He launched union busting, deregulated everything possible, took away the fairness doctrine, made the Republican party remove support for an Equal Rights Amendment. And he refused to even say the word "AIDS" until we were more than six years into the epidemic.
He was as anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-worker, anti-middle class as they get. So would someone please explain this for me?
Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake writes:
No, Ronald Reagan didn't appeal to people's optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about "state's rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi -- the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964's Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for "Reagan Democrats," peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.I absolutely agree.
One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 -- one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn't free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.
There's enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don't think Democrats really need to go there.
18 comments:
Wow, BAC, you have been reading my mail (maybe my comments elsewhere if I flatter myself!)
Dashiell, at Jonestown, wrote an excellent piece on the "meaning" of Reagan, it's thesis being that Reagan indeed set the country on a trajectory which culminated with monsters like the Bush Administration.
Having voted Carter in '80 and Mondale in '84, I could hardly disagree, but for the sake of being contrary and to make a point I wrote, "yes, but..."
* Compared with today the Reagan Era was a Golden Age of competance and fairness!
* Reagan's rhetoric was horrible but he was very quick to establish a rapproachment with Gorbachev
* Although I didn't AGREE with most of their views, I felt like James Baker, Donald Regan and George Shultz were exceptionally gifted cabinet secretaries
* Shultz was especially so, as he distinguished himself in two diverse departments: State and Treasury AND was an unwavering opponent of the "war on drugs" when that was Reagan's singature issue and fraud
* Reagan's domestic rhetoric was also heinous but he had a couterweight in Tip O'Neill. They'd go at it hammer-and-tongs, but later settle it up over whiskey and come up with compromises that would seem "iiberal" by today's standsards
I finished by writing that despite all that I did not care for Ronald Reagan and the true heir to his legacy was BARACK OBAMA!
In my opinion the Reagan administration was the real turning point for this country -- for everything that has gone so very wrong.
He set out to destroy the middle class, and did a damned fine job of it. He nearly tripled the national debt in eight years. He decimated the FCC, which is why FOX News, and TV personalities like Chris Matthews can manage to stay on the air. And the only reason the Cold War ended is because the Communists couldn't spend at the same levels that Reagan did.
We are seeing much the same today, with our banking system now going to foreign countries for a bailout. We don't need to worry about a terriorist attack nearly as much as we need to worry about Saudi Arabia or China calling in their loans.
Reagan, and now Reagan II in the form of George W. Bush, are the absolute worst thing that has happened to this nation. Neither man deserves a kind word.
BAC
I'll go a little further...I don't believe that Barack Obama could be as competant or as JUST a president as Reagan was, although the two men do share a number of qualities in common: their cravenness in using Christianity to serve political ends, their homophobia, and that they are (were) both characterized by limitless arrogance yet highly limited and cribbed intellectual curiousity. Let's be serious here, Obama'd have a lot of trouble figuring out how to play with a toy at the bottom of a Crackerjack box. And even commenter John J isn't naive enough to think that Obama WROTE "The Audacity Of Hope." Shit, I doubt HRC or The Dog wrote their books. Blumenthal, yes. "Takes a Village" or "My Life"? No sale. And I think Bill Clinton was one of America's better presidents and one of its more intellectual. HRC may well be his equal.
Yet, he has the temerity to compare himself to an intellectual and scholar like Martin Luther King, Jr., and to compare his "mastery" of everything to Hall-Of-Fame certainty LeBron James. Reagan was way more modest! He wanted to be Calvin Coolidge and ended up being a whole lot better.
Kelso -- we vastly disagree about Ronald Reagan. The man was a disaster for this country, and we are all still paying for his crimes.
BAC
BAC:
I can't defend Ronald Reagan! Not hardly, especially as I'm a resident of Equatorial America!! I realize that a lot of what I found TOLERABLE about him was a function of the time in the nation's history and that Reagan's campaigns and adminstrations were very, very big net minuses on almost all fronts.
I always like raising points to ponder, though.
Consider yourself and me to be in AGREEMENT sbout Ronald Reagan.
Unforunately, this important video clip you have up here is speaking loudly and clearly about a hell of a lot in one minute clock time.
Not even going to debate you here no-slap, because everything you have written is complete bullshit.
BAC
Ok, I'm sure you knew I would have to come in on this. I don't think Obama bringing a Reagan reference into his campaign was a good idea. But the reason he did, and he spoke to this in the quote, is because Reagan's '80 campaign was the last one to attempt to reach across the aisle to bring Republicans and Democrats together. I was born five months after Reagan was innaugurated, so I can't speak to it from personal experience, but that is the impression I have been given of that campaign.
