UPDATE: Fans of Attytood can tell me what they think of this blog in person tonight, when I talk about "Tear Down This Myth" and sign copies (which will be sold there by Joseph Fox) at Philly's legendary Pen & Pencil Club, at 1522 Latimer Street, at 7:30. See you there...bring your rotten tomatoes.
Roughly this time a year ago, inspired by the insanity that was the 2008 presidential race, I started working on Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future." With a target publication date right before the Gipper's 98th birthday (or Reagan Day as modern conservatives have declared it), I did have one nagging worry. What if a decisive election victory last November by Barack Obama and congressional Democrats appeared to slay the Reagan myth for once and for all -- ushering in an Age of Aquarius in which government took a rational view of science, adopted economy policies that would actually help the middle class, and promoted a foreign policy in which our deeds matched our lofty rhetoric.
Silly me! Just like the bell in the Polar Express, the Reagan myth still rings for at least 37 Republican senators and 188 GOP House members, as it does for all who truly believe in the right-wing blather of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. And it's echoed by a lazy inside-the-Beltway press corps that came of age during the halcyon days of the 1980s and remains falsely convinced that America is a center-right nation, despite a slew of polls and election results to the contrary.
The Reagan myth was sold so successfully to the party's base by the likes of lobbyist and GOP point man Grover Norquist -- who founded the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project in 1997, in the dog days of the booming Clinton-era economy -- that too many Republicans really do believe that a tax cut is the solution to every problem, whether the nation has a budget surplus or a deficit, in times of war or peace, when the economy is booming or when Great Depression II looms.
Before this year's debate, the most bizarre manifestation came in 2003 when the Bush administration pushed through a tax cut even though America was engaged in two wars. Iowa Republican Jim Nussle, who headed the House Budget Committee at that time, explained "the basic playbook" on taxes is the one authored by Reagan, "and that is the one that I follow today." Meanwhile, one study found that nearly three-quarters of the whopping rise of nearly $4 trillion in national debt during the presidency of George W. Bush was attributable to two things: the simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the size of his tax cuts.
When President Barack Obama, both as a 2008 candidate and now as commander-in-chief, declared it was high time to end the folly that tax cuts are the only solution to the nation's woes, this is how South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint responded: "It's incredible that he said that. It's clear that whether it's John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or when Bush did this in 2001 and 2003, the economy came out of recession." But the evidence for that argument just isn't there.
In the case of Reagan's massive 1981 tax cut, it did start the great divergence of wealth between the very affluent and the middle class in this country, but it didn't save the American economy, which actually slid into a deep recession the next 15 months. When the economy finally reversed in the mid-1980s, it was the predicted bounce-back in the business cycle (even Reagan's budget chief David Stockman said so), a steep drop in global oil prices, and the inflation-fighting tight-money policies of then-Fed chairman Paul Volcker, an appointee of Jimmy Carter who today is a top adviser to Barack Obama. And yet the Ronald Reagan myth and the hanging-by-a-thread 41 Senate Republicans have foisted a recovery program on America that is too weighed down by more tax cuts, and spends far too little on the nation's crumbling infrastructure, on mass transit, on green energy.
History matters. To set a new economic course for America, Democrats including the Obama administration won't just have to win the daily news-cycle wars of the present. They will need to dig deeper, and recapture the past as well.
Will, here is a great counterpoint to your Reagan stance. WSJ op-ed piece by Ferrra. Search it out, or god fordbid, actually purchase the paper and check it out. It adds a bit of balance to your Gipper bashing.— PeterMyers
Comment removed.- Peter, yeah, right, the WSJ editorial page. Fair and balanced, right? Always giving equal time to all sides of an issue, right?— Some Boca Dude
Will, Did Reagan slap your Daddy around? Did he spit on your Momma? Because this Reagan dementia of yours is really getting scary. You are supposedly a "journalist" and you are trolling far left blogs to "attribute facts". Not very convincing. You are also leaving out significant facts. True, 2 wars have led to whopping debt. But the tax cuts have led to record Federal government revenue. If the US was not spending on wars (and if the Dummocrats could keep their hand out of the cookie jar) we'd be in the black with a record surplus. I know the truth hurts Will, but you really should try it sometime.— rudytbone- Comment removed.
- Will is truly OBSESSED with Reagan. i can't decide if it's childish or scary.— Bud Fox
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- didderbops, I take it when you were speaking with the monkey, the monkey was the more intelligent side of the conversation.— rudytbone
- Will; you said "that too many Republicans really do believe that a tax cut is the solution to every problem," Yet 62% of people polled want more tax cuts in the Obama stimulus plan...."Furthermore, a poll from Rasmussen reports that 62% of voters want more tax cuts and less government spending in the plan......" news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20090210/pl_ynews/ynews_pl242 Could all 62% be Republican, or are there some Dems who also want tax cuts?— CharlieDontSurf
- The wild spending by FDR did nothing for nine years before the war pulled us out of the depression with our selling of weapons to Britain and Russia. But don't believe me, look up what FDR's Treasury Secretary said. The wage and price controls instituted kept investment and wages down and unemployment high. A miserable failure it was, just like this "stimulus" will be in the future when it has to be paid for. 800 Billion dollars divided by 3.5 Million jobs that will be "SAVED or created" (a joke in of itself) comes to $224,000 per job. Will, do you make that much?— WriteWinger
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- "I haven't felt this bad since we watched that Ronald Reagan film..." Amusing to watch the marginalized minority cling desperately to the revisionist history of the events of 25 years ago.— E.Plebnista
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- To the Supreme Allied DOPE of all DOPES- that's you didderbop in case you didn't know- you can't address the facts can you? THe New Deal was not only an economic failure but much of what he did was ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Will, PLEASE, learn your cult followers a thing or two. And Will, $224,000 per job???? Sounds too good to be true...— WriteWinger
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
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