As we close in on this blog’s annual Reagan’s Birthday celebration, it blows my mind sometimes that there’s a whole generation of adults out there who have no concept of life that wasn’t in the post-Reagan world. People who don’t remember “Malaise”; who likely went through 12+years of schooling without really learning about the Cold War, who know little about Solzenitzyn and Reykjavik, the Brandenburg Gate; people who know the fall of the Berlin Wall only from music videos and various bits of post-irony.
I got an email from someone today; this person was born in 1985 and, like an awful lot of people, is not a political junkie (and is thus pretty normal!). This person writes:
Hey Mitch! __________ here….. i’ve got a bit of a question for you that will make you see how uneducated i am about politics before my time (i’m 22.)
i’ve been reading your blog, truthfully not understanding a lot of it, but i’m interested: the general consensus whenever Reagan is brought up is
that he screwed up. Even Republicans think this way. i was raised in a house where from noon-5 all our radios blasted Rush Limbaugh and Joe Soucheray. My parents are uber-conservatives, who raised me with this line: “Ronald Reagan was a GREAT president.” That’s all they said. i never thought about it much, but for some reason a lot of people have been talking about him lately, my parents saying “I wish there were another Reagan running” and everyone else, including many people who post on your blog saying “Wow, Reagan was a mistake.” What did he do that was so wrong that even Republicans are bad-mouthing him? i haven’t been able to do much research on this, but if you could point me in the direction of a “Reagan for dummies” or another such resource, i’d be much obliged. i googled it, but there is way too much stuff that i don’t even know where to start. Thanks!If you’re busy, don’t worry about it-it’s just a
casual interest of mine.
Well, of course I responded! The notion that people can grow up in this society and get their entire exposure to Reagan from people who are dedicated to rolling back his legacy – teachers, professors, the media, Hollywood – is a national travesty; any chance to try to roll it back, even for one person, is an opportunity and a gift.
So my response:
A *great* book to read – and a fast one, at that – is Ronald Reagan – How An Ordinary Man Became An Extraordinary President”, by Dinesh D’Souza. It’s a
fast read, and it’s a GREAT intro to the life of Reagan by a guy who was about your age when he worked in the White House. I’d lend you a copy, but he only copy I own is already lent out!I grew up in a Democrat house, and was a liberal until was…well, about your age! And Reagan was the first Republican I ever voted for. It occurs to me
there’s a couple of generations out there who don’t kow how hopeless this country felt during the Ford and Carter years; your (plural!) entire frame of
reference is post-Reagan America! If you ever get a chance to see “Miracle” with Kurt Russell – the story of the ’80 US Olympic Hockey team (jeez, that was years before you were born!), the beginning shows a lot of why America was in trouble before 1980; demoralized from Vietnam and Watergate, with economic troubles that seemed intractable (inflation AND high unemployment). Add in Jimmy Carter telling us in a speech that we might all have to get used to the US being a smaller, weaker country, and top it off with *Iran* taking 53 Americans hostage and making the world laugh at us for a year and a half – it was a miserable time to be an American.Just to give you a *very* quick digest of Reagan’s pros and cons:
PROS:
- he turned that around. Reagan was all about hope, patriotism. America never stopped being great, in Reagans world, and never would! We were still the “shining city on the hill”, not just the lesser of evils.
- He articulated a vision for smaller government and lower taxes. Remember – before Reagan, the highest marginal tax rate was over 70%! He cut that to under 40%, and made it stick!
- He had a vision; a world without Communism. He’d spent the forties and fifties (when he was still a liberal Democrat!) fighting communism in Hollywood as president of the Screen Actors Guild. When much of the punditry believed that Communism and all of its horrors were here to stay, Reagan said “No” – we were going to free all those hundreds of millions of people. When his advisors advised him in 1987 to go easy on Gorbachev in a speech in Berlin, Reagan said – before a crowd of rapturous, screaming Berliners – “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”. Four years later, the wall that *everyone* thought was permanent…was gone. This was HUGE for me. I grew up just down the road from a missile silo – the first place that’d have been nuked had the world gone to war. I wondered as a teenager and twentysomething – “why would I dare bring a kid into this world when the chances for a nuclear holocaust are so high, and so close by?” My daughter was born not long after the Berlin Wall fell, and after NORAD stood down from “hair-trigger” alert for the first time in a generation. For that ALONE, I thank God – and Ronald Reagan. I’m deadly serious – I still get a little choked up over that, alone – and more than a little POed at the historically-ignorant liberals who just. don’t. Get it.
