Republicans might be interested to know that there are some people in the world, in this case in Brazil, who already assume that John McCain will beat either of his Democratic challengers.
Now that a turning back of the financial deregulation that began under Reagan and continued under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II looks imminent, what U.S. President is most to blame for the current crisis? Patrik Etschmayer writes for Switzerland’s Nachrichten, “Only when regulations were relaxed under Ronald Reagan did the first rather costly banking disaster ensue: The Savings and Loan crisis. This led to the recession of the early 1990s, which helped secure Bill Clinton’s 1992 electoral victory. But Clinton didn’t heed the warning. Even though it is now no longer discussed, and all fingers point toward George W. Bush - his actions alone could not have resulted in today’s disaster. … Clinton worked until almost the end of his term to abolish Glass-Steagal. The Congress fought him for years just as it had under Reagan and Bush the First. But in 1997, the FED Board of Directors under Alan Greenspan eliminated rules that limited securities trading for savings banks.”
In explaining why things have gone so badly that stricter banking rules are now necessary, Etschmayer writes, “Legal regulation seems to be the only way to rein in the apparently boundless greed - because bankers, speculators, hedge-fund managers and other stock market players large and small - and not only in the United States - seem to have lost the capacity to distinguish between freedom and foolishness.”
How do the Russians view the three remaining U.S. presidential aspirants? After explaining that there isn’t a hair’s breath of difference between President Bush and John McCain on the issue of Russia, Novosti political affairs analyst Dmitry Gornostayev writes, “The Democrats think the same way as McCain. No, not on health care, abortion, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq or the right to carry firearms - God Forbid! - on these issues they are prepared to argue until they’re hoarse. But in regard to Russia (I dare say a marginal issue for American voters), there is a complete consensus.” Gornostayev concludes, “The words, of course, may differ - but action is always in one in the same direction. You ask what political bias is worse - Republican or Democratic? The two are equally as bad.”
By Dmitry Gornostayev
Translated By Igor Medvevev
March 27, 2008
Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)
NEW YORK: What the President keeps to himself, his nominee reveals. Of course, if John McCain is elected President of the United States, he will not repeat what he just said to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. The President of the United States is not the person to repeat that the G8 should “expel Russia,” or speak of the need to “address the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia.”
Before the 2000 election and even during the first few months of his presidency, George W. Bush also criticized Russia. He his first step in regard to Russia as head of state was to expel a large group of Russian diplomats from the United States. However, when he realized it would be necessary to meet the president of Russia, he had to reverse himself. It was then that he glanced into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and was able to “get a sense of his soul.” At least that’s what he told the world, and of course, his own voters, whom several months before he had been desperately trying to convince of the contrary.
If it is Senator McCain who will be President, he too will need to come up with a nice story about a sudden recovery of insight. But strictly speaking, this isn’t all that important. Neither does it matter if it’s McCain or one of the pair of Democrats that is elected. The Senator’s critical remarks about Russia, which incidentally were only a small part of his speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, seem to contain two fundamentally important points. The First is tactical and the second, strategic.
First, let’s address his tactics.
It’s not at all accidental that his tough criticism of Moscow coincided with a statement by Bush about his intention to travel to Russia to discuss differences over U.S.-Russian relations with outgoing President Vladimir Putin . Both or them - McCain and Bush - express the ideas of the political clan that still calls the shots in American foreign policy, the neoconservatives. Despite the different ways the two men express themselves, their philosophies on relations with Russia are essentially the same: to weaken Russia, and if that’s not possible, to deter it (incidentally, we shouldn’t be carried away by Russian pride in this regard - American policymakers are much more afraid of China).
It’s obvious that both of these statements constitute a single logical and tactical step - to assert at the highest levels the inevitability of deploying an anti-ballistic missile emplacement within Europe [in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Bush said in his speech, “I think a lot of people in Europe would have a deep sigh of relief if we’re able to reach an accord on missile defense. And hopefully we can.” By these comments, it’s clear under what conditions Bush will seek to conclude an agreement. This sounds rather nice when compared to the tenor of McCain’s remarks: “Rather than tolerate Russia’s nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make it clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.”
