Stuck in the Middle With You

A lifetime ago, when I sold baseball cards on weekends with my erstwhile partner Bullet Bob Bird, we used to ask ourselves “What did we learn?” when a card show ended. (Things we learned: guys named “Scooter” were entertaining; Maury Wills liked ice cream; and while a lot of people wanted something for nothing, some men were willing to spend a lot of money trying to recapture their childhoods.)

I felt like asking our old card show question after watching Prohibition, the latest documentary film from Ken Burns on PBS last week. It seems unbelievable, but the United States once banned the production and sale of alcohol for 13 years (1920 – 1933). Prohibition was largely the result of the work of the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. They had good cause for their efforts – the nation had a drinking problem, and too many men drank away their paychecks and then violently took out their alcohol-fueled frustrations on their wives and children. The fatal flaw of Prohibition, though, was that rather than attempt regulation or reform, the Prohibitionists went for a total ban. Conservative Christians got a law passed that would have landed Jesus in jail. It is no coincidence that this happened under three Republican administrations – Harding, Coolidge and Hoover – or that it was repealed under a Democrat (Franklin Roosevelt). It also is not coincidental that it happened immediately following World War I – there was a strong anti-German sentiment in the air, and many of the most successful brewers were Germans like Schlitz, Stroh, Pabst, Busch and Miller.

By going for a ban instead of regulation and reform, the law backfired on those who passed it. Things happened that must have mortified Prohibition’s supporters. Organized crime rose because of the easy money put into the hands of criminals who became celebrities, like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz. Average people who enjoyed a glass of wine from time to time were forced into criminal behavior. As the hard economic realities of the Depression set in, the government had lost all the tax revenue from alcohol sales – a major stream of income. Drinking’s attraction grew – after all, a speakeasy is a lot more tantalizing than a saloon. More people drank after alcohol became illegal than before.

After a little more than a decade of rampant hypocrisy, Prohibition was repealed, and I’m asking the question, “What did we learn?” When I was in college taking a class called “Recent American History” (from a professor my dad had also had – which meant my “Recent American History” teacher had lived through all the history he taught) the professor used the old saw, “You can’t legislate morality” to comment about Prohibition. Even then I disagreed with him. We legislate morality all the time. What are our laws other than attempts to legislate moral behavior? Aren’t the lessons of Prohibition more complex than that?

There is a huge lesson about the role of government to be learned here. Our government currently is polarized between two opposing views of what their role should be. On the one hand, there is a political party that believes government can solve our problems. Our President has proposed a jobs package that has the government hiring unemployed workers. On the other hand, there is a political party that believes business can solve our problems. The President’s job package will never pass this party because it’s anathema to them – more of the same “government is the answer” thinking that, they believe, already plagues us. In one of the Republican debates, Mitt Romney said, “There is nothing government does that private industry can’t do better.” (Really? Does he really believe this about, say, the military? But I digress….) The irony of Prohibition is that it was the conservatives who imposed more government into the lives of average people by banning the sale of alcohol. They did this because the “no government” status that existed before Prohibition didn’t work. After Prohibition failed, there were regulations passed that we think of as common sense today – things like establishing closing times for bars and prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages to minors. “No government” didn’t work and “total government” didn’t work. What works is somewhere in the middle. The vast majority of Americans understand this. Somewhere between “thou shall do whatever you please” and “thou shall not” is where we live, knowing that unbridled government isn’t the answer but not trusting business to act in our interest for one second. Most of us feel stuck in the middle.

I have no clue how to solve the ideological impasse that stymies effective government in our country today. One hopes that perhaps, our elected officials watched Prohibition and took its lessons to heart.