Reagan Rewritten
When notable leaders die, the press often "forgets history" sliding into sentiment rather than sticking to the facts. Editor & Publisher's Joe Strupp looks at the recent flood of Ronald Reagan stories:
Reagan's death, especially following the tragedy and torture of Alzheimer's disease, likely struck editors and reporters with a responsibility to go easy on the former president. Few, after all, protested the sacking of the CBS television movie about Reagan a few months back.And the man did win two presidential elections, the second by a landslide, and led a rebirth of a Republican party that had been rocked by Watergate and other scandals. But let's not forget, however, that the often-mocked Bill Clinton accomplished much the same for his party, and despite the Lewinsky disgrace, left office with approval ratings that beat Reagan's (and no federal budget deficit, to boot).
So the overwhelming praise for a president who plunged the nation into its worst deficit ever, ignored and cut public money for the poor, while also ignoring the AIDS crisis, is a bit tough to take. During my years at Brooklyn College, between 1984 and 1988, countless classmates had to drop out or find other ways to pay for school because of Reagan's policies, which included slashing federal grants for poor students and cutting survivor benefits for families of the disabled.
Not to mention the Iran-contra scandal, failed 'supply-side economics,' the ludicrous invasion of Grenada, 241 dead Marines in Lebanon, and a costly military buildup that may have contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union (there were plenty of other reasons too) but also kept us closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, besides leaving us billions of dollars in debt.
And should we even mention the many senior Reagan officials, including ex-White House aide Michael Deaver and national security adviser Robert McFarlane, convicted of various offenses? What about Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger indicted but later pardoned by the first President Bush?
In the end, notes Strupp, much of the press went easy on Reagan:
In Reagan's case, his genial public persona, and Alzheimer's end, may have made it more difficult to knock down a popular leader, despite the fact that some argue Iran-Contra was a more impeachable offense than Watergate.Maybe it's to be expected that the press, when covering a leader's death, will take a kinder, gentler approach. But in the interests of fair, accurate journalism -- something that has become a leading issue in the media today -- no former leader should be above a frank, complete, and balanced assessment.
Especially not the one currently in office, who has the entire right wing "journalism" contingent playing intellectual contortionist to defend him.
Have you noticed, though, that the fawning guff has been toned down somewhat in the past 24 hours? Clearly, NPR, the New York Times et al feel it's okay to step up their criticisms now he's been dead one day longer.
modestproposal at June 8, 2004 8:33 AM
Truth be told, I haven't noticed anything for the past 48 hours but my deadline hanging over me like a giant ax, so the update is appreciated.
Amy Alkon at June 8, 2004 8:36 AM
GAME FOR THE WEEK
Complete this sentence: ìBush is just like Reagan, except __________________î.
Lena at June 8, 2004 9:08 AM
...with Alzheimers, Reagan had an excuse.
eric at June 8, 2004 10:11 AM
Fuckin' liberals.
Crid at June 8, 2004 10:36 AM
I prefer to think of myself as a skeptic who enjoys fucking.
The whole liberal monicker does not fit me in any way. The less government the better. That goes for less government intrusion into our personal lives, less government spending on decades of unjustified wars, zero governmental policy based upon the current incumbents personal mythology...
There are no conservatives in the government-the nature of the system is to grab more and more for your constituents, whether you like to call your brand liberal or conservative. Economics is the science of maximizing benefit from limited resources. Politics is deciding who benefits.
Back to Lenas question please, somebody....
eric at June 8, 2004 1:27 PM
It always strike me as funny when I see how bossy the so-called libertarians are. Eric, if somebody wants to pick up on Lena's smear, they will do so without your nagging.
The fact is, Reagan was a conservative in the best sense of the word, even if he did legalize abortion and no-fault divorce in California.
It's all about the individual, you see, not about the group.
Richard Bennett at June 8, 2004 5:31 PM
OK, Richard, I'll bite. What were Reagans great conservative accomplishments?
My motives were not to be bossy, also. My motive was not to divert from Lenas stream of thought question, which I was interested in hearing from others. Even yours...
eric at June 8, 2004 6:32 PM
You don't know, after all this time, what Reagan's conservative accomplishments were, eric, and you expect me to take you seriously? I'm amazed.
Reagan closed corporate welfare loopholes in the tax code, reduced income tax rates, started the nation's first welfare-to-work program, and ended an inflationary spiral driven by constant wage hikes by smashing the air traffic controllers' union. Even without ending the Cold War and freeing Nicaragua from the Sandinistas, that's a pretty fair piece of work.
