Historiographical essay ( the New Deal) Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Historiographical ( the New Deal) - Essay Example F.D.R won the presidency and embarked on the New Deal.1 The First New Deal took place between 1933 and 1934 and was criticized for not bringing the recovery Roosevelt promised the Americans. A section of Roosevelt’s First New Deal critics described the programs as ‘socialist’. The Second New Deal programs were launched in 1935. The most notable programs of the Second New Deal revolved around Social Security and were thought to be more reasonable and realistic than those of the First New Deal. Roosevelt won the 1936 elections by a landslide, ensuring that the majority of the New Deal programs continued being in place. The programs were faced with missteps and setbacks until national recovery was achieved in the late 1930s, just in time to pave way for military preparations ahead of the Second World War. Scholars and historians of different times wrote books detailing the New Deal. They agreed on some things about the New Deal, but disagreed on others. The differences in views on and perceptions about the New Deal resulted from the different mindsets shaped by the different times the books were published. Richard Hofstadter is the architect of the consensus school of thought on issues surrounding the New Deal and the Great Depression. He alongside other consensus historians believed that that the American past was largely shaped by unity which implies things like homogeneity, shared national interest and stability. In his book, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (1955), he described the New Deal to be more of a reaction of an economic emergency than a clear framework for reform. He said the New Deal was very different from the progressive era reforms, meaning Roosevelt was very different from the progressive era reformers. He said that whereas the New Deal was not based on any cle ar reform philosophies, but were

Is the US Congress too powerful Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Is the US Congress too powerful - Essay Example In evaluating whether the Congress is "too powerful", it is necessary to consider what it actually does. Congress makes laws, and within the United States this "law-making" role has in fact been made difficult rather than easy. In the United States of America laws are difficult to pass for a number of reasons and in a number of ways. American law is based upon a mixture of English and French law, and the Constitution was designed to produce three co-equal branches of government that would provide checks and balances on one another (Friedman, 1998) . These checks and balances are designed to make laws difficult to pass for a good reason: it stops any one individual, political party or branch of government dominating too much. A weak government makes for a strong people. The co-equal branches of government are designed to make laws difficult to pass. However, in a well-organized administration in which the President has a good relationship with Congress laws can be passed quite quickly and easily. But even when one particular Party has control of the Legislative and Executive branches: the House, the Senate and the Presidency, it can still be difficult to pass laws. This is shown by the difficulties that President Clinton had in 1992-1994 and President Bush has had for much his Presidency. The making of an Ameri... This stops what has been called "the tyranny of the majority" (Brennan, 1996). The President can also veto a bill if it does not have the support of 2/3 of both the House and Senate in order to override the bill. However, pressure put on individual members by key positions such as the Speaker of the House or the Leader of the Senate may moderate the effects of this individual power. Members of each party tend to vote with their party. The process of moving from a Member/Senator's idea through to Bill and on to Law is deliberately set in a complex way. The Bill may be stopped at a number of hurdles, and indeed, the vast majority of Bills never make it to be laws (Sabato, 2006) Overall, a Bill may be introduced by a member of the House or Senate. It is then distributed to each member of the House. The Speaker of the House can then give it to a Committee which will recommend that it be released with a recommendation for passing, release with revision or be set aside entirely and not considered at all. Bills introduced by the majority party tend to be taken more seriously than those form the minority. The majority of Bills that have the support of the major powers in Congress (House, Senate, Presidency) do make it to be laws - the other bills are often never intended to become laws by the Members/Senators that introduce them. In fact they are for discussion or to score political points. The relationship between the House and Senate is designed to produce either compromise or to stop Bills making it to be a law. Bills that pass the House need to be introduced into the Senate, and there they may be adapted or changed to be something completely different in "conference committees" (Wilson, 2005).