Is the United States imagining a world in which Russia poses a threat, or is it actually a threat? Mikhail Taratuta, the former host of a Russian television show about America writes for Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, ‘Sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists make reference to a notion called a “second reality.” This isn’t reality itself, but rather a person’s perception of reality. … When we hear that the real objective of America and the West is to pull Russia down and keep it on its knees, how should we interpret this? Is it a cynical lie put forward for some sinister political purpose - perhaps to mobilize society to create the image of an enemy? Or are these the sincere words of people living in a “second reality,” where we already visited once upon a time?
By Mikhail Taratuta*
Translated By Igor Medvedev
March 24, 2008
Kommersant - Russia - Original Article (Russian)
Sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists make reference to a notion called a “second reality.” This isn’t reality itself, but rather a person’s perception of reality. Thirty years ago when I first went to America, I was confident that I would find all the signs of a decaying West as detailed in the Soviet press - unemployment, the suffering of working people, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »
I have excerpted some of her key points and arguments, many of which are already in the process of being twisted and taken out of context by her opponents. Here’s what she actually said in what I thought was an eloquent and crucial speech.
Hillary began by expressing what many Democrats believe: the surge can’t be said to be working unless its purpose is being realized: political reconciliation within the Iraqi government. Otherwise, we are simply polic[ing Iraq’s civil war." If elected, she said:
I will start by facing the conditions on the ground in Iraq as they
are, not as we hope or wish them to be. President Bush points to the reduction in violence in Iraq last year and claims the surge is working. Now, I applaud any decrease in violence. That is always good news. But the point of the surge was to give the Iraqis the time and space for political reconciliation. Yet today, the Iraqi government has failed to provide basic services for its citizens. They have yet to pass legislation ensuring the equitable distribution of oil revenues, yet even to pass a law setting the date of provincial elections. Corruption and dysfunction is rampant….
Pointing out that neither Petraeus nor the Iraqis are satisfied with the progress toward reconciliation, Hillary argued that it is not feasible for the US to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely simply to keep down the violence. We simply cannot afford to police Iraq’s civil war without mounting threats "to our national security, our economy, and our standing in the world."(GWU speech)
This Guest Interview by Bill Steigerwald, columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is with Ed Meese, the former U.S. Attorney General and longtime Ronald Reagan longtime policy adviser, who talks about the country’s last real contested national political convention.
The Last Contested Convention — Interview With Ed Meese
By Bill Steigerwald
With the Democratic presidential primary looking like it will have to be decided at the party’s national convention in Denver on Aug. 25-28, it’s a good time to revisit the country’s last contested political convention — the Republican National Convention of 1976.
For you youngsters out there, that was where ex-California Gov. Ronald Reagan lost a close battle for the presidential nomination with President Gerald Ford and the GOP’s East Coast establishment by a vote of 1,187 to 1,070. Reagan’s primary challenge and his stirring speech at the convention, which overshadowed Ford’s acceptance address, made him a national political figure.
Ronald Reagan’s longtime friend and presidential policy adviser Edwin Meese, who holds the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, was at that famous Republican slugfest in Kansas City.
To get a foretaste of what might happen in Denver when Hillary Clinton Democrats and Barack Obama Democrats duke it out to see who’ll face presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, we talked to former U.S. Attorney General Meese on Thursday, Feb. 7 — the day Mitt Romney dropped out of the race:
Q: You knew it was going to be a tough fight when you got to Kansas City. What did you have to do as soon as you got there?
A: The principal thing was to find delegations that were somewhat uncertain or delegations that we thought the members of which might be persuaded to support Gov. Reagan on a subsequent ballot. It was a matter of whether we could obtain enough delegates to change what was the picture going in. First we had to find out what our relative strength was. That was done by asking for a rule change. It was that vote on the rule change — which ultimately was not successful — that indicated that the Reagan forces would not be able to overcome the number of Ford delegates.
Q: Can you characterize the Ford and the Reagan people?
A: Well, the major issues in the campaign had to do with primarily foreign policy and how to deal with the Soviet Union. Actually, even before the convention started, Gov. Reagan had achieved a major victory by having the party platform changed to take a harder line against the Soviets and Soviet aggression. So there was already a victory in policy before the convention started.
