When David Frum rebuffed Rush Limbaugh in a recent Newsweek piece, he brought up the chatter from the Reagan-adoring right wing, and pointed out that conservatives and Republicans must move on. Bravo, sir.
I wish somebody at the ... GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library had said: "Ronald Reagan was a great leader and a great president because he addressed the problems of his time. But we have very different problems—and we need very different answers. Here are mine."
There continues to be a lot of talk about the "party of Reagan" and how wonderful he was. I don't have many kind words to say about Reagan, but let's give him what deserves: he was a great salesman, a captivating speaker and a charming individual. As a president, he was effective pushing his agenda through, but was he good for the country as a whole? Hell no.
His legacy as a fiscal conservative is as much of a fairytale as his philosophy was. The beacon of small government and fiscal responsibility was actually the man who unnecessarily blew a massive hole in the budget. He's been treated as the Second Coming of Christ on fiscal conservatism, but his record just doesn't live up to the dittohead adulation.
Reagan cut government programs that were helpful to many, and, as you can see below, began an era of reckless spending that was carried on by the Bushes. (Note how the one president in recent memory who actually displayed fiscal responsibility was the from the party of "big government.")
Reagan cut taxes, slashed welfare and deregulated businesses, all under the banner of 'small government' -- and then proceeded to spend like a coked-out college student in Atlantic City on the military. By reinventing government as an entity incapable of properly serving its people, his contempt for government turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. He proved through his policies his pre-conceived conclusion that government is indeed bad.
Reaganomics set the stage for the elitist and corporatist policies that have culminated in this economic crisis -- where the free market was trusted implicitly to behave responsibly and in the best interests of the people. It's this ideology that ultimately killed the critical Glass-Steagall Act, which was implemented to right the wrongs that caused the Great Depression. It was the top-down Reagan philosophy that kicked into high gear the incredible inequality of the modern era, which has transpired in conjunction with stagnant middle-class real wages over the last few decades.
Moreover, it offered a pseudo-intellectual platform of elitism disguised as populism that has defined conservative economics till this day. That's what was amazing about Reagan -- he managed to sell trickle-down economics with the optimism that we all could be that wealthy CEO who gets tax breaks. But is that not a logical impossibility? There always be haves and have-nots, so shouldn't government cater to people's realities rather than their fantasies? There's a massive derangement about all this.
The government is the mirror reflection of the citizenry. It's the voice of the people; it exists to serve the people. Reducing the power of government effectively reduces the power of people. When government restricts its influence and scope, private interests fill the void and push through their agendas at the expense of the populace.
The quintessential American fantasy for the past few decades, which Reagan invented, has been that decreasing the size of government somehow makes people freer. It's a fairytale of epic proportions, and its so powerful that some people continue to cling to it after losing their health care, their homes and their child's college tuition.
I was 2 when he left office, so maybe there was some substance behind the Reagan drama that I never got to experience (though I doubt it). But one way or another, no sensible person can claim the Reagan philosophy of "big government is the problem" is the appropriate cure for the times we live in. The conservatives that continue to cling to this do so because they're out of ideas and have nowhere else to go.
Perhaps this gets to the heart of where the conservative ideology, in my opinion, falls short: it doesn't like change. But if there ever was a time to grow up and put away the fantasies of the past, it's now. Because now that Americans are hurting worse than they have in almost a century, they're looking for real solutions, not looking for insipid catchphrases. And, as proven by the decisive rejection of the McCain-Palin fearmongering of 'big government' -- they're ready to get down to reality.
RIP, Reagan.