Reagan, the moderate?
May 11th, 2007 by Erich ViethReason’s review of a new book, Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, by John Patrick Diggins makes a strong case that Reagan was no George W. Bush. The review was well-written and persuasive on several fronts.
Diggins sets out to write an intellectual biography not just of Reagan but of his times, with special attention to the neocons who always urged the president to take a firmer line against the Soviet Union. The hawks in Reagan’s administration assured him he couldn’t reason with communists. One adviser, the historian Richard Pipes, told Reagan the Russian mind worked in ways fundamentally different from our own. The peasant mentality of the Russian muzhik, Pipes had written in 1977, held “that cunning and coercion alone ensured survival: one employed cunning when weak, and cunning coupled with coercion when strong. Not to use force when one had it indicated weakness.” Reagan disagreed. Ignoring the advice of hard-liners like Pipes and the neoconservative strategist Richard Perle, Reagan preferred jaw-jaw to war-war. “We must and will engage the Soviets in a dialogue as serious and constructive as possible,” he insisted in a 1984 address.
A nuclear close call in 1983, when Soviet early-warning systems wrongly reported American missiles on the horizon and nearly triggered a Russian retaliatory strike, reinforced for Reagan the imperative of building trust with the enemy. After that incident, “I was even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us,” Reagan later wrote in his memoirs. Negotiation was possible, regardless of what the hard-line “experts” said.
It was 1980 when I voted in my first presidential election. I voted for Reagan, at a time when he ran against a man for whom I now have much greater respect, Jimmie Carter. I was often disappointed by Reagan as his presidency played out. On the other hand, I find it incredible that admirers of George W. Bush often put Reagan on a pedastal, as though George W. Bush is a Reagan clone. Yes, they both opposed abortion and they both invoked rhetoric that America needed to be strong militarily. They both spoke of individual responsibility. This book review makes it clear, however, that Reagan didn’t have a thirst for reckless military adventures. Further, Reagan did believe in the power of diplomacy. Reagan lacked Bush’s xenophobia, religious zealotry and parochial thinking. In fact, I am absolutely convinced that had Ronald Reagan been part of the current Bush Administration, they would have had such differences that Reagan would have been fired by George W. Bush.
Reagan is not on any pedastal for me, but I don’t despise him, as I do George W. Bush.
I’ve followed Reason over the years, because of its good non-partisan writing. Tonight, Bill Moyers’ Journal featured an lively interview with the editor of Reason, Nick Gillespie. I highly recommend viewing it when the video is made available on the PBS site.
May 12th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I’m glad you saw the Moyers last night. The ENTIRE show was enlightening to me…
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05112007/transcript5.html
(Rhetorical) Question: How does Bill Moyers *afford* to get all the wonderful guests which he does? Does he pay them the same amount they get to go on Letterman and Leno? Or do they respect his unbiased journalism and strong reputation so much that they feel they are obligated to appear and are thus reimbursed?
Here is another recent episode…
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/watch.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/transcript4.html
-Interview with Jon Stewart of the Daily Show
-Blogging for Truth
-Bill Moyers Remembers David Halberstam
May 12th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Here’s another take on Reagan, this one by Paul Krugman:
But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031907O.shtml
May 12th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Reagan started his campaign in the birthplace of the KKK for a reason. Reagan opposed the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act. More of Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to pander to racism and separatism in the South for votes.
Reagan’s administration was fraught with corruption on a scale that dwarfs W’s debacles.
Reagan got us into war in Grenada when his poll numbers were down because he saw how the Falklands helped Maggie Thatcher.
Reagan had psychotic murderers working out of the OEB bombing innocent mothers, infants and the unborn in Nicaragua using contract killers paid for by money from arms deals with Iran while Iran supported Hezbollah in murdering 219 Marines in Beruit. Reagan tucked his tail between his legs and ran out of Lebanon, giving spawn to the suicide attacks against the US which culminated in 9/11.
Reagan claimed he could cut taxes, triple defense spending and balance the budget. It took Clinton and the Democrats to clkean up that mess which W immediately trashed all over again on an even greater scale of reverse Robin Hood, robbing the middle class and the poor to make the already too rich even more comfortable.
It was not Ronald Reagan which brought down the Berlin Wall but, the consistent pressure upon the Soviet Union for human rights by Pope John Paul II and President Jimmy Carter which loosened emigration for dissidents and created a wave of rising expectations in the USSR and Warsaw Pact nations which forced freedom upon the leadership rather than slaughter of their populations on a huge scale.
We got more racism, more debt, more disparity between the rich and poor, less of a middle class and more corruption and more death by proxy from Ronald Reagan then any president until George W. Bush.
Sheeesh, I guess George W. Bush is Ronald Reagan if he had the opportunity. It’s certain they both had no connection to reality in their Presidencies. It remains to be seen upon an autopsy if Bush has the excuse of Alzheimers for his perfidies.
May 12th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Yes, Reagan is considered a moderate by many people today, but that is because America itself has swung so far to the right that Reagan’s right-wing policies of 1980 are no longer considered right-wing. One good example is the one Erich mentioned: Reagan rejected the neo-con argument, whereas George W. has embraced it…or fell for it, if you consider that Bush is more incompetent than Reagan was with his Alzheimer’s. Likewise, today’s corporate-controlled media — deeply conservative by any objective measure — is now called “liberal” by hard-core Bush supporters, again because Bushites are so far to the right that they consider anyone who doesn’t goosestep to W’s moronic speeches to be an America-hating terrorist supporter. “You’re either with us or against us,” they scream, in their paranoid, delusional rage, as if they, alone, know all the answers. They don’t, of course, but that doesn’t stop them from making the claim, especially when so many of the Democrats they are up against are such patsies.
I can think of two reasons why America has swung to the right since 1980. One is the flood of lies that has poured out of the GOP propaganda machine. Their platform consists of convincing America of two Big Fat Lies: 1) global terrorism is a gigantic threat to America, even bigger than was the Soviet Union; and 2) Republicans are the only people who can save America from this threat. It’s bullsh*t, of course, but it worked for them, and that’s why they used it.
The second reason for America’s shift is probably the aging population. Baby Boomers, despite being anti-establishment hippies forty years ago, are now entering their retirement years, and it’s a good bet that many of them have moved their political beliefs to the right. America’s aging demographic would also explain the increase in religious membership — a major factor in the past two elections: people tend to become more religious when they begin to see their own death on the horizon.
Time will tell whether America continues its rightward swing, but recent elections suggest that the nation has had its fill of neo-con politics and is ready to swing back toward the center. Today’s center, perhaps, not the one of Reagan’s time, but at least it would be a move in the right direction.