The Reagan Legacy
First off thanks to Will Bunch for inviting me to participate in this interesting exchange.
There's no question that part of the reason Reagan is revered in Republican circles is that Grover Norquist and others were anxious to find an icon who could be elevated into the American Pantheon. The Democratic Party had FDR and JFK, while the GOP's celebration of Lincoln and TR had a certain musty, ancient quality to it. But I would argue that Reagan deserves some of the accolades he has received, in part because he restored America's confidence in itself in the the wake of Vietnam, Watergate, and a failed Carter presidency (While President Obama faces a greater challenge, let's not forget the economic situation Reagan inherited, with skyhigh inflation, unemployment, and interest rates). Reagan also inherited a badly weakened presidency; with his five immediate predecessors leaving office under duress. In fact, it was so bad that some observers,including Lloyd Cutler, Douglas Dillon, and James MacGregor Burns, were arguing for a shift toward a parliamentary system. Within two years of Reagan's assumption of the presidency that talked had disappeared. This is perhaps Reagan's greatest accomplishment: restoring the confidence of the American public, including, ironically, their confidence in the same federal government that Reagan viewed as part of what ailed America.
The hero of Ronald Reagan's youth was Franklin Roosevelt, and like Roosevelt, Reagan understood the power of the bully pulpit, and used it to good effect. Conservatives have taken to mocking President Obama as a good speechmaker but little else; it is a ridiculous charge, for this skill is part and parcel of what it takes to be a successful president in the modern age. I would ask my liberal friends to acknowledge that Reagan's rhetorical skills were a contributing factor to the hold that he has on many Americans. His rhetoric lifted the nation time and again, whether in the wake of the Challenger Disaster or his remarks at Point du Hoc, France, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. In the end, Reagan's words, like those of Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, may prove to be his most durable legacy.
My God, TPM, what are you doing?
Reagan was a criminal. He illegally funded a war against a democratically elected government in Nicaragua. Our actions there were arguably war crimes and we get blather about how: "he restored America's confidence in itself in the the wake of Vietnam, Watergate, and a failed Carter presidency," or how he "restored the power of the presidency" as if it's a good thing to restore the power of the presidency to commit illegal acts!
Reagan's legacy is George W. Bush. It's a president who feels accountable to no one and to no law. Iran-Contra set the tone for the Bush presidency and it's frankly amazing that TPM is featuring posts by people who can't or won't see what is simply true.
February 17, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agree entirely.
"His rhetoric lifted the nation time and again," especially at Bitburg.
February 17, 2009 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well I guess Hitler can be 'forgiven' because he loved his mother? Not that Reagan was a Hitler, but you get the point.
The author of the article used the term 'assumed' in regards to the presidency and that's exactly what the office has become, whoever holds it automatically becomes a divinity. (And, if Reagan's ascendency prevented us from adopting the parliamentay system, that's one more strike against him.)
February 17, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just so we're clear on what kind of nut we're dealing with here, the June 1 2007 edition of the journal "Presidential Studies Quarterly," contains this description of Knott's work on Iran-Contra: "Jeff Chidester and Stephen Knott take an operational perspective in chronicling the battle between members of Congress and Reagan CIA Director William casey. The authors maintain that too much congressional oversight ultimately left intelligence agencies "slouching toward 9/11" (p. 221)."
That's right, the guy thinks that the problem in Iran-Contra was too much congressional oversight!
And from a 1997 review of Knott's odious seeming book, "Secret and Sanctioned" that was published in the "American Political Science Review" we get this:
"During the Iran-Contra investigation, Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter (the president's national security adviser) conceded that he bypassed the intelligence oversight committees to avoid "outside interference." This extreme form of executive discretion is, evidently, what the author seeks as well; secrecy and efficiency are his ideals, not the preservation of safeguards against abuse.
What riles Knott the most are the "ill effects" democracy brings to intelligence decisions (p. 179). In this domain, debate must remain hidden largely behind closed doors. The new system of oversight, however, provides an opportunity for some degree of outside review. The alternative advocated in this book is covert operations by executive fiat. The unfortunate consequences of that approach, well documented by investigators in 1975 and again in the wake of Iran-Contra, remain seared in the memory of many observers, if not Knott's."
Finally, in 1996 Kott wrote in the Christian Science Monitor: "After 20 years of this experiment, we have reached a point at which the presidency is under a perpetual state of siege regarding covert operations. The executive branch should not be constrained from moving with what Alexander Hamilton called "secrecy and dispatch."
Knott is clearly an unbalanced authoritarian. It would behoove anyone who reads him to be skeptical.
February 17, 2009 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi, I was one of the 15 commenters on Douglas Kmeic yesterday who was elimimated -- accidentially, I've been assured -- but I'm diving right back in here. When I was asked ri suggest guests for the week, I wanted a mix of people who shared some of criticisms of the Reagan myth and Reagan himself, along with folks like Kmiec and Professor Knott who have more favorable views of the 40 president but also struck me as open-minded. We should applaud their participation -- I thought on the left side of the political dial we prided ourself in not being "dittoheads."
At the same time, I have to agree with some of the criticism here -- that there are ways to be a strong president without dangerously undermining the Constitution, as the Reagan administration did with the very severe abuses of Iran-Contra, which might have completely destroyed Reagan's president were the nation not still living in the shadow of Watergate.
