I haven't been paying too much attention to Presidential Campaign 2008--partially because I think it's far too early for the likes of debates and the already established tiering of the candidates, mostly because I have only so much time--but Frank Rich's recent pieces about Falwell and the Republican debate say a lot about the little that the Republican contenders have to offer. As Rich said, the Republicans seemed to be putting on their best Reagan impersonations the other night. Now that he is dead, Reagan's legacy goes beyond even the gratuitous naming of buildings, streets, and monuments in his honor: it extends to his deification by the right. For them, he is riding horses in the heavens in an open white shirt and frowining down upon Bush's deviation from his formula for Morning in America, which on closer glance does not look that different from what Bush has done this last 8 years.
Indeed, what no fan of Reagan seems ready to acknowledge is that Bush is extreme Reagan, Reagn taken to his logical end. Reagan made government bigger, he built up the defense budget, he cut taxes for the wealthier and ended up passing those on to the less wealthy in the form of Social Security tax hikes, he actively ignored the AIDS epidemic, and on and on. Bush has either done this or would do this if he could (can anyone imagine him acknowledging AIDS if he were president 25 years ago?). His policies have kowtowed even more to the social conservative part of his base than did Reagan's.
Yet, Reagan remains that elusive Republican ideal. As Rich said, the Republican candidates mentioned Reagan's name in the debates 19 times, while they only mentioned Bush's once. "Meanwhile," Rich concludes,
most of the pressing matters the public cares passionately about--Iraq, health care, the environment and energy independence--belong for now to the Democrats [...] You don't see Democrats changing the subject to JFK and FDR.
The cover of a recent news weekly asked who the country's new Truman would be. Maybe we need to stop looking for saviors from the past and start acknowledging that the problems faced because of all of the corruption and waste wrought by this current administration are pretty unique to our time and were wrought by forces that could have been prevented but were not, over and over again. If we had a Truman around, the prominent political commentators would have probably derided him for lacking experience or being too unrefined or too deferent or too overcompensating. When there have been people as good or better than Truman around (Al Gore, for instance), they've been derided. We're far past getting or deserving a Truman at this point, and what we really will need when this administration is done is someone with the energy of an FDR and the vision to realize the last thing we can affored to dwell in right now is nostalgic escapism.
6 comments:
about Reagan ~ right on!
about Bush and Reagan ~ right on!
about looking forward not back ~ really right on!
from someone who is old enough to remember!!
~ hm
I completely disagree with you on your characterizations of Bush and Reagan. Of course Bush built up the defense budget-we currently engaged in two wars. The tax cuts are admittedly very Reaganesque - but would that make all tax cuts Reaganesque? As for AIDS you're actually wrong, and saying Bush would "ignore it if he could" is so hollow I can't believe you wrote it - how can you know that? He's given more money to combatting AIDS in Africa than any president before him. Reagan taken to his logical end would be some kind of weird libertarian/military hybrid; this would not include that less-than-stellar "No Child Left Behind" program and other forms of so-called "compassionate conservatism." Please make an effort to understand the political philosophy before determining what its logical ends are.
Now for the part I agree. The GOP candidates mention him so much because they haven't spent the time figuring themselves out and so have little substance. Chasing after historical analogies and wishing we could clone figures of the past is beyond pathetic. Different historical moments require different people. However, anticipating that someone now living (Obama?) will be your political savior is also just as misguided.
I'm very confused when you say that I'm wrong about Reagan ignoring AIDS. It's pretty much agreed upon that he could have done a lot more and that the reason he didn't was because of his own indifference and because AIDS back then was seen as a gay disease. Reagan didn't speak publicly about AIDS until 1987, six years after it was reported in the news and medical journal. The impact was that AIDS was "chronically underfunded" as this article puts it: http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jan2004/bronski0104.html. I think it is safe to say, based upon Bush's relationship with the same base that influenced Reagan's position on AIDS, Bush would have done similar things.
As for compassionate conservatism, I don't believe GWB would have even had to put on the posture of being a compassionate conservative except that he was aware that after 12 years of Reagan-Bush and 8 more years of Republicans appearing out of touch and removed from American's policy concerns, the compassionate conservative image was the best way to sell himself.
Ok, I'm going to be more measured in this response. Reagan didn't do anything on AIDS, that's right; but to say that Bush is forcing himself against his will to fund AIDS campaigns is ridiculous because it's based on your own caricature of what a Republican should be like. It's same thinking that leads to the Republican obsession with Reagan: this is what a Republican is, if you don't follow in lock-step, something's wrong with you. This is also why the Left has a problem with Hillary and with Lieberman.
Your "logical conclusions" remark in the post is exactly what I'm talking about when people think in the "single trajectory" mindset. The logical ends of libertarian/Republican mindset is anarchy or fascism; the logical ends of the socialist/Democratic mindset lead to anarchy or Communism. Both logical ends are two sides of the same coin. But taking things to their logical conclusions leaves out any room for context, nuance, let alone limits to any philosophy; no one but total idealogues would think like this.
You are wrong to assert that things will improve for America when Bush leaves office.
The Democrats have the power to end the carnage in Iraq, yet they do not.
Each of the two political parties we are stuck with is immoral and bellicose.
It's time to look at GWB more as a symptom than a cause.
Michael Blaine
www.rudelystamped.blogspot.com
Ok, to finish my response:
The tax cuts are admittedly very Reaganesque - but would that make all tax cuts Reaganesque?
No, and I didn't suggest it would. For instance, cutting the payroll tax wouldn't be Reaganesque, nor would Clinton's proposed middle class tax cuts of the '92 campaign (that he never actually passed because the deficit was too big when he entered office in '93).
Reagan taken to his logical end would be some kind of weird libertarian/military hybrid; this would not include that less-than-stellar "No Child Left Behind" program and other forms of so-called "compassionate conservatism." Please make an effort to understand the political philosophy before determining what its logical ends are.
I see what you're saying, and I agree with your point, but I don't put that much stock in the idea that Reagan adhered to the conservative/libertarian ideology, which is why I think Bush has taken what Reagan did to its logical end, at least in deed.
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