As far as the two sides, the Ford supporters, of course, were primarily establishment Republican Party figures and several of the state delegations. The Reagan delegates and supporters were primarily strong conservatives on both foreign policy and domestic policy. They involved some of the delegations that had supported Ronald Reagan in the primaries or in the caucuses that preceded the convention. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a Guest Voice column by Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s oldest son, who is also a popular radio talk show host. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
Show Us The Shining City On The Hill
by Michael Reagan
Thanks to Mitt Romney, John McCain has all but wrapped up his party’s presidential nomination.
So where does the Republican Party stand at this point in a crucial election year? Well, consider that none of the potential nominees of the party — except maybe McCain to some extent — has ever gone out and helped any Republican get elected to anything.
Now that he’s suspended his campaign and is out of the race, if Mitt Romney still wants to be president of the United States some day let him call me up and I’ll give him the road map he needs to follow to become the GOP nominee in another year.
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the three men have all been working from the top down and not from the bottom up. As a result, the voters — the grass roots — are all over the landscape, and the primary results showed there’s no real consensus. They were with Huckabee, they were with Mitt Romney, they were with McCain, and some were with Ron Paul.
Mitt Romney didn’t do anything to gain the trust of the base, while McCain — who hasn’t yet won the trust of the base — is a familiar old face.
First we got Coulter promising with a straight face to campaign for Hillary if McCain wins. Now Rush Limbaugh is saying that he’d rather see Clinton or Obama win the presidency than John McCain, despite Bob Dole’s plea for sanity on the party’s far right. Too bad, Bob Dole. That ship sailed a long time ago.
When it comes to the McCain mutiny, Limbaugh has plenty of company on the right side of the dial. Laura Ingraham endorsed Mitt Romney last week, saying, "There is no way in hell I could pull the lever for John McCain." Sean Hannity, who also endorsed the former Massachusetts governor, regularly rips McCain. Hugh Hewitt is urging the audience for his syndicated radio show to fight for Romney against what he calls a media-generated "McCain resurrection." But with a program heard on 600 stations, including Washington’s WMAL, Limbaugh is the loudest and brashest voice inveighing against the man he derides as "Saint John of Arizona." (New York Times)
Could it be that even some of the dittoheads have noticed that the far right has turned out to be wrong about every single thing it’s said every single time? Doubtful. Clearly, though, a certain number of sane Republicans have noticed.
In the desperation to be rid of Bush, this has become a year of imagery shorthand. While any Republican with a pulse claims to be another Reagan, Barack Obama is seen as a new JFK.
There are parallels. As Nixon did in 1960, Hillary Clinton is invoking her experience during the eight-year tenure of a popular president. But in both cases, the actual occupant of the Oval Office undermined the chances of his would-be successor.
Eisenhower did nothing as blatant as Bill Clinton’s campaign antics but, in trying to help his Vice-President in 1960, he asserted that Nixon played a major role during his terms in office. Asked at a press conference about any piece of advice he had heeded, Eisenhower answered, “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”
In that campaign, as Frank Rich reminds us, neither could Kennedy point to any significant achievement in his brief Senate career, but what he offered was change in a time when Americans were ready but not as desperate as they are now for new, younger leadership.
This is a Guest Voice column by Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s oldest son, who is also a popular radio talk show host. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
John McCain Hates Me
by Michael Reagan
Until [Tuesday] night, when I watched the Republican debate, I had no idea how much John McCain dislikes me and just about everybody else but Rudy Giuliani, who if you believe The New York Times is a pretty good hater himself.
As I watched McCain and Governor Romney go at it during the debate at the Reagan Library I was struck by the huge gap that separates McCain — whose contempt for his fellow humans is patently obvious — and my dad, Ronald Reagan, who had nothing but the deepest affection and respect for the American people.
The feeling is mutual between McCain and me. I don’t like the way he treats people. You get the impression that he thinks everybody is beneath him. He seems to be saying, “I was a war hero, and you had damn well better treat me as your superior.”
He has contempt for conservatives who he thinks can be duped into thinking he’s one of them, despite such blatantly anti-conservative actions as his support for amnesty for illegal immigrants, his opposition to the Bush tax cuts which got the economy rolling again, and his campaign finance bill which skewed the political process and attacked free speech.