- He created a genuine dialog in this country. Before Reagan, Republicans – dating back to the forties – were not that much different than Democrats; both parties weree big government, high-tax, high-intervention parties – the GOP *slightly* less so. (In Minnesota, it took an extra twenty years to
have that debate, but it’s finally on, and the DFL hates every second of it!). Finally, there was a genuine alternative – which a lot of liberals find very, very threatening.CONS- He ran up a huge deficit. He spent A LOT of money on defense, and still managed to hold the line on t xes. That meant he spent a LOT of money, and racked up a big deficit. George Will dinged him endlessly on spending. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln both racked up huge deficits, too; they had wars to win, and the nation was better off for it in both cases. Reagan had a war (albeit a Cold one) to win, too. Some economists have shown that America *saved* so much money on defense in the nineties (because there was no more Cold War!) that it more than repaid the costs of the Reagan Deficit – indeed, the “peace dividend” was largely what made the Clinton Presidency so prosperous.
- He didn’t do that much about social issues. While he was pro-life, he didn’t advance the pro-life movement all that much. I suspect that it’s largely because he didn’t see the role of the federal government to be changing social views (and I agree!).
That’s about the quickest intro to Reagan I could give. He was, without any doubt, the greatest president of my lifetime, and the best of the last half of the Twentieth Century; I’m not sure who’s dinging on him and why, but there’s my two cents.
I think that was a good, quick summary…
Depending on my energy level, any anti-Reagan comments might be cheerfully mutilated.
Because it’s my blog, that’s why.
I like “When Character was King” by Peggy Noonan (not to be confused with Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits). And other works. Read his speaches. And the book on his drafts of his radio show from the 70s. Incredible mind and great American.
I was a youngster when Ron was President, but recall the hate that the Democrats had for him and Nancy. It was really just as bad or worse then BDS. I think I mentioned before that my older brother would bring home the student newspaper from Eau Claire. That paper hated Reagan so much, that they portrayed Nancy as a dog. Putting her head on a dogs body.
The wrioters said this:
“”My parents are uber-conservatives, who raised me with this line: “Ronald Reagan was a GREAT president.” That’s all they said. i never thought about it much, but for some reason a lot of people have been talking about him lately, my parents saying “I wish there were another Reagan running” and everyone else, including many people who post on your blog saying “Wow, Reagan was a mistake.” “”
And you say this:
“”The notion that people can grow up in this society and get their entire exposure to Reagan from people who are dedicated to rolling back his legacy – teachers, professors, the media, Hollywood – is a national travesty””
Which, as is usually the case here, simply making shit up. Cause the writer specifically said his influences were His uber conservative Parents, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Soucheray, and “many people who post on your blog”
What a Grand Canyon leap even for you.
His point was never that those mean old Marxist liberals were bashing Reagan, he was wondering what Reagan did that was so God Awful that Republicans struggle with is legacy. I think your eventual answer was tolerable, but how you got there was wading through a pasture of cow pies.
Flash
Fair enough point, Flash, but don’t you think you could get something else about Reagan from the general public?
If you think that Hollywood, teachers, etc. don’t hate Reagan and pooh-pooh him all through the 90s and consider it to be Mitch making shit up… please expand on that idea.
Flash,
While it may not have been perfectly clear in the excerpt I published, the writer’s influences (parents) were not the same as the influences I was referring to (hollywood, teachers, the media, yadda yadda).
I’ll accept your apology for the accusation of “making shit up” which, for the record, never has happened on this blog and never will, but for the odd bit of satire.
Which this was pretty obviously not.
“”the writer’s influences (parents) were not the same as the influences””
Sure, but it was clear HIS influences were not the ones you listed, but tried to tie to him through your smear of anyone to your Left, thus my point, and your need to embellish, commonly known around these parts as making something where nothing was there
“never has happened on this blog”
Again, just cause you say it, doesn’t make it so! In this case, I have clearly who that is exactly what happened.
Badda and ‘mitch’, from the excerpt of the writers question, his concerns was ‘Why are REPUBLICANS’ bad mouthing Reagan. Never in the clip was there even a hint at a Left/liberal influence. I don’t deny that they exists, someone has to get the truth out, but regardless it wasn’t his question or concern and even went out of his way to clarify his Conservative influences.
