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Monday, January 21, 2008

Debunking the Reagan myth
Posted by Jill | 6:01 AM
Somehow I expect that if by some miracle we have a Democratic president who somehow manages to implement policies that start extricating us from the economic mess that the Bush Administration is leaving us, conservatives will say it's because of policies Ronald Reagan implemented. Because before George W. Bush was worshipped as a god by hard-core conservatives, it was Saint Ronnie. Republicans have been searching for their new Ronald Reagan ever since George Herbert Walker Bush proved a bit honking dud as a campaigner, expressing astonishment at a supermarket scanner and saying to middle class Americans about whom he really didn't give a damn except to the extent that they might keep him in power, "Message: I care."

To the extent that Ronald Reagan is to be admired, it's as a highly effective snake oil salesman, convincing middle class people that if you shovel enough cash into the pockets of the wealthy, the change that trickles out of their overflowing pockets will enrich the middle class as well. Reagan also fed into the deep-seated emotional need that conservatives have for a father figure, though in those waning days of the Cold War, nutually assured destruction seemed a remote prospect at most. Reagan was the affable daddy, the one who'd keep the bogeyman (welfare queens) away from you but still go out in the backyard and have a catch. In this year's Search for the New Reagan, the Republican candidates are running as the punitive, controlling daddy; as Robert DeNiro in This Boy's Life or Robert Duvall as The Great Santini.

That Charlie Wilson's War turned out to be a dud at the box office is actually a positive sign that people outside those on the hard-core right with their daddy issues are re-evaluating the Reagan era. Whether it's that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are past their prime as box office draws, or if it's that people now understand that the events described in that particular story are what led to the creation of al-Qaeda remains to be seen. But it's clear now that the American role in putting the last nail in the Soviet expansionism coffin helped put us in the mess in which we find ourselves now.

It's in the area of economic policy where the current crop of Republicans persist in embracing the Reagan Doctrine, despite the fact that it was a Democratic president that had to clean up the mess that Reagan and Bush left in their "borrow and spend" policies. Today Paul Krugman sets the record straight on the Republicans' Reagan nostalgia in pointing out how there is absolutely no reason for any Democrat to invoke Ronald Reagan as an example for anything:

The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.

Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.

For example, I’m not sure what “dynamism” means, but if it means productivity growth, there wasn’t any resurgence in the Reagan years. Eventually productivity did take off — but even the Bush administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers dates the beginning of that takeoff to 1995.

Similarly, if a sense of entrepreneurship means having confidence in the talents of American business leaders, that didn’t happen in the 1980s, when all the business books seemed to have samurai warriors on their covers. Like productivity, American business prestige didn’t stage a comeback until the mid-1990s, when the U.S. began to reassert its technological and economic leadership.

I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)

But why would a self-proclaimed progressive say anything that lends credibility to this rewriting of history — particularly right now, when Reaganomics has just failed all over again?

Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies.

And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.

This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.

It’s not just a matter of what happens in the next election. Mr. Clinton won his elections, but — as Mr. Obama correctly pointed out — he didn’t change America’s trajectory the way Reagan did. Why?

Well, I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.

Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.


I would say that the reason the Clinton Administration didn't change the narrative had nothing to do with policy, and everything to do with the Clintonistas' underestimation of whom they were dealing with on the other side of the aisle, and Bill Clinton's inability to exercise the extra caution in his personal life that was required when the vultures are constantly circling.

Ronald Reagan ought to be the third rail of Democratic politics in that anything that smacks of praise of the Republicans' most cherished icon is to be strictly avoided. I have to wonder how much of Barack Obama's disappointing performance in Nevada was a result of him touching that third rail. It may be that he was trying to win the endorsement of the Reno newspaer that was conducting the interview, but ultimately none of the newspaper endorsements in the world will compensate if you don't get the support from voters who never, ever, want anything that smacks of Ronald Reagan running the country ever again.

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10 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
We can't even compare a bit W.Bush Reagan. There's no good similarities with the both, Reagan was the President who save US from recession, but Bush just doest it reversely...
Car Breakdown Cover
1/21/08, 8:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
When Obama speaks in front of a black congregation and warns them against homophobia and anti-Semitism, that's speaking hard truths to the base, but be anything less than scathing of Reagan, and he's an apostate. More disturbingly, Krugman gives the reader the impression that Obama praised the Reagan economy when he did no such thing.

(Still, I agree with you and Krugman that the statement was a bad look and probably contributed to the loss -- although Hillary also had a far superior ground organization.)

Now I have the utmost respect for Krugman, but he is playing a little loose with the facts. The only words he quotes from Obama aren't even a full sentence, but a reference to the "sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing" from the 60s and 70s.

Now, when you check the full quote, it's pretty vague stuff.

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating and he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, people wanted clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamic and entrepreneurship that had been missing, alright?"

He's not talking about the dynamism and entrepreneurship of the Reagan years but the 50s! Easy to miss that bit, though, so I'd give Krugman a pass on that.

