Debunking the Reagan Myth on Reagan's 100th Birthday
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT
Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.
And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.
Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “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.”
Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
(More here.)
NYT
Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.
And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.
Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “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.”
Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
(More here.)
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2 Comments:
Bill Clinton was no dummy. He knew, despite the rhetoric on the campaign in order to ingratiate himself with liberal audiences, he had to lambaste Reagan and his reforms. But, no one president was as a large of a benefactor of Reagan's reforms than Clinton.
Clinton, to his credit, didn't really do much economically, except keep government out of the way. Oh sure, Clinton steered public dollars here and there with a 'stimulus package' and raised taxes when he took office (which passed only by Al Gore's tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 1993), but by 1993 the full force of Reagan's economic reforms were so entrenched, even Clinton's mild rollbacks were pretty ineffective against Reagan's eight years of reforms.
But, all the accumulated stimulus packages and the government-sponsored enterprises and their quid pro quo bailouts and shifting the tax burden so far upward and then subsidizing the biggest stimulus package of them all in housing finally brought down Reagan's reforms after 20 years. And so here we are today. With almost nothing left in government or the economy with Reagan's fingerprints on them.
And we wonder why the economy is flat on its back....
Of course, every time Krugman opens up his pie-hole, all he talks about is more government spending as the solution to anything and everything - more borrowing, more debt, more spending. But, I think there might be one other person out there somewhere who agrees with Krugman's elixirs. The rest of American disagrees with the 'professor'.
Right wing myths. Reagan never submitted a balanced budget and tripled the debt from $900 billion to $2.9 trillion in his eight years in office.
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