I wrote in the concluding paragraph of "Tear Down This Myth," I write that the next truly great president will be the one "to truly improve the nation itself and not just the national mood." Unfortunately, too much of what Reagan and his sometimes stirring rhetoric accomplished was the latter. His success in encouraging optimism about the economy was built atop a debt-fueled spending spree, both by consumers and the federal treaaury. And his railing against the "politics of scarcity" that he accused Jimmy Carter of in 1980 was accompanied by the gutting of alternative energy programs in this country, which set us back or decades. One more thing about Reagan's rhetoric is that it has been misused and abused by the current generation of conservatives, like when Bush 43 spoke of an "axis of evil" and made the speech the basis of a policy that made no sense out in the real world. That is the damaging power of the Reagan myth.
February 17, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm... I'm not sure the author should be supplying his own book reviewers, as it were. But, that's another issue.
As for my take on Knott -- it's not about not wanting to read a dissenting view it's that Knott is particularly authoritarian in his thinking. I guess that this is a Reagan defender tells us a lot about Reagan and his legacy.
For your part, Will... I think you haven't discussed Iran Contra enough here. It's the defining scandal of the Reagan presidency and the template for what W. did.
February 17, 2009 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reagan and Jesus have a lot in come. Both lived. Both had followings. Both are credited with having said a lot that influenced the people of their days. And the influence of both have been greatly exaggerated. In the case of Jesus, there is a group of theologians who meets every so often to discuss his teaching - and they agree that only 14% of what Jesus is credited to have said is true. So too for Reagan.
February 18, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Apologies for the typos, I hit "submit" instead of "preview." My computer skills haven't advanced that much since the Reagan era :-)
February 17, 2009 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
.
Hey ...
Excuse my salty Navy-speak -- but you can stow the "dittoheads" crap in your hat right after you're finished working on your computer skills. :^)
Don't be echoing the echo-heads, it's unbecoming of a journalist of your stature.
~OGD~
February 18, 2009 1:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Carter certainly had flaws, but he didn't have a "failed" administration. His ranking among presidents will slowly but steadily rise over the decades, while Reagan's will fall.
February 17, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I also object to characterizing the Carter administration as a failure. Camp David remains the only enduring peace initiative in the Middle East. The opening to China was accomplished on his watch (not Nixon's). We could learn a lot from his administrations non-military approach to diplomacy. But the major "failure" of his administration was the failure to convince the
American public of the danger of reliance on foreign oil.
February 17, 2009 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can anybody point to a President more to blame for what we are facing today the Reagan.
1) Trickle down economics - A philosophy Republicans still believe.
2) Government is the enemy and by extension Democrats since horror of horrors they believe a government should govern.
3) Single handily may have had more to do with the culture wars than any other individual.
4) And while some blame the Clinton administration for deregulation. That train had already left the station by the time he came into office.
February 17, 2009 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is simply a mis-remembering (or reading) of history. Reagan did not buck up a beleaguered nation. He gave white assholes permission to shake off the liberal guilt that the 60s and heaped on them (occasionally, unfairly). His rhetoric only sounded good if you were committed to ignoring the truth of what he was saying -- in that regard he was no different than his rival/mentor/student Nixon.
The idea of Reagan as someone who made America feel good again is a myth spawned intentionally both by his handlers at the time as well as the handlers of his historical legacy.
Reagan was a far more divisive figure than modern punditry seems prepared to accept. He was someone who was addicted to the casual lie, and when called on it turned on his attacker in a most Bushian way...
February 17, 2009 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't believe that no one has mentioned the corruption and lawlessness. There were an incredible number of people in that
Adminstration who were convicted, indicted, had to resign because of
misfeasance and malfeasance, etc. The NY Times printed a very long list of them...some time before Reagan even left office it was a very long list.
February 17, 2009 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I now take it for granted that the phrase 'restored America's confidence in itself' is code for 'boosted the Pentagon's budgets and gave the green light for America to make war again.'
With a cheerful smile, of course.
My favorite Reagan quote illustrates Mr. Knott's thesis perfectly--though not in the way he intends:
The Reagan presidency can be seen as the tipping point for the Republicans to turn away from the Rule of Law to the Cult of Personality.
February 17, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't forget, he invaded Granada on the pretext that American medical students down there needed protection. I think this was after the 238 or so Marines he put in Lebanon got blown up in a terrorist attack on the base in a truck.
February 18, 2009 9:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
We invaded a city in Spain?
Oh wait, you meant Grenada. (wry grin)
February 20, 2009 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
The main problem that I have with Reagan's speeches is that they concentrate too much on the past. For instance the D-day speech mainly influenced Americans just to think about the good old days without asking them to embrace new ideas or solutions. Obama, on the other hand, manages to combine the past and the future. In Obama's speech on Lincoln's birthday he related on how Linclon's support of the railways can serve as a precedent for government involvement in supporting new forms of alternative energy. Obama uses the past as a bridge toward the future while Reagan just concentrated on the past without offering any new views or ideas.
February 17, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am amazed at what I find the most important and kind of cruel legacy of Reagan is not even noticed by the people. Or may be people are not really aware of it. He promoted closer of the hospitals devoted to mental illness in the USA. If you find mentally sick homeless people in major cities and towns in cold weather or in rain, that is the major legacy of Reagan. How can the most prosperouis country leave the weakest of the population so ignored. Many of these patients can be functional with regulated regime of medicines, which can be done under the supervision of people dedicated to this profession. For example, people suffering from schizophrenia. Who but Government can financially support it. Private charities can add to it but do not even think of creating such instititions.
February 18, 2009 3:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are we getting through to you, Mr. Knott?
February 19, 2009 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
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