Since today marks the 100th birthday of the Dark Lord (aka Ronald Reagan), I figured I would take the time to set the record straight on his legacy and help my fellow liberals/leftists/progressives challenge contemporary Reagan hagiography. It goes without saying that Reagan's presidency was a watershed time in American history and politics, but those on the right (with their enablers in the current American media) have it wrong. Reagan did preside over the end of the Cold War anymore than he oversaw great economic growth, for example. While I will spare the readers a laundry list of how the right (and by extension, the American people) view Reagan, I do want to focus on four areas that I find very important.
Students and the working class:
It is no secret that Reagan passed himself as a man of the people, but he was anything but. Between weaning college students (especially those from blue-collar backgrounds) off federal grants (which do not need to be paid back) to federal loans (that do), Recagan seriously impacted the educational dreams of many Americans. But this is hardly surprising. Given his open hostility towards college students during his days as CA governor ("I should harness their youthful energy with a strap.", I believe he said), this near abolition of grants almost seems anticlimactic. Meanwhile, soon after taking office, Reagan's 1982 tax cut that would seriously damage the American economy (along with S&L scandal that took out Charles Keaton, among others.) ,exploding the national deficit, and weakening America's economic base.
Reagan cut taxes one time in his eight years of office, but raised taxes 11 times (something his acolytes failed to mention)--and the ones most impacted were middle and working-class Americans. Meanwhile, his breaking of the air-traffic controllers' strike was proof positive of to whom he really answered, and it wasn't the average American.
Race
While it is true that MLK's birthday became a national holiday under Reagan, he kicked off his 1980 campaign with a pledge to honor states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights activists were kidnapped and murdered in 1964, and whose killers were probably at the Neshoba County Fair, when Reagan made his speech. But what is not often discussed among contemporary conservatives is Reagan's veto of anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa in 1985 (a veto that Congress had the courage to override, even with the Senate [in Repiublican hands). While it can be debated if Reagan was a racist per se, it is clear that he was never afraid to or above playing the race card (black bucks buying T-Bone stakes, or Cadillac-buying welfare queens), a tactic that Thurmond, Goldwater, Buckley, and Nixon had down pat. And one that Reagan would use to destroy the safety net that America had just implemented, and cast a blind eye on the emerging AIDS crisis (He wouldn't mention AIDS publicly until 1987.)
Foreign Policy
The claim that Reagan ended the Cold War is the weakest claim of all. When Reagan told Gorbachev to "tear down this wall", the USSR was fighting a losing battle in Afghanistan (one that would spawn al-Qaeda), and one that would spell the demise of the "evil empire". But while doing so, he was playing Iran and Iraq off one another,by supplying both nations with weapons during their 8-year-long war, after having traded (illegally) weapons for hostages in 1980, weapons that would make their way to Nicaragua to the Contras. As most of you know, the Iran-Contra affair would send several top Reagan officials (Col. Oliver North, for example) to prison. Meanwhile, Reagan allied himself with a variety of right-wing nutjobs across the globe, chief among them Margaret Thatcher of the UK and Efrain Rios Montt of Guatemala, who were never afraid to use force to suppress their people.
The Conservative Tradition
Reagan's election (which is questionable) is a paradox. His election was a crescendo in terms of the power of the American right. But not all conservatives were happy with Reagan. Joan Didion denounced him as a "false conservative", while Sen. Barry Goldwater publicly broke with him. In fact, the reason why Reagan won in 1980 was not because of the "movement conservatives" of the 1960s, but the Religious Right which had come to dominate the Right. Jimmy Carter had won 1976, partly because evangelicals like Jerry Falwell (according to TNR in 2007)had believed that Carter would fulfill their mission. When Carter didn't live up to billing, they looked elsewhere. Reagan's presidency would see him trying to strike a balance between the Rapture Right and the John Birch Society.
On this 100th birthday of the 40th president, I think Reagan's hagiographers would do well to tell the whole story, not just part of it.