I am appalled by his contempt for the intelligence of his listeners when he flat-out lies and expects them to believe what he says even when the truth is staring them in the face. Read the rest of this entry »
I was all fired up to write a deep-thinking post on Barack Obama’s continuing indifference (or inability) to put meat on the bones of his otherwise captivating hope-and-change mantra after Daniel Larison cited this terrific quote from Joshua Foa Dienstag, a deep thinker whose specialty is the study of pessimism, which certainly would seem to be a growth industry in America:
“Since, unlike the present, tomorrow is always imaginary, such idolatry can be manipulated in many ways. On the one hand, of course, the Stalins of the world can demand the death of millions in the name of a future paradise. This is an especial concern of Camus, who complains of those who ‘glorify a future state of happiness, about which no one knows anything, so that the future authorizes every kind of humbug. . . . ‘
“Given the ironic character of history, we should, at the very least, make sure that our actions have some value in the present. The future that we imagine is unlikely to come about, if it does come about it will not last, and when it does come about we will probably despise it.”
Alas, I am not the same intellectual ballpark as Dienstag, let alone Larison, so I’ll merely belabor the obvious: While Obama excites the heck out of me and other voters in the abstract, how do we know whether he can deliver on his message since it is so lacking in substance beyond a welcome pledge to end the Iraq war?
The answer, of course, is that we don’t know and just like George Bush’s infamous “trust me” line, we’ll probably just have to trust him, although I’m far from comfortable with that.
Can Obama succeed without having a political philosophy? Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to name several notable presidents of the century past, all had philosophies that were their lodestars.
Why are so many Europeans so hooked on Barack Obama? According to this op-ed article from Portugal’s leading business daily, Diario Economico, ‘Europe sees Barack Obama as the antithesis of George W. Bush. And confronted with the state of the world, this is something that makes all the difference. Seen from the Old Continent, Obama symbolizes the American spirit in the European heart. He may not represent the full complexity of America, but he certainly represents the America that exists in the Europe’s wildest imagination.’
By Carlos Marques de Almeida
Translated By Brandi Miller
January 25, 2007
Portugal - Diario Economico - Original Article (Portuguese)
Definitively, Barack Obama is the candidate of Europe. The fact that he’s Black, can carry on good social discourse and has cultivated a casual and sophisticated image makes Obama the perfect portrait of an American liberal. But whether or not the senator is a product of talk shows and is the very definition of a style that epitomizes the ideal of “change,” Europe sees Barack Obama as the antithesis of George W. Bush. And confronted with the state of the world, this is something that makes all the difference. Seen from the Old Continent, Obama symbolizes the American spirit in the European heart. Barack Obama may not represent the full complexity of America, but he certainly represents the America that exists in the Europe’s wildest imagination.
In a nation still marked by the American “cultural wars” of the 1960s, the issues of race, religion and gender continue to influence the political discourse. Perhaps in a surprising way, Barack Obama has sought to define himself as the candidate of a new era, a universe apart from radical politics and ideology. In aspiring to a new era, Obama approaches Ronald Reagan, not in the policies he proposes, but certainly in terms of presence and inspiring oratory. Like the Reagan coalition, which succeeded in uniting fiscal and social conservatives nationally, if Obama achieves a fully-fledged “grand social coalition” around the Democratic Party, perhaps Obama’s dream will become Obama’s revolution.
This Guest Interview by Bill Steigerwald, columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is with former George Bush speechwriter David Frum, who argues that conservatives must change their message and adapt if they want to win elections.
David Frum: Conservatives Can Make A Comeback
by Bill Steigerwald
Conservatism has lost much of its appeal to young and independent voters. The Republican Party is on the ropes. The White House and Congress increasingly look like they’ll be controlled by Democrats for a long time. In “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again” (Doubleday), David Frum, the American Enterprise Institute scholar and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, says if conservatives and Republicans want to recover their power they must change their message and adapt to new political realities. The National Review Online columnist says conservatism’s red-meat issues — low taxes, gun rights and promises to restore traditional values — don’t cut it anymore. I reached Frum on Wednesday at his hotel room in Toronto.
Q: What’s the 60-second synopsis of what your book is about?
A: The Republican Party, which was so dominant in American politics from about 1970 to about 1995, has been running out of gas for the past decade. It’s not just Iraq, and it’s not just George Bush. We’ve got deeper problems of exhaustion of our message and we must renew that message. I am trying in “Comeback” to offer specific ideas based on the needs of the country for renewal
Q: Why did you write this book and who is it for?
