If you think wingnuts trying to tie every movement of the stock market to imagined corporate fears of a Democratic White House is a new thing, try out this quote.
If it's been a Reagan stock market up till now, it's a Carter stock market today. The very day that Jimmy Carter pulled ahead of Ronald Reagan in the polls the markets reacted with their largest decline of the year.
Who said it? Recently eulogized and fondly fawned over radioman, Paul Harvey.
Call me ignorant (and I certainly was at the time), but up until the fall of 1980 then I had pretty much ignored the right wing snippets Harvey wove into the mixture of stories, soap-selling, and news of the weird that had been an almost constant background to my childhood. I owned (still do) his whole series of "rest of the story" books, and from them learned trivia that kept me tuning in each day. Harvey's presentation of some odd fact framed as a mystery was masterfully done. But there was no mystery about the broadcaster's inclinations that fall, as Harvey's disdain for President Carter dripped from the speakers daily, along with praise for the cowboy coming to rescue America. Harvey not only invented the term "Reaganomics," he used it proudly.
When the election season ended, I realized that Harvey was always sprinkling his broadcasts with heavy sarcasm for "liberal hippies" and that when he talked about American values, he meant conservative values. It was easy to get lost in the avuncular chuckle or the way he delivered a pitch for hair cream in the same tone he used for world events, but the attitude was still there.
That doesn't mean Harvey was blind shill for the GOP as so many pundits are today. He had the guts to speak out against Nixon and wasn't always a cheerleader for Ford. But Reagan was tailor made for Harvey's American mythology. Both in his personal biography of reinvention, and in his message, Reagan echoed Harvey. Both of them spoke to a time in America that never really existed, both turned complex events into simple (and simplified) catch phrases, and both called for the best in Americans -- but did so in a way that too often reinforced the worst in our nature.
Newscaster Lowell Thomas received a Presidential Medal of Freedom for four decades of reporting that ranged from the battlefields of World War I and the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia to the grim days of the Cold War. Paul Harvey is the only other broadcaster so honored -- and it's no coincidence that he was given his award by George W. Bush. Harvey was the template from which later conservatives would start. He was the bridge between Father Coughlin and Rush Limbaugh, the torch carrier mixing news, opinion, and medicine show tonics.
With Harvey gone, it's natural that ABC radio is looking for someone to fill the niche, and the person they seem to have settled on is Mike Huckabee.
Mike Huckabee will be getting his 15 minutes of fame. ABC Radio, wowed by listener reaction to the former Arkansas guv, says the stations Harvey fed will now get the Huckabee Report, a five-minute mix of Harvey-esque news and commentary, three times a day.
15 minutes a day doesn't match the airtime Harvey commanded, but Huckabee certainly has the right mix to take over the massive audience -- folksy mannerisms ladled over a one-sided view of America.
Speculation is that Huckabee is taking the role to bolster his position for 2012 (or 2016, since the smart money may decide to ride out the Palin / Jindal follies). But Huckabee might just decide he likes Harvey's seat. Teddy Roosevelt once described the presidency as a "bully pulpit" meaning that it was a good platform to advocate for a position, but both the words in that phrase have alternative meanings -- ones that are likely to appeal to Mike Huckabee. If he can get his bully pulpit without having to run for it, Limbaugh may find he has another AM soul mate.