"Nice guys finish last"--Leo Durocher.  Dems rename airport to honor Reagan.  Dems finish last.

I just don't see the argument here.  This passage strikes me as self-defeating:

Reagan was prevented from doing much of what he wanted to do, even from raising his battier ideas, by the fact of divided government and checks and balances. Republicans, on the other hand, have controlled both houses of Congress for Bush's entire term.  To ignore this distinction and to credit Reagan personally for avoiding Bush's excesses is not only to overlook the excesses that did occur under Reagan; it also is to value the personal over the institutional.

 

Dang, that's so much shorter and less convoluted than my attempt to say the same!

 Thanks!

The best argument the Democrats have is that the 'Publicans are morally and politically bankrupt.  Their policies should be brought to an end, period.  The myth of a free lunch is sensible as paying one credit card with another, it WILL come back to hurt. 

Indeed, every Democrat opposing a 'Publican who pushes or has recently voted for a tax cut should run an ad with the image of someone playing a credit card shuffle (paying one credit card with another) and say, "This is what (fill in the blank) is promising."  Then they should cut to the recent bankruptcy changes, then have a sheriff at the door carrying a big pice of paper that says "EVICT" and have "Uncle Sam" (1) peeking out the window, then (2) dragged out of the house.

YOUR proposal just buys 2 years then plays against us if we win in '06. 

Reader MM is, in a sense, him/herself personalizing the question.  I disliked the Reagan administration a lot.  Asserting that Bush is an even worse president than Reagan is not in any sense praise for Reagan. 

 MM is right that the larger enemy is Reaganism, not dubya.  However other commenters are right that attacking Reagan personally is a political loser.  But it is essential that the features of Reaganism be attacked.  For instance, John Edwards' focus on poverty is about as directly contra-Reaganism as you can get, contra the atomized, screw-everybody-else ethos Reagan spawned.   Attack Reaganism with both barrels blazing, but don't do it pe se (why do that?).  It's been 25 years, and I think people are ready for the proverbial sea change on some fronts.  When we wear our poli sci hats, we tend to see politics as deterministic a little bit, but of course it's not really.  Just because people might be ready for a change, or could be persuaded to be amenable to one, doesn't mean that the Democratic 'Party' will seize the opportunity.

Anyway, Bush is worse than Reagan because Bush has none of Reagan's good qualities, such as they were, and more bad qualities, in addition to the same bad, incoherent 'philosophical' underpinning.  Personality DOES matter, quite a lot.  Unlike Reagan, Bush and his family and his network are the apotheosis, the very definition of modern corruption - corruption in every sense of the word.  That's something.  Can you imagine an official in the Reagan Administration telling a reporter 'We make reality, etc.?  I understand that Iran-Contra wouldn't have had the political legs it did without divided government, but once they couldn't be denied, Reagan did at least acknowledge that those goings on were wrong.  Bush has a dozen Iran-Contras, and would never dream of admitting anything wrong about any of it.  He just keeps raising the stakes.  Would Reagan have fomented constitutional crisis for the hell of it, and to cover for his own adminitration's ineptitude?  We'll never know.  It's possible, but the fact is, he didn't, and didn't try (presumably).  After 9/11, would Reagan have persued, as his total political strategy, a policy of dividing the country almost exactly in half?  Again, we'll never know, but odds are he wouldn't have; Lee Atwater and Karl Rove are Bush Creatures more than Reagan ones. 

Boring though it is to keep repeating, the 'incompetence' issue is in fact central.  Josh Marshall made an absolutely key observation a few months back: incompetence and tyranny are symbiotic.  That's not to say that all tyrants are incompetent, but extremely powerful governmental officials who are incompetent are bound to be tyrannical.  You can argue that it's the modern conservative ideology itself which is incompetent, and I'd agree with that.  But that isn't the whole story.   Bush is incompetent at devising a working ideology of any kind because his only 'ideology' is corruption, in every sense of the word.  Bushism is not conservative, or liberal, or compassionate, or libertarian: it's devolution, utterly arbitrary; it's the dog returning to its vomit; it's strolling on the Golden Gate bridge, looking down, and being tempted to jump.  Bushism is decay.

 You can say that the Reaganite ideology also represents decay (I would say that it does), but just as we can't know that an unfettered Reagan wouldn't have done a lot of the same things Bush has, it a very open question as to whether he *would've* done.  Self-absorbed and actorly as he was, Reagan had a sense of humor about himself to some extent, and therefore was able to be, for good or ill (mostly ill) a real man of destiny.  Bush, on the other hand, really believes  his own spin, really believes what his yes men and work-wives tell him: that he is, unironically, a Great Man.  Big difference.  Bush is a tin-horn.  He is worse.

Reagan's shoelace had more leadership quality in it than the sum of your posts imply about their author in my opinion. (0;

<<Indeed, every Democrat opposing a 'Publican who pushes or has recently voted for a tax cut should run an ad with the image of someone playing a credit card shuffle (paying one credit card with another) and say, "This is what (fill in the blank) is promising."  Then they should cut to the recent bankruptcy changes, then have a sheriff at the door carrying a big pice of paper that says "EVICT" and have "Uncle Sam" (1) peeking out the window, then (2) dragged out of the house.>>

Nice. It would be good, too, if we could find a way to point out that the exact same thing happened in the 1980s. It really scares the hell out of me, that the next time a Democrat gets elected, be it 2008 or 2012, he or she will have to raise taxes to pay off the monstrous Bush deficit. At which point, of course, the REpublicans will accuse him of being a "tax and spend" liberal.

