The Trouble With Obama

I don't really care what Barack Obama's intent was when he made his statements about Ronald Reagan. Just like his comments on Social Security he was validating Republican talking points and that's not only wrong it's stupid. Over at The Left Coaster eriposte did a good job of taking down Obama and Markos Moulitsas' defense of them. Today Paul Krugman, who thinks even less of Obama than I do, explains why Obama's comments were ill advised at best.

Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.

And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.

Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?

Reagonomics not only failed it's still failing which is why we are in a recession now. Of course the only reason it is a recession is because the stock market is tanking so the investor class is taking the hits most Americans have been taking for seven years. Krugman continues:

For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.

Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.

For example, I’m not sure what “dynamism” means, but if it means productivity growth, there wasn’t any resurgence in the Reagan years. Eventually productivity did take off — but even the Bush administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers dates the beginning of that takeoff to 1995.

Everyone talks about how Hillary Clinton is a triangulating politician, which she is. But are you going to try to tell me Barack Obama is not worse? And Krugman concludes with why Obamas comments were ever so wrong:

Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.

End of the coalition

Jack Balkin points out what we have we have been saying here that the coalition that has resulted in Republican wins since 1980 is all but dead and credits George W. Bush for it's death.

If 2008 turns out to be a pivotal election, defining a new political era, it is important to give credit where credit is due. Two key reasons for the change will be the crackup of the coalition of the dominant party of the era, the Republicans, and the almost complete political failure of George W. Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove. Let me begin with the second reason, and then move to the first.

The Bush/Rove strategy of accentuating divisions along partisan lines was a bold gamble that ultimately failed, because it depended on the Bush presidency being successful. Think of it this way: If Bush does well at his task, then people at the margins gravitate toward the winning side and the Republican coalition slowly expands over time, rejuvenating the party and producing a post-Reagan vision (organized, for example, around the War on Terror and the opportunity society) that extends well into the future. But if Bush does badly, or as it turned out, very badly, the same strategy that encourages increased partisanship and divisiveness will tend to make Americans believe that these features of political life are also the cause of political failure. They will seek both change and a sense of unity. This is precisely what Obama has tapped into, which is why he has been successful so far. Obama, if you will, is what Bush's strategy has produced.

Now I think that the coalition was bound to unravel anyway but the failure of George W. Bush may have sped it up. The Reagan Revolution itself was responsible. The social conservatives could only be expected to vote against their own economic interests for so long. For that reason I think Huckabee may deserve more of the credit than Bush. As I explained the other day:

People are not voting for Huckabee because he's a likable guy they are voting for him because they are scared. Not of the Islamo terrorists but they are afraid of losing their jobs, their house and their medical insurance.

[.....]

They don't trust the leaders in government or the leaders in business to look out for them. And we are not just talking about the working poor - there are families with six figure incomes that have the same fears.

The Trouble With Romney

I like to make fun of David Brooks - sometimes his columns are idiocy personified. Occasional he takes off his partisan dunce hat and his delusional rose colored glasses and gets it right. Today is one of those times as he talks about the snake oil salesman, Romney.

Road to Nowhere

Earnestly and methodically, he has appealed to each of the major constituency groups. For national security conservatives, he vowed to double the size of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. For social conservatives, he embraced a culture war against the faithless. For immigration skeptics, he swung so far right he earned the endorsement of Tom Tancredo.

He has spent roughly $80 million, including an estimated $17 million of his own money, hiring consultants, blanketing the airwaves and building an organization that is unmatched on the Republican side.

And he has turned himself into the party’s fusion candidate. Some of his rivals are stronger among social conservatives. Others are stronger among security conservatives, but no candidate has a foot in all camps the way Romney does. No candidate offends so few, or is the acceptable choice of so many.

And that is why Romney is at the fulcrum of the Republican race. He’s looking strong in Iowa and is the only candidate who can afford to lose an important state and still win the nomination.

And yet as any true conservative can tell you, the sort of rational planning Mitt Romney embodies never works. The world is too complicated and human reason too limited. The PowerPoint mentality always fails to anticipate something. It always yields unintended consequences.

And what Romney failed to anticipate is this: In turning himself into an old-fashioned, orthodox Republican, he has made himself unelectable in the fall. When you look inside his numbers, you see tremendous weaknesses.

