The Common Good

First let’s take care of the definitions: Top-Down government in 2014 is defined as the current “welfare state” which provides support for citizens who are elderly, poor, or disadvantaged and includes programs for the “common good” such as federal support of education, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, and also includes government regulation of business and industry with the aim to protect the common good and encourage economic growth by building infrastructure. The course describes FDR as a top-down president along with Marx and Rousseau. The comparison is an extremely poor one, but more on that latter.

Bottom-up government is defined in 2014 as limited government with the expectation that the common good is best served by free unregulated markets, and with the belief that top-down governance such as Social Security, Medicare, and regulation inhibits the common good by producing citizens who are “takers” instead of producers. The Tea Party praises the idea and laments the current state of the nation. Ronald Reagan’s ideology expressed the principal but not the practice of botton-up government. 

These are current definitions and usage. The words and terms would have had very different meanings to FDR, Kennedy, or Johnson, who were practical men motivated by the circumstances of their times and not by ideology, rather by common sense and compassion. 

To address the question was Kennedy bottom-up or top-down? Clearly neither one by current definition. He did lower taxes for the wealthy, on the advice of John Kenneth Galbraith who had been an advisor to FDR. 

“In a 1962 address to Congress, John F. Kennedy said, “it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”

reduction of the tax rate “will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the budget.”

The decision was made out of a practical understanding of the circumstances of the times, on advice of a practical economist and not out of ideology. 

In addition, he also said, ”One of the great things about this country has been that our most extraordinary accomplishments have not come from the government down, or from the top down, but have come from the bottom up.” This was a statement of an undeniable fact rather than an idealogical statement about the possible limits of role of government.

Kennedy was an intelligent, practical leader. Informed and influenced by Michael Harrington’s, "The Other America” his administration began exploring measures to reduce the level of poverty in America, at the time over 20%. After his death the basic strategies were refined and expanded into Johnson’s War on Poverty. 

Kennedy’s actions were motivated by two moral principles that are absent from today’s bottom-up/top-down politicians — justice and compassion. Principles outlined by John Rawls in Justice as Fairness:

“It should be noted that the second principle holds that an inequality is allowed only if there is reason to believe that the practice with the inequality, or resulting in it, will work for the ad-vantage of every party engaging in it. Here it is important to stress that every party must gain from the inequality. “ — Justice as Fairness (Source: Philosophical Review Vol. LXVII. 1958.)

The terms, “bottom-up/top-down” define a current political problem created by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and the Republican party. Both Reagan and Clinton designed programs that were short-sighted. Programs that immediately benefited their their wealthy supporters, but were not designed for or had any concern for future prospretity and justice. 

Kennedy’s philosophy of leadership was moral, practical, and concerned with long-term goals. His policies answered directly to the needs of his time, but were designed with a concern for their impact on the future. Although much of what he envisioned was reshaped by Johnson, the basic foundation remained after his death — a vision of a flexible government, unhampered by the narrow ideologies that paralyze us today. A government  that empowers the greatest number of citizens without reducing opportunity for the ambitious. Fairness of opportunity lead him to support the civil rights movement. The programs he proposed in regulation, education, and infrastructure were practical, and far-sighted. They were meant to expand education and opportunity for all and to reduce poverty and suffering for generations to come. His programs were design to achieve practical, long-term goals, not idealogical statements of top-down or bottom-up ideology.