The Politics of Time
If you traveled back in time to August 14, 1935, and told someone that in our era, Social Security is one of the most important government programs and protecting it is a priority for both political parties, they probably would have been shocked and not believed you. Even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt had just signed the Social Security Act into law, there were grave concerns about the constitutionality of the act. “Two federal child labor laws, one based on the power of the Federal Government to regulate interstate commerce and the other based on the taxing power, had been declared unconstitutional,” reads an essay by the former Social Security Commissioner Arthur Altmeyer. At this time, social service policy was considered a state issue, not a federal one. Even Roosevelt’s own cabinet was wary of the Act’s future. But now this measure is extremely popular and protected by most mainstream politicians.
On July 30th, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law, even though organizations, especially the American Medical Association (AMA) were strongly against the measure. Other presidents had considered this program too radical or failed to win approval for it. A 2015 New Yorker article regarding the history of Medicare cites that, “In the thirties, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had chosen not to add health care to his Social Security proposal because he believed that it would be too controversial.” President Harry Truman attempted to pass Medicare in 1945 and 1949 and faced great opposition both times. The AMA “conducted the most expensive lobbying effort to that date in opposition to Truman’s health-care plan, which it branded as ‘un-American’ and ‘socialized medicine.’”Even the popular President John F. Kennedy was unable to get Medicare approved. However, now this program is popular among the American people and an integral part of the American Social security net.
If you traveled back in time to September 21, 1996, you would not believe that in less than 20 years later gay marriage would be legal. President Bill Clinton had just signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that, “[banned] federal recognition of same-sex marriage and defining marriage as ‘a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.’” How could peoples’ attitudes possibly change so quickly?
Time. That word is the answer to all these questions. Time. As more time passes people become more comfortable with ‘radical’ programs because they see and experience the benefits. Human nature causes people to become desensitized to certain policies over time and they realize different people can coexist with each other and change can be beneficial.
As more time passes, people become more comfortable with ‘radical’ programs. The see and experience the benefits.
But it is not just time that changes people’s minds. The actions of politicians, activists, and other societal figures impact what policies we see as radical and what we see as mainstream. This idea is not new to politics, and is known as the Overton window. It was created by Joseph P. Overton, an executive at a conservative think tank in Michigan in the 1990s. “Mr. Overton argued that the role of organizations like his was not to lobby politicians to support policies outside the window, but to convince voters that policies outside the window should be in it. If they are successful, an idea derided as unthinkable can become so inevitable that it’s hard to believe it was ever otherwise,” cites a New Yorker article. This idea is extremely applicable to the examples from the beginning of this article, especially the example of gay marriage. Activists’ state-by-state victories helped the American population feel that gay marriage was not a radical idea and would not destroy American life as they knew it. Or, in the words of the Overton window, voters became convinced that gay marriage had come into the window of acceptable policies. While the Supreme Court did rule gay marriage as legal, there is skepticism towards whether this ruling would have happened if gay marriage did not become as politically and socially accepted as it did.
Of course, the longer a policy is in effect, the more ingrained in American society it becomes and the more people accept it, so time plays an important role in American politics. What does this mean for us? If someone in the future traveled back 20 years to this day and told us that transgender people are generally accepted by all mainstream politicians, would we believe them? What if they told us that immigration was popular in the United States and encouraged by both political parties? What if they told us they had a nationalized healthcare system that was popular? Would we believe them? Probably not. All these ideas sound insane now, but do they sound any more unrealistic than the situations described above?
Emily Woodruff ‘24 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at ewoodruff@wustl.edu