Glad I could help.
Flash
Flash,
While your skills as a word-parser would be of invaluable use in a second (third? fourth? 🙂 career in law, the clarification of my intent renders them sorta obtuse in this case.
And no – no “shit” has ever been made up on this blog. You “clearly” invoked a fictional scenario based on the sort of word-parsing that…well, see paragraph 1 of this response.
Flash,
I re-read my post – and you’re even more wrong than I thought.
In my paragraph, I clearly define who I’m talking about – teachers, hollywood, etc – SPECIFICALLY to distance my statement from the writer’s parents.
You are trying to introduce “unclarity” into the discussion – or, as you’d put it, “making shit up”.
Cease and desist, I say!
people who are dedicated to rolling back his legacy – teachers, professors, the media, Hollywood – is a national travesty
your smear of anyone to your Left
This is a _Fact_, not a smear.
Your reading literacy of your own writing is even worse than I thought. But now that you have clarified what you meant, rather than at least owning up to what you in fact wrote says a lot.
“Cease and desist, I say!””
Because you are afraid people may learn the truth and you just want to stifle said truth!
“”This is a _Fact_, not a smear. “”
I have no doubt you accept fiction as fact. You come here and read the fiction at SitD often enough.
Flash
In 1980, Reagan looked like a roll of the dice. His high stakes gamble with the Soviets paid off. My hat is off to him. I didn’t think that the Soviets would falter as quickly as they did.
If I have any complaint about Reagan, and I do, it’s that he didn’t borrow more of Milton Friedman’s ideas.
Also, I don’t think Reagan took advantage of his political clout to pull a “Nixon goes to China.” I really wish we had not ramped up the War on Drugs. No one would have accused Reagan of being soft on drugs had he advocated a different approach (like those advocated by Friedman).
Also, pulling out of Beirut didn’t work out for us in the long run.
So, Flash… what’s your gripe with Reagan?
rather than at least owning up to what you in fact wrote says a lot.
For the benefit of any Tics reading this – what I wrote was what I wrote. Flash is tacking a completely spurious interpretation, based on a (now) willful misreading of my post, and calling it “reality”, which would explain a lot about Margaret Kelleher.
Because you are afraid people may learn the truth and you just want to stifle said truth!
Er…yeah. Sure. That’s exactly it.
*whoooie*
“So, Flash… what’s your gripe with Reagan?”
I don’t really have a gripe with Reagan. He was an average to above average President. But I think he was WAY over rated by those who worship him and try to pass him off as better than he really was. But if ‘mitch’ didn’t have drill and spin we wouldn’t have a blog
“”Sure. That’s exactly it.””
You are coming around slowly!
You are coming around slowly!
Just like the turret of an M1A1.
flash:
The whole post you reference is right above these comments.
Just pointing it out so you can read it again (?). Take it slow.
Flash, that’s kind of vague. Give me something to work with.
” I really wish we had not ramped up the War on Drugs. No one would have accused Reagan of being soft on drugs had he advocated a different approach”
Agreed. I was 18 in 1979. Reagan was the first president I voted for, the first and only president I campaigned for (twice) and the only president so far that I didn’t consider myself voting for the lesser of two evils. I can only assume people just don’t remember the inflation, the joblessness, the use of symbols rather than actions to govern. The carrying of suitcases when Carter was sworn in, the wearing of sweaters as an energy policy, the skipping of the olympics as foreign policy etc etc etc. And some consider him an “average” president? Amazing. However, since this isnt a perfect world, clearly there were things I disagreed with him on, the war on drugs would be one of those.
“Also, pulling out of Beirut didn’t work out for us in the long run.”
And that would be another one. That, as well as our reaction of what happened in Iran under Carter, were the first couple steps that got us where we are today. If Reagan had handled Beirut differently, would we have a 9/11? And Carter handling Iran? Bush and Clinton handling Somalia? Hard to say.
Can the media convince America that it’s 1978 again? Can Obama channel the same sort of thing Reagan did? If so, it will be a runaway election. Obama seems to be the only really decent person running right now, but I disagree with him on almost everything politically. OTOH, if we get him as president and still keep all those conservative democrats in the Congress who can band with the Republicans to give us 4 years of a do-nothing congress, Obama could be one of our more successful presidents ever.