Richard Bennett at June 8, 2004 11:22 PM
I'm old enough to remember it all, and the analysis on the web and radio in the past two weeks has brought two reflections, one particular and one general.
The particular was the PATCO strike. I thought planes would fall out of sky. Instead, the technocratic death grip between labor and management was kicked swiftly in the shorts. This was good, and not just because planes didn't fall out of the sky (except for that crash in LA a few years later). This was nourishment for a Postrellian kind of economic grinding.
The general thought concerns the tenor of Reagan's rhetoric. Brooks noted the other day that the pattern of Rep/Dem interactions continues today. Republicans are about optimism, profits, and concrete thinking through short sentences. Democrats are all about nuance, data, and the compassion absent from the hearts of others.
I grew up to realize that despite their often horrid faults, the conservatives are usually right.
See also Britain, Great.
Crid at June 9, 2004 10:09 AM
Hi Richard --
At the risk of being castigated as ignorant, I'd like to ask you for some detail about the welfare-to-work program that Reagan instituted. I don't know anything about it, and I'm genuinely interested in hearing more.
Also during the Reagan administration's tenure, the Medicare reimbursement system for hospital care received a very radical and very much needed overhaul. In the early 80s "the prospective payment system" seemed like cruel and unusual punishment, but it probably saved the Medicare program -- or at deferred its collapse for a few more decades.
Lena
Lena at June 9, 2004 10:34 AM
1.) Reagan closed corporate welfare loopholes in the tax codeÖ
Yes, this was a good thing. No arguments here.
2.) Reagan reduced income tax ratesÖ
Yes yes, very nice. What Reagan did not do was reduce government expenditures. What Reagan did do is increase the actual tax rates through deficit spending, which effect everyone through higher interest rates, and a now cumulative $7.2 trillion federal debt. That results in $332 billion in interest payments (11% of the total fed budget) us taxpayers are burdened with each paycheck. So he didnít cut taxes at all- he just pushed them onto the next generation.
3.) Ended an inflationary spiralÖ
I agree with you on this, but not for your stated reason. Reagan did support Volker, and it was tough. If you think inflation was in any way the result of the Air Traffic Controllers strike, you are mistaken. Paul Volker (whom Carter appointed) began the intentional recession to ìbreak the back of inflationî in 1979 during the Carter administration by tightening the money supply, and continued it though the first of the Reagan years.
4.) Started the nations first welfare to work programÖ
I guess you forgot about the Comprehensive Employment Training Act that was passed in 1973 to reduce the level of non-working welfare cases, a decade before Reagan.
As for welfare reform, in 1987 the relief rolls stood at near record levels despite six years of the Reagan presidency. Some 11 million Americans received payments from Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Roughly 3.7 million families were on the rolls in 1986, near the 1981 all-time high of 3.9 million. The high number of welfare families was not unusual during the Reagan Administration. Federal expenditures on AFDC rose from $7.8 billion in fiscal year 1982 to $9 billion in fiscal year 1985. After adjustments for inflation, that amounted to a rise of three percent.
As with any president, there are achievements and failures. Before we put Reagans face on any money, or carve him in Mt Rushmore, we should also remember his state sponsored terrorism throughout Central America, his ìliberatingî bewildered medical students in Grenada, his authorization of the illegal sale of 107 tons of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, including his public denial and later public apology. We should keep in mind the Contras he supported and the CIA under his watch flooded the streets of America with cocaine to pay for their illegal war.
The fall of the Soviet Union was inevitable, and was not caused by the United States spending them into bankruptcy or an American President chiding them to ìtear down this wallî.
I highly reccomend the link below for those with an interest in the history of Nicaragua... decide if you think the Nicaraguans were better of with our help.
http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/cia5.htm
eric at June 9, 2004 11:46 AM
Eric, have you ever met a conspiracy theory you didn't like? Gary Webb was fired from the San Jose Mercury News for fabricating that CIA/crack story, and nobody circulates it any more but extreme tin-foil hat heads.
Re: welfare reform, Reagan started Workfare when he was governor of California in 1971: "Governor Reagan opposed Nixonís proposal for reforming welfare. Reagan resisted efforts to pressure California into increasing cost-of-living payments to welfare recipients. In 1971, Reagan worked out a compromise. He brought California into compliance with federal regulations, and Nixon promised not to stand in the way of a pilot program requiring able-bodied welfare recipients to work as a condition of receiving aid. The program had mixed success but established Reagan as the champion of ìworkfare.î " http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Ronald_Reagan_Welfare_+_Poverty.htm
Re: tax cuts, the empirical fact is that Reagan did cut rates, and whether that lead to inflation is another question entirely. Inflation, after all, is not an income tax in anything but a symbolic level. Are you ready to blame the bust of the dot com bubble on Clinton, and to call it a tax increase? I didn't think so.
