The Reagan Myth

Obama’s statements last week about the relative importance of Reagan and Bill Clinton are still reverberating around the primary scene. Here’s Paul Krugman’s position from the New York Times: Debunking the Reagan Myth

One of my continuing reservations about Obama is the level of his commitment to the liberal cause [I hate using the word “progressive” since it has no political meaning other than the avoidance of the word “liberal”!]. His comments about Reagan reinforce this reservation.

Obama seems to misinterpret the Reagan legacy. He essentially buys the right wing talking point that under Reagan America turned quickly into a hot bed of entrepreneurial activity that boosted wealth far beyond the levels attainable from the economy as it pre-existed Reaganism. As Krugman illustrates: the facts just don’t support that interpretation. So why does Obama mimic the right?

My own explanation for Reagan’s enduring popularity was his optimism: he brought with him a kind of simplistic idealism that lifted away the gloom of the Vietnam defeat and the first oil crisis. Both those events hit the American psyche because showed that there may be a limit on the American dream. American power was constrained, and the public felt their prospects were dimmed. Reagan bundled that off the stage by focusing attention on the Soviet Union. He set out to “win” the Cold War by outspending the Soviets and demonstrating to them that they had no chance of competing economically. That the Soviet Union crumbled is often attributed to Reagan’s policy. His supporters ignore that the decline has already set in and that internal tensions [including a split along Islam/Orthodox Christian lines] was developing. Reagan’s spending accelerated the end.

But at a huge cost. His economic legacy was one of debt and division. The Federal debt grew rapidly during his presidency because he refused to make Americans pay for his policy. Instead he relied on debt, and bolstered his position by arguing, falsely as it turns out, that the debt would disappear as the economy grew. Conservatives loved his economics because it skewed wealth their way. The middle class loved him because he persuaded them that they could pursue expensive defense policies without paying for them. Everyone else loved him because of his upbeat demeanor and the promise he sold them on: they too would benefit from the reduced regulation he supported.

His promises all failed to materialize, except for the redistribution of wealth upward.

Reaganism turns out to have been to ultimate right wing con game.

Obama is correct to the extent that he argues Reagan established the parameters within which political dialog has taken place since. It has been a right wingers paradise: even Clinton didn’t pull the debate back away from “market forces”; “small government”; “robust foreign policy” and so on. Indeed Clinton embraced the new territory as his reformation of welfare showed. Bush has merely sought to bring Reaganism back to the fore untempered by any of Clinton’s erstwhile progressive conscience.

So here we are in an election where the mood of the country is ripe to reject the snake oil that is Reaganism [and the country surely needs to reject his other legacy: his tacit racism as expressed through his enormously cynical Southern Strategy], and all Obama is doing is to help perpetuate the lie.

Optimism is one thing. Reagan had that in spades. The only credit he deserves is for his sunny attitude. As for his actual policies, he needs to be thoroughly debunked.

Obama could do us all a favor by separating these two Reagan legacies and letting us know which he likes so much.