Ronald Reagan killed people, and he killed ideals. He began his campaign for the presidency with a paean to states’ rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where that cause—the right to trample the rights of others—had claimed the lives of three civil rights activists barely more than fifteen years earlier. In Central America, he painted nun-raping, dope dealing thugs with the high gloss of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson as they slaughtered tens of thousands of people, in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, who only wanted to live their lives in peace.
Reagan supported the racist apartheid regime in South Africa; he killed Congressional sanctions against Iraq sparked by Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas against the Kurds; he mounted an assault on regulatory structures that resulted in, among other disasters, a trillion-dollar implosion of the savings and loan industry. When the AIDS epidemic took root and spread in this country, he stood by and did nothing while victims, advocates and scientists begged for research money and government assistance.
He did all that, and more, and he called it, with an easy smile, “Morning in America.” Barack Obama thinks Reagan appealed to an overwhelming urge among Americans toward clarity and optimism and “a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
But what he really appealed to was the American urge to escape introspection, to feel good about ourselves and our country, to feel comfortable about abandoning any sense of responsibilty for tiresome, less fortunate others. He told Americans they were enshackled by government regulations and taxes, by unions, by an unnecessary regard for civil rights. It was the reactionary version of “If it feels good, do it.” It was an easy sale by a great salesman, and it was a disaster, one that would have been far worse absent the ability of partisan Democrats and moderate Republicans in Congress—the latter still existed in those days—to override some of Reagan’s vetoes.
Obama wasn’t endorsing the outcome of Reagan’s pitch, but he seems not to recognize that the pitch and the outcome were inseparable, that Reagan’s “clarity” and “optimism” were the thin, leading wedge of a malevolent effort to degrade government and our political culture that has reached apotheosis in the Bush administration; that Ronald Reagan and George Bush are, if we’re lucky enough to get a president who can kill the Reagan legacy, bookends.
There may be similarities between the electoral climates of 1980 and 2008, but assigning any virtue to one of the all-time great bait and switch campaigns is nauseating, and Obama’s suggestion that there are echoes of Reagan in what he offers is at least discouraging if not a bit scary.
As an African American I knew if you left Obama talk long enough he would stick his foot in his mouth. Just when you thought that Obama was going to turn a corner and really start looking like a REAL candidate he goes and sticks his foot dead in his BIG MOUTH. I don’t know what HOLY KOOL AIDE jar he’s been drinking from but to say Ronald Reagan appealed to anyone with a brainwave and a pulse is beyond ridiculous. RONALD REAGAN, is the man delirious or delusional or both. You mentioned in your article just a small portion of the endless list of mayhem, madness and murder that ran wild while he was President. Like you, if Obama thinks RONALD REAGAN is someone who should be looked upon with esteem I’m not just scared I’m horrified. He just lost any chance of getting my vote just on the face of it.
This added to Paul Krugman’s wariness about the guy. More evidence too that he might need more seasoning.
To further the theme, btw, if the people are so chipper about Reagan, apparently the best path would be to vote for one of the guys trying to wrap themselves in his mantle.
One gets what he was aiming at, but his words are inapt esp. during primary season where partisans don’t want nice words to be said about that hero of the other side.
Barack Obama is 100% Correct.
Who are the defenders of the status quo ? Is that you ?
Reagan did spawn a ‘sea change’ in American politics.
Obama hopes to spawn a new ‘sea change’. Change based on the ideals of unity – not division (and certainly not modeled after Reagan’s ideas)
How can anyone look at the state of modern politics and the outlook for our country guided by our current stautus quo – how can this ‘sea change’ of unified working government not make sense.
Anyone who has paid any attention knows what Obama is speaking of about the Republican Party being guided by ‘ideas’ for the past 15 years… you don’t have to subscribe to those ideas but they are, none the less, ideas. The same could be said of the Democratic party of the late 50′s and into the 60′s – Kennedy Idealism. Both of these movements ran their course and were watered down by time. That explains the state of the Democratic Party in the 70′s and 80′s. It also explains the ‘washed out’ state of the Republican Party today.
— Why do ‘we’ resent being talked to as if we had the capacity for knowledge. That is how Barack Obama is speaking to America… as if ‘we can’ understand. Why would we sell ourselves short and believe that we are past our zenith… that we are a declining people. Come on people… Now is the time to show some strength of character.
Hillary Clinton should do her part in making the Democratic Party a party of ideas again. She can start by voting for Barack Obama in November.
Barack Obama for President of the UNITED States of America.
Hey, you left out the main difference between Reagan and Jimmy Carter. It took Carter 14 months to get American hostages out of Iran, it took Reagan all of 14 minutes.
Yeah, Jack, that Reagan was a goddamned miracle worker. Praise be.
PulSamara, Reagan built a coalition based on fear, racism, resentment and anti-intellectualism. He ran a mean-spirited and vindictive government. Obama appears to confuse appeals to American exceptionalism and selfishness with optimism. He’s idealizing what Reagan did, which in point of fact bears little resemblance to what Obama is trying to do.
Are we past our zenith? I don’t know; I don’t care. I do know and care that progressive government faces obstacles that Obama chooses not to engage, and I see little of the clarity he ascribes to Reagan in his own rhetoric.
That he was, Weldon Berger. Won the Cold War without firing a shot – who da thunk?! And unlike you, Reagan was motivated by the fear that American was past its zenith, not indifferent to it.
[...] « Obama appropriates the apocalyptic optimism of Ron Reagan 19 [...]
Looks like someone might need to watch Charlie Wilson’s War.
What Pulsamara said.
What Krugman said.
As we now know, Carter was prevented from getting the hostages out earlier by to Reagan’s behind-the-scenes deal with the Iranians to give them missles for their war with Iraq if they held onto the hostages until after the election. He even went so far as to sabotage the military mission to rescue the hostages by using GHW Bush’s connections to replace the mission team with an untrained one and to replace the helicopters with ones which could not operate in sand. This was all uncovered by the committee investing the affair, now known as Iran-Contra. Inarguably an act of treason.
As for ending the Cold War, two points:
1) By forcing Gorbachev to walk away from the Rekjavik talks due to his insistence on Star Wars, he gave fuel to the Soviet hardliners who claimed he was only interested in war – and indeed, he wanted SDI so that the US could initiate and survive a nuclear first strike against the Soviets – delaying Gorbachev’s democratic reforms and actually *extending* the life of the Soviet Union by years;
2) The point overlooked about Charlie Wilson/Afghanistan is that Reagan not only in effect ordered the creation of Al-Qaeda, but funded them, armed them, and taught them how to take down a superpower (and we all know how well THAT has worked out for the US).
What has not been noted here – or by anyone much elsewhere, outside of Paul Krugman – is that in the interview, he Obama referred to:
“all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability.”
Funny, but by 1980, neither liberals nor progressives thought this: they had already – in reaction to Nixon – enacted various accountability reforms, and did not in any way think of those decades as “excessive” or of the goverment as somehow too large. So if this really is how Obama feels, it calls into question his claim to be a progressive; if he doesn’t feel that way, then he is pandering to the right for votes, which calls into question his supposed integrity. Either way, criticism of him by the left is quite justified. One only wonders why there isn’t more of it.