takes us to the people who put their money where their mouths were.

"It is a book," she writes, "about businessmen like Lemuel Boulware [of General Electric] who supported and helped to build the conservative movement that brought Reagan to power in 1980 . . . This book is about those determined few, those ordinary businessmen . . . from companies of different sizes and from various industries, who worked for more than forty years to undo the system of labor unions, federal social welfare programs, and government regulation of the economy that came into existence during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s."

There is a big cast of characters in this book, including many figures who are not well known, but who were influential. For example, President of Sun Oil J. Howard Pew was determined to combat the influence of liberal ministers in the Protestant church. He helped to create an organization called the Spiritual Mobilization which paid to send conservative books to ministers and solicit money for this cause.

In another chapter of the book, Phillips-Fein recounts the history of The National Review, a journal famously founded by William Buckley Jr., that helped spread and popularize the ideas of conservatism since the 1950s. But what is less discussed are the people with the money that allowed this magazine to happen. Fellow Yale graduate Roger Milliken, a wealthy industrialist in the textile industry who had been tough with unions in his South Carolina plant, purchased subscriptions for over a thousand of his friends and bought advertising space. According to Phillips-Fein, he increased the number of ads significantly when the magazine faced a revenue shortfall that threatened the future of the magazine early in its history. Milliken also leaned on his friends to purchase advertisement. He was one among many other executives, like Lemuel Boulware from General Electric.

During the 1970s, businessmen funded the creation of numerous think tanks and advocacy organizations to fight against unions, government regulation, and for lower taxes, leaving behind a significant institutional infrastructure of organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, which continue to influence public debates.

Progressive Democrats now have their own wealthy donors, though the list is not nearly as extensive as the one compiled by conservatives. In the coming years, they will have to decide what role wealthy donors should play in this burgeoning movement. There will be two ways to read this book. One is as a guide of what not to do, a model of how private money became extremely influential in the political world. The other way is different, as a model of how money can be a useful and constructive force in coming years.

More soon from the academy....

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism, will be published this fall by Basic Books. For more information about this author, see www.julianzelizer.com.

Comments

[Rugger]

These so-called people are the true terrorists. Their lust for power and wealth is insatiable and is the cause of most of the suffering in the world today. Prison would be too good for them. Imagine, if the wealth they possess were devoted to improving the human condition instead of degrading it?

[WorldGriot]

I have been following this for years and knew that both Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and other pseudo conservatives were contrivances of the moneyed class. This is the same group that created the Ayn Rand wave of toadies. We keep calling them by soft names as if they deserve legitimacy but these are evil, people who are vacuuming the vitality out of our country with their greed. The recent AIG bonus fiasco is but a telling example of how truly criminal these bastards are. this is Organized Crime on steroids in the best of times but it is truly satanic during these times. But this will get worse before it gets better because, judging from the sheer numbers of Swiss Bank accounts we know about, there will be a fight. AND ITS FIGHTING TIME FOR THE PEOPLE! we need a massive, sustained blow-back against this colossal greed.

[1dogmom]

This post piques my curiosity about the book "Invisible Hands". A more important question is WHY these captains of industry invested so much money and effort into establishing the conservative movement. Were they motivated simply by the desire to increase their personal wealth and power? By "classism"? It's worth a read to find out.

[edtheengineer]

You don't have to read the book. Just use your brain. They wanted total control over ALL of us. IF their precious "trickle-down" Ponzi scheme had not tanked a little too early last year, they would have achieved their goal.

[krocklin]

The answer is the "sense of entitlement" the Overclass has had throughout human history.

[Colaholic]

And Reagan used to work for GE on one of their TV programs. A GE ad exec at the time later called R the most fatuous person he'd ever met.

[jmpurser]

Interesting column. I think there always IS a class war, but the bottom 2/3s of society keeps thinking it's over until they get clobbered by the top 1/3 who never rest.

[krocklin]

"A society should be judged by how it treats its most disadvanta­ged."

The social Darwinism promoted by the Rightwing dating back to oil-rich Texans of the 30s and 40s, popularized by Reagan and culminating in George W. Bush, is a moral stain on America.