Brooks sees something that many of us have seen but that most Republicans have refused to acknowledge - the end of a coalition.

But his biggest problem is a failure of imagination. Market research is a snapshot of the past. With his data-set mentality, Romney has chosen to model himself on a version of Republicanism that is receding into memory. As Walter Mondale was the last gasp of the fading New Deal coalition, Romney has turned himself into the last gasp of the Reagan coalition.

That coalition had its day, but it is shrinking now. The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. Democrats have a 50 to 36 party identification advantage, the widest in a generation. The general public prefers Democratic approaches on health care, corruption, the economy and Iraq by double-digit margins. Republicans’ losses have come across the board, but the G.O.P. has been hemorrhaging support among independent voters. Surveys from the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, Kaiser Foundation and Harvard University show that independents are moving away from the G.O.P. on social issues, globalization and the roles of religion and government.

If any Republican candidate is going to win this year, he will have to offer a new brand of Republicanism. But Romney has tied himself to the old brand. He is unresponsive to the middle-class anxiety that Huckabee is tapping into. He has forsaken the trans-partisan candor that McCain represents. Romney, the cautious consultant, is pivoting to stress his corporate competence, and is rebranding himself as an Obama-esque change agent, but he will never make the sort of daring break that independent voters will demand if they are going to give the G.O.P. another look.

And the following observation is not the kind I have come to expect from Brooks.

The leaders of the Republican coalition know Romney will lose. But some would rather remain in control of a party that loses than lose control of a party that wins. Others haven’t yet suffered the agony of defeat, and so are not yet emotionally ready for the trauma of transformation. Others still simply don’t know which way to turn.

Brooks and other Republicans (and former Republicans) are beginning to realize the the politics of Karl Rove that were supposed to keep the "Reagan revolution" going forever in fact destroyed it. That will be the lasting legacy of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.

Update
We all know that the vast majority of politicians are phonies. That said Matt Yglesias makes what may be a vaild point about Romney.

...to give Romney the benefit of the doubt, one thing I can say about him is that there's some indication he might make an okay president. He ran a successful business. He managed the Olympics well. He took over a state that enjoyed a high standard of living and during his years of governor it continued to enjoy a high standard of living and he never tried to do anything crazy. He's taken a lot of repugnant stands in the campaign, but that's clearly because he's telling people what he thinks they want to hear. When he thoughts his constituents wanted to hear about gay equality and a women's right to choose he said that stuff, too. He's a giant phony. But also a technocrat with some record of competence -- basically a risk-averse guy who knows what he's doing and understands how to color between the lines. It's impossible to imagine him being a great president, but it's relatively easy to imagine him being an okay president.

The others in the field, not so much. Who knows what wars Rudy Giuliani or John McCain would start? And Mike Huckabee can't even fake knowing what he's talking about for fifteen minutes.

I'm not sure I'm entirely ready to buy that but he probably is the pick of the litter.

The Reagan Myth - Tough Gunslinger Edition

I discussed the fiction that is The myth of Ronald Reagan a few months ago and then again yesterday. Joe Conason does a good job of debunking the "tough gunslinger" part of the Reagan myth in
GOP's Reaganesque Tall Tales.

The tough gunslinger described by the Republican candidates resembles the real Reagan about as accurately as his movie roles resembled his real life. It was strange to hear him mentioned in the context of Iran, the scene of the worst foreign-policy fiasco of his administration — and the topic that most clearly demonstrates the distance between right-wing fantasy and historical reality.

Let's not forget Iran-Contra

Available evidence strongly indicates that when the Iranian regime released American hostages in January 1981, within hours of the first Reagan inauguration, that decision had nothing to do with fear of the new president and everything to do with a pre-arranged deal. While no proof of that plot has ever emerged, the covert sequel that commenced three years later certainly arouses suspicion.

Between 1984 and 1986, the Reagan administration tried to free American hostages in Lebanon from their Shiite captors, not by confronting the terrorists militarily but by negotiating with their presumed Iranian sponsors.
By then, Reagan had already retreated from Lebanon, withdrawing the Marines after the terrorist bombing of their Beirut barracks had claimed 241 American lives.

