Borosage: The Reagan Ruins. Celebration of his 100th birthday begins in March.

madfloridian

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Fri Feb-04-11 02:20 AM
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Borosage: The Reagan Ruins. Celebration of his 100th birthday begins in March.

Impressed by this article by Robert Borosage of Campaign for America's Future. It's quite true. It is almost automatic that Ronald Reagan is considered the president to which all other presidents are compared.

The Reagan Ruins

The celebration of Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday doesn't come until early March, but the devotions have been going on for years. For conservatives, Reagan is the lodestar, the genial demigod to whom all must avow fealty. In a Time cover story, Michael Scherer and Michael Duffy suggest that Obama considers Reagan "The Role Model." Richard Norton Smith, writing about the "Reagan Revelation," attributes Obama's uptick in the polls because he's been "acting positively Reaganesque," reaching out to the business community, scoring bipartisan victories on tax cuts, delivering a sermon in Tucson that Smith calls "worthy of the Great Communicator at his most consoling."

Borosage then proceeds to point out some of the harm Reagan did to this country.

Before we go too far down this road, it is worth a reality check. Reagan, no doubt, was a transformational president. His presidency marked the beginning of 30 years of conservative domination of our politics, although Rick Perlstein argues persuasively that Nixonland tilled the soil of racial and cultural division that Reagan cultivated. (Not by accident did Reagan open his campaign in the unreachable Philadelphia, Mississippi, previously known only as the site of the infamous murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, where he announced his belief in "state's rights").

Reagan advocated low taxes.

Low taxes turned into successive tax cuts for the rich. Reagan believed in the voodoo of the Laffer Curve, that cutting top-end taxes would generate more revenue. One thing it generated was inequality. The great leveling that marked the post-Cold War years came to an end under Reagan, as the wealthiest Americans began capturing ever greater portions of the nation's income. Today, the wealthiest 1 percent captures about 23 percent of the income, and control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of Americans, and captured a staggering two-thirds of the rewards of growth in the last "recovery" form 2002-2007. This is the true Reagan legacy.

Reagan pushed for free trade, and our Democratic think tanks quickly took up the mantra.

Free trade was the label affixed to a trade policy defined by and for multinational companies and banks. Under Reagan, America began shipping jobs rather than goods abroad. When Reagan fired the PATCO strikers, he signaled to corporate America that it was open season on unions. The combination was lethal for America's manufacturing base -- and for the family wage that was the signature of America's broad middle class.

I remember that day clearly when he went on the air and fired the PATCO workers. It was like a chill went through me.

Deregulation and a strong military were two other things he pushed. They were as well taken up by the Democratic leaders. It's like we never looked back.

Reagan was his most hypocritical when he used the "family values" folks to get elected, and then pretty much ignored them.

Family values, the Republican reach to the evangelical right, were cynically used to divide Americans, not unite them, targeting blacks, women (or feminazis in Rush Limbaugh's lingo), and gays. Reagan, steeped in the ways of Hollywood, was the utter cynic. He was the only divorced man to occupy the White House, was at best a distant parent, and generally avoided going to church. While he pandered to the Christian right, he was never very serious about pursuing their agenda.

The greatest harm done by Ronald Reagan was to the field of education. I hate to keep repeating this, but his policies were continued by both parties. The dismantling of public education began under Reagan when he published his Nation at Risk report.

The demeaning of public education began under Reagan. It has worked well.

As CA governor:

He called protesting students "brats," "freaks," and "cowardly fascists." And when it came to "restoring order" on unruly campuses he observed, "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement!"

Several days later four Kent State students were shot to death. In the aftermath of this tragedy Mr. Reagan declared his remark was only a "figure of speech." He added that anyone who was upset by it was "neurotic." One wonders if this reveals him as a demagogue or merely unfeeling. Governor Reagan not only slashed spending on higher education. Throughout his tenure as governor Mr. Reagan consistently and effectively opposed additional funding for basic education. This led to painful increases in local taxes and the deterioration of California's public schools.

More about his policies as president.

William Bennett, the President's demagogic Secretary of Education, took the lead in this. He toured the nation making unprecedented and unprincipled attacks on most aspects of public education including teacher certification, teacher's unions and the "multi-layered, self-perpetuating, bureaucracy of administrators that weighs down most school systems." "The Blob" was what Bennett dismissively called them.

Three years into his first term Mr. Reagan's criticism of public education reached a crescendo when he hand picked a "blue ribbon" commission that wrote a remarkably critical and far-reaching denunciation of public education. Called "A Nation At Risk," this document charged that the US risked losing the economic competition among nations due to a "... rising tide of (educational) mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people." (The commissioners did not consider the possibility that US firms were uncompetitive because of corporate mismanagement, greed and short sightedness.)After "A Nation At Risk" the nation's public schools were fair game for every ambitious politician or self-important business boss in the country. Its publication prompted a flood of follow-up criticism of public education as "blue ribbon" and "high level" national commissions plus literally hundreds of state panels wrote a flood of reform reports. Most presupposed that the charges made by Mr. Reagan's handpicked panel were true. Oddly though, throughout this entire clamor, parental confidence in the school's their children attended remained remarkably high. Meanwhile Mr. Reagan was quietly halving federal aid to education.

That sums up Mr. Reagan's educational legacy. As governor and president he demagogically fanned discontent with public education, then made political hay of it. As governor and president he bashed educators and slashed education spending while professing to valued it. And as governor and president he left the nation's educators dispirited and demoralized.

Today the public schools continue to be defunded rapidly, teachers continue to be treated with contempt by both parties.

So in March his legacy will be celebrated.

I agree with Robert Borosage in his article posted above.

So let's celebrate Ronald Reagan's style. He was a great communicator, an aw shucks American original, a genial optimist. He was a transformational president who launched America on a misguided, 30-year experiment with market fundamentalism. But let's not forget the reality. His race bait politics of division were inherited from the dark side of Nixon. And his conservatism has cost this country dearly.

Our party never fought back against his particularly harmful brand of conservatism, and it has taken a deep hold on our country.