The End of Reagan
What a week!
Today the House of Representatives passed the infamous bailout bill. This time last week they had failed in the same task, so the switch was not just notable, it was monumental.
I have a feeling of having watched history these past few weeks. Never did I think that the collapse of free-market ideology would be so rapid and so complete. The Reagan era is definitively over. Here is Andrew Leonard’s piece in Salon:
How the World Works
The bailout as it now exists is nowhere near complete. That is I think we will still be seeing bank failures for a while to come. The bill is tortured mix of vague promises and speculation: there is precious little detail about how the Treasury is going to use the funds it now has available to it. Nor is there much detail about the way in which oversight will be maintained. This leads me to believe that there many legislators who think this will be taken up again after the election and a new, more thought through bill will be voted on to replace this one. For one thing we need to cut out all the awful pork barrel provisions that were added to persuade various Senators to go along with the bill.
But for all its warts getting the bill passed was a triumph.
I would have preferred a more straightforward approach to the bailout … I wanted simple nationalization of failing banks … but at least a start has been made.
And the ringing in my ears is the death knell of Reaganism. That’s the real triumph here. It is entirely appropriate that Reaganism died at the hands of a Republican administration. One that had taken the lore of the market to absurd and ultimately dangerous lengths. The reckless abandonment of government oversight has had all sorts of effects over the last few years, from tainted food imports, poisoned toys, the appalling response to Katrina, and now the melt down of one of the Republicans stoutest citadels: Wall Street. The collapse of the Soviet Union is the most recent analog for what we have just lived through.
The Republican Party is now out of ideas. We need a new right wing party to emerge from its rump. One with a less ideologically pure position, and one committed to a more pragmatic right of center set of principles. That will take time. The purge of the far right is only now beginning. Obama has to win the presidential election with sufficient margin to convince the Republicans to go away and start over. That’s the effect Reagan had on the Democrats three decades ago. Maybe it will be another three decades before we can trust a Republican platform again.
Meanwhile we can revel in the fresh air that the lifting of the oppressive free-market monopoly allows into our intellectual climate.