And finally, if the Sandinistas were such saintly heroes, why have the Nicaraguan people rejected them at the polls? Do you have some white-male-hetero-imperialist-hegemon bias that makes you disrespect the will of the authentic brown peoples? Shame on you.
Richard Bennett at June 9, 2004 3:02 PM
Can't you have a discussion without name calling? I wonder if you are so tough in person....
Well, I guess us tin-foiled conspiracy mongers will take some solace in the fact that even the CIA admitted the involvement with drug smuggling after the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics and Terrorism (headed by John Kerry) published its findings. Anyone can google these public records:
Senate Committee Report on
Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy
chaired by Senator John F. Kerry
I never said the tax cuts were inflationary. I never brought Bill Clinton into the discussion, nor would I blame him for the 1999 stock market bubble. I didn't blame Reagan for Black Monday, when the stock market crashed, did I? Who knows where your train of thought took off on that one.
Finally, regarding Nicaragua. My belief is that if a country votes itself communist, America should respect it's sovereignty. (See also Chile.) This country was founded by agrarian revolutionaries, wasn't it? We have no right, certainly no God given right, to subject our will upon another nation. Didn't you get that I am the one who respects the "will of the brown peoples" as you so condescendingly put it? And if Reagan was operating with such integrity, why did he defy Congress and operate this program covertly?
eric at June 9, 2004 4:45 PM
OK, I see this is moving too fast for you, eric, so let's slow it down a little and try not to leave you behind. I see you have nothing to say about Reagan's workfare program in California, so I'll take that as a concession on your part of the fact that he was the originator of the nation's first experiment with welfare-to-work. And I'm sure you also would agree that this kind of social compassion is better than the kind that places no obligations on charity recipients to better themselves. So enough about all that.
The CIA/crack connection is much more modest in fact than you imagine it to be, of course, but it's a complicated story so let's put that off until a more opportune moment and focus on the tax cuts question.
You agree that Reagan closed loopholes and cut income tax rates, but you maintain that these policies had the effect of increasing the financial burden on the citizens - those who pay taxes, presumably - because they weren't accompanied by reductions in spending, leading to a situation down the road where interest on the debt took money out of American paychecks, presumably through a secret line-item that nobody's ever explained to me. Is that about right?
Well, that's a crazy theory for a couple of reasons. First, we pay the interest on the federal debt out of our income taxes (you've disallowed inflation already, so we won't go there), not through an additional levy. So the interest we pay this year on last year's debt actually comes out of tax receipts, and therefore acts as a break on further growth in government spending, which is what Reagan wanted. Now a sane person could argue that Clinton and G. H. W. Bush had to raise taxes to pay off the Reagan-era deficits, but even so, the tax rate that we ended up with after Clinton balanced the budget was less than it was before the Reagan tax cuts, right? So Reagan did cut taxes, even after we factor in the effects of the deficits in the budgets Congress passed during his term of office.
Now I realize this is a bit complicated, so digest it and tell me what you think. "I see you're right" would be an appropriate rejoinder.
Next we can go under the tin-foil.
Richard Bennett at June 9, 2004 5:15 PM
My favorite commentary on our governments involvement in Nicaragua is on a bumper sticker...
Buy Contra Coke
Another Blow for Freedom
Sheryl at June 9, 2004 9:21 PM
"Bush is just like Reagan, except he's not so heavy handed with the blush."
Sheryl at June 9, 2004 9:24 PM
GAME FOR ERIC AND RICHARD BENNETT
Multiple choice (circle A or B):
My penis is bigger than:
A. Eric's penis
B. Richard Bennett's penis
Lena at June 9, 2004 9:40 PM
Envious, Lena?
Richard Bennett at June 10, 2004 10:15 AM
Envy? Not at all. I have an 8.5-inch clitoris. It's so very Kafka-esque.
Lena at June 10, 2004 11:09 AM
That's very charming, I'm sure, but why go waving it around in public? You seem to live under the delusion that somebody gives a shit.
Richard Bennett at June 10, 2004 1:41 PM
I live under many delusions. They shade me like a mighty palm.
Lena at June 10, 2004 7:36 PM