A: I wrote the book because of my own concern that the conservative movement that I had grown up in was in so much danger. I wrote it for anyone who would care to read it, but I mostly wrote it for my fellow conservatives and fellow Republicans, to make them feel the seriousness of the problem; second, to offer some conclusions; and third, even if people don’t like the particular solutions I offer, to show them how we ought to be thinking about politics — how we need to have an approach based on empiricism and reality and less on the way we wish things were than on accepting things as they are.
Q: How do you define your conservatism and is it fundamentally at odds with Goldwater or Reagan conservatism?
A: I don’t go in for these factional subdivisions. I don’t like to say I’m this kind of conservative or that kind of conservative. I’m somebody who believes in markets, who believes in rule of law, who believes in less government and I’m certainly a strong believer in America’s mission in the world. That’s where I tend to come from. What I’m struck with by Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, each of them was an innovator. One of the questions you get asked a lot is “What would Ronald Reagan do if he were alive today?” I can’t really answer that question. I do know this: He would not do what he did in 1980, because he was an innovator. Great politicians are like artists. They are sensitive to their times. They absorb what’s in the air. They sense the needs of the country at a particular moment.
For example, one of the great concerns that America felt in the late 1970s … it wasn’t just that government was failing in the late 1970s. All of the institutions in American life were failing. The car companies were failing. You couldn’t put up a beautiful building anymore. Nothing seemed to work. People were unhappy that government wasn’t working, but in a funny way they weren’t shocked, because nothing worked.
Today, 2008, almost all the institutions of American life work brilliantly. You want to send a package — the package goes. You walk into a new building – it’s gorgeous. You take delivery of your new car – it works. So the fact that government doesn’t work is a much more specific problem. That’s why events like Katrina were so terribly damaging. We are in an era where Americans have great confidence in their society in a way that they didn’t in Ronald Reagan’s time, but they are just disappointed again and again by their government – and Republicans have been in charge of that government for a long time. So when they are disappointed in their government, they are disappointed in Republicans.
Q: You essentially are saying the conservatives or Republicans have to adapt to a changed America. How so?
A: Let me give you one example: We know that how you vote when you are in your 20s casts a shadow that affects how you vote for the rest of your life. The people who turned 20 between 1985 and 1990 are the most Republican cohort in the entire electorate; these are the Reagan voters. They saw Reagan, they saw his politics work, and they’ve been rewarding him ever since. The people who turned 20 between 2000 and 2005 are the most anti-Republican group in the entire electorate – more anti-Republican than the “Watergate babies,” more anti-Republican than the G.I. Bill Generation, the people who turned 20 after World War II. This is a big problem. One reason they are so anti-Republican is that we neglect the environmental issue, which is very important to them.
Another way the country has changed is that in Ronald Reagan’s time immigration was a challenge and a difficulty, but it was not an overwhelming problem in a way that it has since 1980 become an overwhelming problem. We’re looking at a situation where since 2000 about 8 or 9 million people have entered the United States, at least half of them illegally. These immigrants are of very low skill. They are not catching up to the incomes of the native born. When they are legal they are net beneficiaries of the tax system, they are not net contributors. This is a problem that was once at the margins of politics and it’s come to the center.
Q: For instance, environmentalism, what does conservatism or Republicans – are you more worried about the Republican Party of conservatism?
On the heels of Caroline Kennedy’s paean to Oback Barama as the heir to her father’s political ideals come reports that the family patriarch, Sen. Ted Kennedy, will endorse Obama, too.
For weeks now, JFK’s alter ego Ted Sorensen has been campaigning for the Illinois Senator, underscoring the continental divide in American politics between the dynasties.
The famous picture of a starry-eyed young Bill Clinton in 1963 shaking Kennedy’s hand is now an ironic reminder of the political and temperamental differences between the two.
Both came to office after enormously popular Republican presidents, Eisenhower and Reagan, but JFK overcame his political caution, learned from mistakes and earned respect for an idealism that, unlike Clinton’s, strengthened during his tenure and earned respect across the ideological landscape.
Kennedy was a skeptic by nature, but he was not capable of the cynicism that Bill Clinton has been showing in the attempt to get his wife to the White House.
The Kennedy dynasty is over, but its heirs may play a significant role in ensuring that the Clintons’ never materializes.
