Post-Eisenhower, the only Republican president who has not ended his presidency in political tatters is Ronald Reagan.
The view that he was a ‘great president’ mostly, that he improved the direction of the country, and his approval ratings, have all stood up.
As a result, Republicans continue to use him as their great former leader and steer their ships to his star. (Note the first 2016 Republican debate was held at his library).
Many independent and even Democratic voters are influenced by these views, accepting the general dogma of the Reagan presidency. Republicans do better in elections because of this view of Reagan.
However, the more correct view is that Reagan was a disaster.
You don’t have to look at every policy for this evaluation — presidents have thousands of policies and actions.
I suggest that in our country’s history, two of the major ‘inflection points’ are the FDR presidency’s change in our culture for government to have more responsibility to solve society’s problems — it created more government regulation, and put limits on the wealth and actions of Wall Street and the wealthiest — in my opinion, a great improvement for the country.
The second is the Nixon-Reagan presidencies’ political organization of the wealthy and the corporations, using their great wealth as a new coin for the political system, moving us away from one person, one vote toward one dollar, one vote. In their desire for power, they recognized how to use that wealth for changing our politics.
That was the period when advocacy organizations — ‘think tanks’— were formed to push pro-business and pro-wealth agendas, and other such actions were taken.
Under FDR, inequality went from a record high to a record low. Post Nixon-Reagan, it continually increased eventually returning to record highs today.
I could easily post a hundred ‘good government’ programs — and many more — the FDR culture led to. There were mistakes, excesses, but overall a lot of good.
It was Nixon who quietly declared war on that culture and Reagan who declared war publicly, with perhaps his most infamous statement that government is the problem, not the solution.
That utterly radical and anti-American view, challenging the people’s power and pitting the people against their government as the enemy, persuaded many with his smooth delivery as a corporate spokesman. A healthy skepticism of government, a desire for limits, had always been part of American political culture. We never wanted to be the Soviet Union. What Reagan was to do was to conflate moderate government with a far smaller version — a plutocracy, without naming it.
Almost no one thinks that they want to give up a third of their income so that billionaires can get more billions. Almost no one thinks that the middle class should pay more taxes so that Wall Street tycoons can pay a far lower rate than they do. Almost no one thinks that what the country needs is higher inequality. Yet all of those things are the result of that Nixon-Reagan shift in our politics — and it’s a shift with no change seen on the horizon.
There were many specific issues — such as the plummeting of union membership — but the effect was to make the poor poorer and less powerful, and the rich more and more.
And this has quickly been normalized, so that returning to the norms in better times now is seen as ‘radical leftism’.
Democrats seem to think they can win tactically, election by election, saying ‘our policy on this and that is better than Republicans’, and ‘this candidate is better than that one’.
The result has been the loss of every branch of government and nearly 1000 state seats to where Republicans are on the edge of being able to pass constitutional amendments without Democrats.
That’s for many reasons, but the point I’m making is that the Democratic Party should make Reagan a failed president not unlike how Jimmy carter’s presidency is wrongly viewed as a failed presidency.
It’s perverse that Carter — who is the only post-WWII president to keep us out of war, and had many legislative victories, who even steered us toward some of the more justifiable conservative policies — from appointing Paul Volcker to the Fed, where he got the Nixon-Ford initiated inflation under control (but Reagan got the credit), to deregulating air travel (again, Reagan gets the credit), even to starting to rebuild the military — as well as attempting to move to renewable energy and making human rights a top priority in our foreign policy unlike had ever been done before, to the lasting benefit of our nation’s moral standing — is viewed as the ‘bad’ president, while Reagan, who was far worse, is viewed as ‘great’ by so many.
I view the issues I mentioned as the key ones for Reagan’s presidency — the advocacy for anti-government hysteria, and plutocratic economics. But there’s much more.
It was Reagan who sent the Marines to Lebanon to please Israel, who was secretly delivering missiles to Iran for him illegally; it was on his watch those Marines were not protected and hundreds were killed by their opponents with a car bomb attack; it was Reagan who then pledged the attack would not affect our determination to continue the mission, but then withdrew weeks later. You never hear of this from Republicans, while you hear a lot of attacks from them on Obama’s Syria ‘red line’.
It was Reagan’s campaign who there is much evidence treasonously sabotaged Carter’s negotiations to return American hostages, to help him win the election (with echoes of Nixon treasonously sabotaging LBJ’s Vietnam peace talks, with far greater harm, extending the war for years and roughly doubling the casualties — with no accountability).
It was Reagan’s administration that criminally sold missiles to Iran to raise money for their illegal war against the socialist government in Nicaragua, fought with terrorism by thugs — with ten senior officials convicted (and Vice President Bush guilty but too well protected to charge) — later scandalously pardoned by Bush. As well as backing ruthless regimes in their authoritarian rule kidnapping, torturing, killing many liberals and labor leaders.
The S&L scandal (a thousand bankers convicted), the first massive peacetime deficits in our history — it’s a long list. Maybe you have a favorite to add in comments.
In fact, I’d suggest that the huge gap between the reputation of Reagan’s presidency — polling ‘best since WWII’ reportedly — and the disastrous history suggests the earlier version of the disconnects with trump’s base versus the facts. Reagan was called the ‘teflon president’ for the way he could avoid scandal accountability, not unlike the way trump is not held accountable so frequently.
Democrats mistakenly instead SUPPORT the myth of Reagan, by correctly pointing out how he’d be ‘too far to the left’ to do well in today’s party.
They point to his support for amnesty, or gun control after he was shot, and win the battle on those issues but lose the war against the much bigger Reagan anti-government agenda.
It’s worth noting some changes you almost never hear about from Republicans and not enough from Democrats since Reagan.
The Reagan-Carter election was the last time the candidates ran funding their campaigns entirely from the government funding from the IRS voluntary donations. Spending was low. It’s increased ever since, having turned our elections into legalized bribery where the candidates have to raise billions to win, and more billions are spent by anti-public interests — because judges Nixon and Reagan appointed did what they were appointed for and ruled money is speech.
When Reagan became president, there were fewer than 1000 lobbyists. Now, there are over 35,000. Most members and staff of Congress, when they leave office, enter lobbying now.
That has a huge effect, again legalized bribery — we can’t bribe you now, but it’s understood there’s a nice lobbying position waiting — maybe.
Democrats need to take down Reagan, correcting history, making his reputation closer to Nixon’s than belonging on Mount Rushmore (or our currency, where there’s a fight to put his picture).
Democrats need to battle the whole anti-government hysteria, instead of trying to co-opt it — as Bill Clinton did, with his ‘era of big government is over’ politics, for example slashing welfare.
The alternative is to continue to normalize the current record inequality as it gets worse — and will increasingly threaten democracy itself.
Reagan was a terrible president. He was good at soothing and inspiring much of the country — but at a huge cost.