Debunking the Reagan Myth
Jan 21st, 2008 at 7:56 am by Susie
I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)
But why would a self-proclaimed progressive say anything that lends credibility to this rewriting of history — particularly right now, when Reaganomics has just failed all over again?
Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies.
And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.
This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.
It’s not just a matter of what happens in the next election. Mr. Clinton won his elections, but — as Mr. Obama correctly pointed out — he didn’t change America’s trajectory the way Reagan did. Why?
Well, I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.
Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.
Yeah. Unfortunately, Obama lost me for good with those comments. I don’t actually care why he made them. Reagan was a disaster economically for all but the wealthy, as Bush has been. He lied to Congress and the American people about his violent foreign policies (Iran-Contra), as Bush has done. It was also during Reagan’s years that United States operatives trained death squads in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala in the art of torture and other lovely practices. See the connection? I could never imagine, in a million years, making such statements. Obama will never get my vote, now.
Reaganomics did work, and I am living proof. I entered college in 1979, when Carter was in office, and the economy, and my job prospects, were horrible. By the time I left college in 1983, I had offers from all over the country. Revenues to the treasury nearly tripled during his time in office, due to the tax cuts. More blacks entered the middle class than in any other decade in our history. The middle class prospered during the Reagan years. The disparity between the rich and poor decreased during the Reagan years, but increased dramatically during Clinton’s term.
Paul Krugman is a discredited economist. He predicted the Bush tax cuts wouldn’t get us out of the recession from 9/11 - they did. His line in the article above, “Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era” is meant to simply mislead the reader. Unemployment is, and has been during the Bush years, at historic lows. It is impossible to add jobs at a pace like that in the 90’s because there aren’t as many unemployed people to take those jobs. In other words, “duh.” Let’s examine the facts - the average unemplyment rate has been lower during the Bush years than during Clinton, and GDP growth has been higher. By nearly every measurement, the economy during Bush’s presidency has been better than during Clinton. The misery index, invented by Jimmy Carter, has been lowest during Bush’s presidency, lower than either Clinton or Reagan. Facts are annoying things to political hacks like Krugman. Before you believe anything he writes, it is best to check the facts first. More often than not, the two never match up.
Right on, Louis!
Thanks for pointing this out.
We are in a broad-based economic boom right now,
and it’s getting better every day.
I don’t think that things have ever been better.
[...] Susie. [...]
Louis,
Reaganomics did not work, and I am living proof of that. I graduated in Biochemistry in 1991 and there were no jobs. As a matter of fact there were so few jobs it was all over the cover of the news weeklys. When I went to career services they said they don’t really get companies looking for employees any more.
Dear Sifter,
Please, before you give up on Obama, rad what he actually said. Krugman is being deceitful in not reporting the entire conversation, which can be found here:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/clinton-obama_slugfest.html
Obama: The Republican approach, I think, has played itself out. I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.
Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they’re being debated among the presidential candidates, it’s all tax cuts.* Well, we’ve done that; we’ve tried it. That’s not really going to solve our energy problems, for example.
* meaning: “the Reagan approach”.