The Reagan Era, which lasted from 1981-2009, is over, and will be seen as constituting those years in the history books! This would include the time of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, as well as Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan promoted the idea of distrust of government; of greatly increased federal spending on defense and national security, while cutting domestic spending: helped to undermine labor rights and minority rights; allowed corporate dominance to grow without federal regulations; undermined the environment and consumer safety; engaged America into a major role in the Middle East, therefore promoting anti American terrorism; and caused through their taxation cuts on the upper class and their wild defense spending to cause most of the increase in the national debt from $1 trillion when Jimmy Carter left office to $10.5 trillion when George W. Bush left office.
Even Bill Clinton, the one Democratic President, accepted the idea of smaller government and less regulation, while, however, having the success of adding less to the national debt and having balanced budgets for several years, something that the Republican Presidents—Reagan and the two Bushes—were unable to accomplish during the 20 years out of 28 total in the era they were in charge.
And one must recall that Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981-1987, and from 1995-2007, except for the last half of 2001 and 2002. And they controlled the House of Representatives from 1995-2007. So they had an impact on policy making for a majority of the years of the Reagan era.
Barack Obama represents a diametrically opposite viewpoint on all of the characteristics of the Reagan era. While he will not be able to accomplish all of his goals in the second term, with the GOP control of the House, and the ability to use the Senate filibuster in the upper chamber, the Obama era can now be seen as a path breaking event, similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan representing fundamental change in their times!
Utopianism, whether it be in the form of progressivism, fascism, socialism or any other type of statism, is irrational is theory and practice, for it ignores or attempts to control the planned and unplanned complexity of the individual, his nature, and mankind in general. It ignores, rejects, or perverts the teachings and knowledge that have come before – that is, man’s historical, cultural, and social experience and development. It substitutes glorious predictions and unachievable promises for knowledge, science and reason, while laying claim to them all. Yet there is nothing new in deception disguised as hope and nothing original in abstraction framed as progress. A heavenly society is said to be within reached if only the individual surrenders more of his liberty and being for the general good, meaning the good as prescribed by the state. If he refuses, he will be tormented and ultimately coerced into compliance, for conformity is essential. Indeed, nothing good can come of self interest, which is condemned as morally indefensible and empty, as Phil Mickelson found out this week for example. Through persuasion, deceit, and coercion, the individual must be stripped of his identity and subordinated to the state. He must abandon his own ambitions for the ambitions of the state. He must become reliant and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state – not family, community,and faith, all of which challenge the authority of the state. Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state with endless social experiments and lifestyle calibrations.
Barack Obama, according to multiple press accounts, has staked his entire presidency on both book ending and surpassing the conservative presidency of Ronald Reagan. Betting that progressive policies will leave the Reagan-era in the historical dust.
In that rarity of worlds inhabited only by the 43 men who have held the presidential office, Barack Obama, by his own quite deliberate choice and the demands of his supporters, has set himself up — and even more importantly set up the Progressive World View — for a direct, results-oriented side-by-side comparison to Reagan and the Conservative World View.
The New York Times swoons with a banner headline:
Obama Offers Liberal Vision: ‘We Must Act’
One might offer the eternal caution of being careful what you wish for — but too late for that. So. The Reagan-Obama Presidential Olympics are on.
Exactly right, Professor! 🙂
As Peggy Noonan wrote about Obama yesterday in the WSJ:
But he means business. He means to change America in fundamental ways and along the lines of justice as he sees it. The proper response to such a man is not—was not—that he’s a Muslim, he’s a Kenyan, he’s working out his feelings about colonialism. Those charges were meant to marginalize him, but they didn’t hurt him. They damaged Republicans, who came to see him as easy to defeat.
He doesn’t care if you like him—he’d just as soon you did, but it’s not necessary for him. He is certain he is right in what he’s doing, which is changing the economic balance between rich and poor. The rich are going to be made less rich, and those who are needy or request help are going to get more in government services, which the rich will pay for. He’d just as soon the middle class not get lost in the shuffle, but if they wind up marginally less middle class he won’t be up nights. The point is redistribution.
The great long-term question is the effect the change in mood he seeks to institute will have on what used to be called the national character. Eight years is almost half a generation. Don’t you change people when you tell them they have an absolute right to government support regardless of their efforts? Don’t you encourage dependence, and a bitter sense of entitlement? What about the wearing down of taxpayers? Some, especially those who are younger, do not fully understand that what is supporting them is actually coming from other people. To them it seems to come from “the government,” the big marble machine far away that prints money.
There is no sign, absolutely none, that any of this is on Mr. Obama’s mind. His emphasis is always on what one abstract group owes another in the service of a larger concept. “You didn’t build that” are the defining words of his presidency.
He is not going to negotiate, compromise, cajole. Absent those efforts his only path to primacy in Congress is to kill the Republican Party, to pulverize it, as John Dickerson noted this week in Slate, to “attempt to annihilate the Republican Party,” as Speaker John Boehner said in a remarkably candid speech to the Ripon Society.
Mr. Obama is not, as has been said, the left’s Ronald Reagan. Reagan won over, Mr. Obama just wins. What Mr. Obama really is, is Franklin D. Roosevelt without the landslides. He has the same seriousness of intent but nothing like the base of support.
In 1932, FDR won the presidency with 58% of the vote to Herbert Hoover’s 40%. In 1936 it was even better: Roosevelt won 61% of the vote to Alf Landon’s 36.5%.
In 2008, Mr. Obama beat John McCain solidly, 53% to 46%. But last year, against a woebegone GOP candidate, he won just 51% of the vote, to Mitt Romney’s 47%. (Yes: ironic.)
Mr. Obama received 66 million votes in 2012—but four years earlier he received 69.5 million.
His support went down, not up.