This is a Guest Voice column by Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s oldest son, who is also a popular radio talk show host. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
Newt: A GOP Dark Horse?
Making Sense, by Michael Reagan
Fred Thompson’s gone. Duncan Hunter’s gone. All these people are gone. Huckabee could become Huckabeen — gone by next Tuesday. So could Rudy after next’s Tuesday’s Florida primary.
All of a sudden you’ve got this Republican primary coming down to McCain, Romney and Ron Paul. With all this uncertainty, just where can a conservative go? All of a sudden radio talk show hosts, who reflect the opinions of grass-roots conservative voters, are all over the lot hammering on Rudy, hammering on Romney, hammering on McCain and hammering on Paul.
Listening to them you get an idea who they want or don’t want. They don’t like McCain. Most probably they support either Huckabee or Romney. Although they think Rudy is gone, he could come back if he wins in Florida next Tuesday.
If Huckabee is finished, I think they go to Romney, who is somewhat more conservative than the rest. At any rate, conservatives could be faced with backing either McCain, or Romney, or Huckabee or even Rudy.
Or they could end up backing none of them.
Who, then, could conservatives end up backing? Well, who recently has come out with a new book? Who’s doing all the shows talking about his new book? Read the rest of this entry »
Unless Rudy Giuliani pulls off a Florida surprise in next Tuesday’s primary, there are now three Republicans with some chance of winning their party’s presidential nomination: John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee. Recently, I speculated on who might be the vice presidential running mates of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the event that one of them becomes the Democratic nominee for president. But what about the remaining Republican contenders?
Each would have their own particular needs when it came to selecting running mates. In this post, I want to address what and who McCain will likely need in a running mate.
McCain should, by all rights, be the clear frontrunner, given the usual orderly succession of Republican presidential politics. That he isn’t results in part, from the fact that neoconservatism, with its advocacy of Wilsonian intervention in foreign affairs, has at least temporarily changed the definition of conservatism. Additionally, on at least two major issues–immigration reform and campaign financing–McCain has departed from conservatism. Some will also mention his opposition to President Bush’s 2002 tax cuts. Others will excoriate his participation in the Gang of Fourteen, ignoring how the compromise struck by those US Senators in 2005, made it possible for the President’s conservative nominees for the US Supreme Court to be confirmed without controversy.
Be that as it may, McCain, an orthodox Goldwater-Reagan conservative who is an advocate of strong national defense, restrained government spending, Second Amendment rights, and an end to abortion, doesn’t have the luxury that Ronald Reagan had in selecting running mates in 1976 and 1980. Read the rest of this entry »
Ronald Reagan has been the luckiest president of my lifetime, which is one reason that I find myself chuckling when his name is invoked — as it frequently is these days — by the Republican presidential wannabes and by that Obama fella on one or two occasions, as well.
What do I mean by luckiest?
Because Reagan was pretty much an empty vessel into which every Republican mover and shaker of consequence of his time poured their own political views and agendas. He was a universal wrench of a man whose primary qualifications were a mediocre movie career and so-so turn as governor of California. He had no interest in details and was befuddled by complex concepts, but was extraordinarily adept at exciting the Republican political base and making Americans feel really good about themselves even as he rewarded the rich and undercut the middle class.
Aside from that nasty assassination attempt, some recession messiness during his first term and being caught out in the Iran-Contra affair, things usually broke Reagan’s way whether he was napping or not, most notably when the Berlin Wall came down and Soviet Union swooned on his watch. Today he is an oft-cited conservative icon despite the reality that he had little substance beyond his political skills.
I am fond of saying that you make your own luck, and George Bush certainly has done so.
Like Reagan, Bush has been pretty much an empty vessel into which today’s Republican movers and shakers (read neocons and right-wing Christianists) have poured their own political views and agendas. Like Reagan, he was more resume than man when he became president. And like Reagan, seems to use a notably small part of his brain but once upon a time could excite that political base.
After the 9/11 attacks, Bush did a passable job at making Americans feel really good about themselves at a really lousy juncture in their history and then, because he believed the sycophants around him when they called him The Latest and The Greatest, recklessly squandered the greatest presidential mandate since Pearl Harbor on the Iraq war and other misadventures. So enormous has the collapse of the Bush presidency been that it has to be ranked right behind the 9/11 attacks as the biggest story of the young millennium.