Instead of retaliating against Iran or any of the organizations that claimed responsibility for the Lebanon attack, Reagan approved a secret initiative to "improve relations" with the Iranian leadership by shipping advanced missiles to them. The immediate objective was to get the Iranians to lean on Hezbollah in Lebanon to release a group of six American hostages.

National Security Adviser Robert (Bud) McFarlane visited Tehran, carrying a Koran and a cake as tokens of presidential esteem. Meanwhile, the profits from the arms transactions — conducted by private citizens working with White House and CIA personnel — were diverted to finance the contra rebellion in Nicaragua.

These bizarre intrigues breached U.S. law and policy in myriad ways, including repeated violations of the statute forbidding aid to regimes that support terrorism. At first Reagan tried to deny that he had "traded arms for hostages," then reluctantly confessed many months later, while seeking to blame his subordinates.

So where was that gunslinger?

Although there was much more to the amazing scandal that nearly ended Reagan's presidency — including the starring role of neoconservatives who have since masterminded another and worse disaster — the basic outline is clear: Terrorists killed our troops, and Reagan responded by retreating from Lebanon, kowtowing to the terrorists' sponsors, meeting their demand for advanced weapons and pleading for the release of our hostages.

It is easy to imagine how the Republicans would have reacted to this kind of behavior by a Democratic president — and how they would recall such behavior today. Words such as "strong" and "resolute" would not leap to their lips.

The actions of the neocons nearly destroyed the Reagan presidency.

With Reagan, however, myth replaces memory. The truth is that he saved his presidency by ousting the hawks and neoconservatives who had almost destroyed it, and by entering into the unprecedented negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that helped to end the Cold War peacefully. For that momentous decision, he suffered angry public attacks by many of the same conservatives who lionize him today.

The macho posturing in Reagan's name is comical and demeaning, but not without danger. Let's hope this is all just campaign bluster — and that none of the pretenders who may someday achieve power believe in their own fakery.

What Conason doesn't mention is that it was James Baker III and Nancy Reagan were the ones who got rid of the neocons when the effectively took over the controls of the ship of state from the fading Ronnie. Baker did it for reasons of "real politic" and Nancy to salvage Ronnie's legacy.

The myth of Ronald Reagan

The Republicans with the help of the main stream media have created a mythology around Ronald Reagan. The most obvious rewriting of history is that he defeated the Soviet Union and ended the cold war. Those of us who were involved in analysis of the Soviet Union knew in the early 70s that the Soviet empire was in a death spiral. Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech did nothing to speed the collapse. One thing that may have was the support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan but inept handling and negect of that country after the Soviet departure resulted in that same mujahideen morphing into al-Qaeda and the rest is history. That's what is known as blowback in the intelligence community. Paul Krugman explains today that the mythology surrounding Reagan is alive and well.
Don’t Cry for Reagan

As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans “need to reclaim the Reagan legacy.”

But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.

Mismanagement will probably the legacy of the George W. Bush administration but there are plenty examples from the Reagan years.

In 1993 Jonathan Cohn — the author, by the way, of a terrific new book on our dysfunctional health care system — published an article in The American Prospect describing the dire state of the federal government. Changing just a few words in that article makes it read as if it were written in 2007.

Thus, Mr. Cohn described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who “presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands to industry and developers” that “deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.” Oil leases, anyone?

Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because “the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned that the putative gains of contracting out have evaporated. Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.” Holy Halliburton!

Not mentioned in Mr. Cohn’s article, but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, including the deputy attorney general and the chief of the criminal division, resigned in protest.

Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives — people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.

In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.

Reagan didn't go as far simply because he couldn't.

Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Reagan never controlled both houses of Congress — and the pre-Gingrich Republican Party still contained moderates who imposed limits on his ability to govern badly. Also, there was no Reagan-era equivalent of the rush, after 9/11, to give the Bush administration whatever it wanted in the name of fighting terrorism.

Mr. Reagan may even have been helped, perversely, by the fact that in the 1980s there were still two superpowers. This helped prevent the hubris, the delusions of grandeur, that led the Bush administration to believe that a splendid little war in Iraq was just the thing to secure its position.

Krugman concludes that the failure of the Bush administration is not the failure of a man but the failure of the ideology. George W. Bush had the opportunity to move the conservative ideology much further than Reagan could so the failure is much greater.

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