But there's no excuse for him not mentioning what Obama says immediately following:

"I think Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times. I think we're in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren't working. We're bogged down in the same arguments that we've been having, and they're not useful. And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out. I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you've heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they're being debated among the Presidential candidates and it's all tax cuts. Well, you know, we've done that, we tried it. That's not really going to solve our energy problems, for example. So, some of it's the times. And some of it's, I think, there's maybe a generation element to this, partly. In the sense that there's a, I didn't did come of age in the battles of the 60s. I'm not as invested in them. And so I think I talk differently about issues. And I think I talk differently about values. And that's why, I think we've been resonating with the American people."

A common complaint of Obama critics is that his supporters project onto him what they want to see in him. Seems to me this can cut both ways.
1/21/08, 8:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
One more thing: Krugman speculates that Obama wanted to "curry favor" with a conservative editorial board. Seems to me if he wanted to do that, he wouldn't have said that the Republican approach had "played itself out."

I'm trying not to be disappointed in Krugman, but I really do think he's heavily invested in a theory of political change that is predicated on aggressive conflict. Obama subverts that entire frame, and that tends to make partisans see red.
1/21/08, 8:39 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I noticed, Nigel, that you chose not to bold one of the most offending part of Obama's statement, that came after the highly popular quoting, that being:
I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.
I'm sorry, but this assertion is blatantly false. The GOP has been running on the same ideas, over and over, ad nauseum, for as long as I can remember. It is this validation of a GOP-myth, that I found troubling with Obama's statement.
1/21/08, 9:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
archcrone -- You're right, I didn't bold it, presumably in the hopes that I could hide those embarrassing words by leaving them on the screen. Sheesh.

As for the substance of your criticism, I took that phrase to refer to the conservative advantage in think tanks. Love em or loathe em (I loathe em), there's no doubt that think tanks have provided conservatives with a lot of ideas, and more importantly, a certain (pseudo)academic luster.

Hence, Obama, speaking to conservatives, gives a nod to these ideas. But then he clearly says these ideas have run their course.

Look, I get that Obama's no fire-breathing liberal, but don't fall into the trap of thinking he's a conservative in sheep's clothing.

(BTW, if Clinton wins the nomination, I would vote for her without hesitation. Just so you know I'm no Obama cult follower.)
1/21/08, 9:41 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
There's only one idea, nigel: take the cash. All else has been marketing.
1/21/08, 9:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
tata: Heh. :-)

I still think there are a lot of ideas; it's just a lot of them are terrible.

For instance, take the various institutes that were set up to argue against the harmful effects of tobacco. They morphed into DDT boosterism and, most recently, global warming denial -- which REALLY pisses me off.

Now, these think tanks have plenty of ideas -- some of which some conservatives believe quite sincerely -- but do we engage with such deluded people by laughing at them, or rejecting them out of hand?

Some are shills, OK, sure. But I'm an optimist, and I really do think that there are a lot of people out there who could eventually be talked around, if you treated them with respect. After all, isn't that how international diplomacy works?
1/21/08, 10:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Actually, Nigel, I argued the other day that the rightie think-tanks did not offer up new ideas to the GOP. Instead they took the same old tired GOP "ideas" and wrapped them up into "how-to" manuals, based on marketing slogans. It was the "how-to" manuals that helped catapult the GOP into control. that's a big difference from promoting "new ideas," and I stand by my assertion.

FWIW, I can't support either of the two selected front-runners in good conscience. And I just may have to stay home this cycle, rather than hold my nose while casting a vote I personally find morally repugnant.
1/21/08, 12:05 PM  
Blogger AmPowerBlog said...
Note to Krugman: It's not the economy (and Krugman's not stupid, so he knows better than to insinuate such).

What Reagan restored was the spirit of American grandeur and readiness to lead. He brought new ideas that moved the country in a dramatically different direction. Instead of telling Americans we can't do it, we can't improve out lives - turn down your thermostat and put on that sweater - he said our best days are ahead of us, and we'll continue to be that shining city on a hill. Reagan rightly belongs in the pantheon of great 20th century presidents.

That's something contemporary leftists can't stand. They hate the glorious exceptionalism Reagan trumpeted. Barack Obama gets it, and his radical antagonists hate it, including Krugman.

American Power
1/21/08, 1:30 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
What Reagan restored was the spirit of American grandeur and readiness to lead. He brought new ideas that moved the country in a dramatically different direction.

What baloney! All Reagan did was bundle Goldwater's right-wing jingoism together with Calvin Coolidge's laissez-faire economics (the policies that enabled the excesses that caused the Great Depression).

What we got after 8 years of Reagan was a bloated Federal deficit and increased economic stratification. The wingnuts embrace Reagan while trying to pretend George W. Bush doesn't exist. However George W. Bush's policies (especially his domestic policies) are pure Reaganism. George W. Bush is an inarticulate clone of Ronald Reagan. In fact, until Dubya blundered his way into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., no modern President had done more to screw over the American middle class than Ronald Wilson Reagan.
1/21/08, 2:44 PM  
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