The Republican Party is trebly hobbled this election season:
With Vice President Cheney a hiccup away from what Redd Foxx called The Big One on “Sanford and Son,” the party has no heir apparent. Bush has almost single-handedly ended the Republicans’ grip on power. And because he is so toxic, the presidential candidates have to look hard over their shoulders to when that city on the hill last shined so brightly for the Grand Old Party.
Up front, let me be brutally clear: For reasons that have much more to do with my gut than with my brain, I think both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were reasonably good Presidents. Were either of them perfect? Hell no. Were they the best Presidents since the founding of the country? Absolutely not. But they each turned in respectable performances, and — on an admittedly selfish level — my thoughts about the future were generally optimistic and my good fortune was considerably advanced while they were each in office.
That said, I think my optimism during those years perhaps had more to do with these Presidents’ rhetorical flourish than with reality, and the progress in my personal (and familial) well-being had more to do with a combination of good luck, good upbringing, and old-fashioned hard work than it had to do with either man’s domestic policies.
Taking all of that into consideration, I’m baffled when I read columns like Paul Krugman’s yesterday, in which the always confrontational NYT columnist insisted (once again) on denying anything remotely good from Reagan’s tenure while pointing to many good things (sans one) during the Bill Clinton years.
Damozel has already offered her take on Krugman’s column. While she is, in her words, “not a Krugman apostle,” her experience during Reagan’s tenure jived with Krugman’s claims. I respect that. But my experience was much different, which proves nothing more than the conventional wisdom that most of us are (a) favorable toward Presidents who were in the White House during years when we/those-we-know did well and felt good about the future, and (b) unfavorable toward Presidents who were in the White House when we/those-we-know didn’t do well and/or worried incessantly about the next shoe to drop.
In turn, these varying perspectives beg two age-old questions, namely: “What is the scope of a President’s influence? And can any President single-handedly change the personal fortunes of a nation?” My non-expert answers: The president is (or largely should be) an inspirational leader, setting the tone for a nation, representing it well on the world stage, etc. Beyond that, he/she really can accomplish very little, and the lasting impact of his/her domestic policies will likely (a) not be realized during his/her tenure; and (b) even if they are, take a back seat to other forces beyond his/her control.
Bill Clinton rode the failure of Reaganomics all the way to the White House in 1992 ("It’s the economy, stupid"). In 1991, he said:
“The Reagan-Bush years…have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.
Those who didn’t worship the Gipper and his grandfatherly twinkle could see way before his illness was announced that he had problems processing information and recalling his own policy decisions (cf. Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor). The Iran-Contra scandal (which it later appeared he really didn’t remember), was a grim precursor of the unchecked wielding of executive power characteristic of the current Bush Administration.
How, then, has Reagan been recast as the ideal Republican, whose giant shoes the current crop would be happy to fill? The elevation of Ronald Reagan to Republican sacred cow makes it hard to resist the notion that Republicans really are an especially trusting people. Do they—like Reagan himself—really not recall? Or were they all too young or too busy disco-dancing?
Bush-2 is what I’d call the logical successor to the policies of the Reagan era, particularly on the economic front. When he was elected, the fear of all the moderate Democrats I knew was that Bush would turn back the clock to the Reagan era. And that is exactly what he did.
If you, like Barack Obama, see the Eighties as a Golden Age of prosperity and "dynamism," economist Krugman would like to remind you how it really was.
This is a Guest Voice column by Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s oldest son, who is also a popular radio talk show host. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
A Party Turned Upside-Down
by Michael Reagan
Nobody ever tried to build a house by starting with the roof and working down — it can’t be done. You have to start from the bottom up.
The same thing is true about building a political party. You have to start at the grass roots and work your way up to the national level, going from precincts, to counties, to states and all the way up to the national level. Without a large body of workers at the local level, a political party would be like an army with only generals and no privates.
This is just plain common sense, but it seems to have escaped the notice of the Republican Party, a vast organization with lots of generals and colonels and damned few privates. Nobody has focused on building the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan took on the job. My dad won the presidency because he worked to build the party from the ground up from 1976 to 1980. Read the rest of this entry »
![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://worldmeets.us/images/mccainpennsylvania_telegraph.gif)