Obama didn't address, to his detriment, (and as far as this clip goes) his views on Reagan's presidency. Again, I don't think I knew there was a president for half of Reagan's tenure, but many of today's problems can be traced back to initiatives started during his presidency.
To Kelso, I ask you once again to back up your obsessively anti-Obama claims. He writes in "Dreams From My Father" why he joined a Christian church, and it was not political. He has supported LGBT rights, which I have already discussed. I haven't read "The Audacity of Hope" so I cannot speak to that, but he did write "Dreams From My Father". I don't know why this would matter, but it is the case.
BAC, do you have the rest of that interview anywhere to better put this small clip in context? When was it taken, what was the question posed, what else did he say after the clip cut off abruptly?
Never mind BAC, I found the full quote, as well as a link to the entire interview. The full quote does put it in the context that I heard "I think Kennedy, 20 years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it has to do with the times. I think we are in one of those fundamentally different times right now were people think that things, the way they are going, just aren't working."
It is clear that he wasn't supporting Reagan's presidency, only the platform of unity he ran on. He was also comparing the desire for change that people had then to what he sees is going on now.
John - I'm 54. I lived through the Reagan era -- and he did NOT run on a platform of unity. And his presidency proved that fact.
There are very few people in this world that I "hate" and Reagan is at the top of the list. I can understand Obama not wanting to evoke the name Bill Clinton in his campaign, but he should have stopped at Kennedy. To present Reagan in any sort of positive light makes me absolutely question Obama's ability to represent me. This is one of the most divisive things he could say, in my opinion.
Watching friends die from AIDS. Seeing the middle class eviscerated by Reagan's economic policies. It is unthinkable to me that a Democrat would mention Reagan's name as a positive.
And again, no_slap, don't bother trying to peddle your bullshit here.
BAC
I agree, Reagan's presidency wound up being horrible for our country and after his presidency our country was horribly divided. The reason I (and apparently Obama) am under the impression that he spoke for unity in his campaign is the way he reached out to his opponents and was able to get many self professed Democrats to vote for him.
I completely agree that Obama shouldn't have even discussed Reagan. I think in this instance he was suffering from something that Kerry suffers from - he went analytic about something and wound up making himself look bad. It was a poor choice, but I don't think, judging from his policy positions and speeches, that he supports the Reagan presidency.
And just a quick note to slappz, Reagan did get the credit in the US for the fall of the Soviet Union, people in other countries have credited Osama bin Laden with the same success. It doesn't mean either one is correct.
John - Any Democrat that may have voted Republican didn't so much vote "for" Reagan, as they did vote "against" Carter. It was a much different time. Carter did make some errors, but history has proven him to ultimately be the better of the two men.
And I don't know how they managed to make it happen, but I do think Reagan supporters were able to delay the release of the hostages until he was sworn in. They were literally released within minutes of his swearing in. The hostage crisis was a terrible blow to Carter's administration.
Regardless of all that, if the Obama campaign wants to 'win over' women 40+ he better STOP talking about Ronald Reagan.
BAC
BAC, I am so sorry that your blog has been polluted by slappz.
Just telling you that I have deleted all his comments. This person is just about insulting and defying.
At this point all that I will say is that I wrote a post about the levels of anger and vitriol on the blogs, among Democrats.
I am not saying you did that, but I am seeing evidence of that in the comments. Holy crap.
We are creating the scene for a thousand and one Republican wet dreams. As Bill Clinton, I believe once said - primary season is time to fall in love, candidacy is time to fall in line.
Whatever the case, in context or not, I don't like the name of Reagan to be raised unless it is to say - this time won't be like that time.
Hang in there BAC!
And delete those comments from slappz.
Fran - I've never deleted comments before, but that's not a bad idea. I have no intention of responding to him.
Reagan is a particular hot button of mine, because of all the destruction his presidency did to this country. I'll never forgive him. And I certainly don't want a Democrat holding him up as an example.
BAC
BAC -
Now I know what happened to all the people Reagan threw onto the streets when he closed the mental hospitals in California as governor.
Hi SlappZ!
Regards,
Tengrain
So true Tengrain!
BAC
BAC, you have chosen wisely.
This was a great video and if you don't mind, I may add it to one of my posts one day. This is one of the reasons that I don't trust Obama. If you look at any of his legislation, he has a Republican as a co-sponsor. Some may see this as 'reaching across the aisle', but if you look at the legislation, it appeals more to Republicans than Democrats.
Anyone who see's Obama as a progressive should step back and look at his record as a Senator.
He'll do lots of reaching across the aisle, but I don't think those who are supporting him for that will like it as much as they think.
Thanks again for bringing out this gem.
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