Noel

You're making the exact mistake that Matt's warning against. People like you will be responsible when we have President George Allen.

This is so profoundly misguided it just makes me want to scream.

In our system, the party labels matter a great deal.  Joe Lieberman could vote like Rick Santorum and it wouldn't matter.  As long as he calls himself a Democrat, he will count towards building a Democratic majority, and a Democratic majority is profoundly significant.  Think about it.  Real investigations - with subpoena power.  That alone is worth it.  Real power in selecting presidential appointments.  Real power to declare Bush's remaining agenda dead. 

A Democratic majority will yield such a stupendous benefit that it is worth a lot of sacrifice.  Even if you think Joe Lieberman is an apostate, which he's not, it's worth forgetting that and keeping your eye on the ball.  Nothing must jeopardize a Democratic majority.  Nothing.

"Central role in the West's Middle East policy"? I'd say it's more like "supporting actor in a tragicomedy." We can't even get a government we like in a country we're occupying, let alone keep Hezbollah in check in Lebanon, stop Iran from going nuclear, pressure Egypt to have reasonably free elections or rein in Israel from expanding its settlements. Democrats may not agree on all foreign policy issues, but I doubt very much whether a President Gore or Kerry would have allowed the world to see how weak and ineffective our streamlined, high-tech military is when pitted against real-world problems.

 As for "India, Japan and South Korea," they're also realizing that we're now too weak economically to stand up to China  -- and too weak diplomatically to turn North Korea around. We're on our way to bit-player status in that arena, much like what's happened to Great Britain in its traditional spheres of influence.
 

Matt

The problem is that our allies must help us with the issues that you mention.  In Washington the alliance system is sort of an ever-evolving game because when the U.S. is strong they too benefit.  Take the United Arab Emirates.  They play our "game" and at the cost of perhaps pride, they are the richest nation in the world per-capita.  The United States certainly has pinned itself in a corner diplomatically but I would argue that our military threat, in conjunction with our economic and trade strangleholds put us in a decent position.  On the China end, however, you are right.  As I've said a thousand times before at this site, I believe China is the true reason for the Iraq War.  The members of the Bush Administration "made their bones" during the Cold War and have no doubt forgotten what benefits may be gained politically by isolating one nation as "public enemy #1."  They have not yet done this publicly but the Pentagon's obsession with China has been well documented by the likes of The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard.

If China is the real issue then we're hosed.  They don't need to go to war with us, just call in our loans.

EWK

In essence, you are exactly right.  The seemingly inevitible confrontation with China will not necessarily be a military war.  It may very well be a pseudo-cold war based not on political ideology but on economics.  The United States trade deficit with China will continue to grow because both government and the private sector are working on a low price paradigm, meaning that outsourcing will be allowed as long as goods stay cheap.  This needs to change immediately.  Economics 101 would indicate that if American jobs are kept in America, prices will rise as a result of more expensive labor.  But at the same time, prices CAN rise if workers are making more money.  No doubt everyone knows this, it's just a question of getting the establishment to change.  Though I have supported the Bush Administration over the years, I have absolutely no qualm in admitting that his greatest long-term error as president was not the Iraq War, but his seeming disinterest in stopping the outsourcing of jobs to Asia and a refusal to trim the rising trade deficit.  Pardon this analogy because it is a bit crude, but in 15-20 years China will represent Wal Mart and the U.S. will represent Target.  We will be a better business with better goods, but will nevertheless be completely at the mercy of China in terms of trade, production, and manufacturing.  Steps must be taken now.

Great, incisive comment, GB.

 Anybody watch Kevin Phillips interviewed by Grover Norquist last weekend?  I obviously share Phillips' disdain for the Bush influence on Republicanism, and I'm not even a Republican.  I in fact resent having to be partisan in any sense.  Most people do.  The current GOP depends on cheesy, ridgid partisanship.  That's why it's a mistake for everyone else - progressives, etc. - to merely produce an 'equal and opposite reaction'.  This Reagan v Bush discussion is. of course, academic, but withal, it has been very clarifying.

 The Bush family is the worst of both worlds, in terms of conservatism: pure corruption as a birthright (Eastern elitism) coupled with patently snide pandering to 'South-Western' values.  There is no 'center' to hold.

 The crux of Matt's argument seems to be that without Reagan, there would be no Bush 43.  That may be true, but it means only what it means.  We have a 'normative' problem here.  The key insight is to be able to face the fact that things can always get worse.  There is no 'system' or safeguard.  It's definitely time for an upgrade to Reaganism, but Reagan was somewhat successful because he inspired a change in the culture; legislative ins and outs were secondary, as they are now, really.  The pathetic Bush 'team' has only one effect on the general population: embarrassment, shame, defiance.  It can always get worse, and Bush is much worse.