Rethinking The Reagan Mystique

Steven F. Hayward: Conservatism Finds Itself In a Place Roughly Analogous To Liberalism's 25 Years Ago

(CBS)  Steven F. Hayward is F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989, forthcoming in August from CrownForum.

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In the New York Times this weekend, John Harwood revisited the debate between conservatives and Republicans over whether it is time to "rethink the Reagan mystique." Does anyone really think the major media outlets covering this intramural argument really have conservative success in mind?

Now, that's not to say that the argument isn't a worthy one or should be suppressed - NRO has hosted some fruitful discussion on the issue. But Americans should approach such stories with a grain of salt, since many of them fail to get a few basic things straight.

Yes, I have several big dogs in this fight. My copious (and revisionist) narrative history of the Reagan presidency is coming out in August, featuring a special emphasis on the difficult domestic-policy story, rather than the dramatic Cold War story that is easier to tell - and I hope all NRO readers will rush out and buy it. The book is not all cheerleading for a happier time for our movement: It contains a number of criticisms of Reagan. But the criticisms I'm hearing now seem wide of the mark, though - when they're not simply wrong.

There was no Reagan "mystique." Study him closely and you see that he worked very hard at becoming a good politician, and part of that hard work was invested in concealing just how hard he worked at it. Too many conservatives think it suffices simply to call themselves "Reagan Republicans" and mouth a few optimistic generalities (fill in your least favorite radio talk-show host here.)

Now, I hate to disagree with David Frum, who offered some of the earliest cogent criticisms of the failures of the Reagan years in Dead Right, but he capitulates to the conventional wisdom when he says that "the most dangerous legacy Reagan bequeathed his party was his legacy of cheerful indifference to detail." I sentence Brother Frum to a close reading of Reagan's diaries, and perhaps a few days in the Reagan Library reading the declassified transcripts of White House meetings, all of which decisively refute this tired cliché. It's clear that Reagan was hardly disinterested in the daily details of the 1986 tax-reform process, and he was an active participant in every annual-budget fight. Reagan was also intimately involved in the arms-for-hostages debacle - not to his credit, of course. (In my forthcoming book, I sum up one installment of the affair thus: "Through all the murkiness of the decisions made throughout the entire affair, however, one fact is clear - the Iran arms-for-hostages initiative carried on because Ronald Reagan wanted it to.") Reagan may have ignored the EPA, HUD - make your own list of rightly ignored favorites - but that redounds to his credit; I think it was Wellington who said that sensible men concentrate on the essential things.

Unfamiliarity with the historical facts on Reagan is one thing. Reshaping them is quite another. I was startled by Harwood's quote from Indiana governor Mitch Daniels: "I don't use [Reagan] publicly as a reference point." Well, fine; but back in 1989, Daniels said, "The Reagan years will be for conservatives what the Kennedy years remain for liberals: the reference point, the breakthrough experience - a conservative Camelot." Well, which is it? Has Daniels changed his mind - or has Harwood done a little reshaping of his own here by quoting Daniels selectively?

Back in 1989, Daniels added this: "At the same time, no lesson is plainer than that the damage of decades cannot be repaired in any one administration." This is why I have argued here on NRO that it is precisely the failures and shortcomings of the Reagan years that should be the focus of our debate; here I'm probably close to the same page as Brother Frum, but we differ on the specifics. Frum, in his most recent Bloggingheads exchange with Brink Lindsey, went so far as to say that Republicans might have been better off had neither Barry Goldwater nor Reagan been nominated in 1964 and 1980, respectively. (I think he's just trying to test the efficaciousness of my new blood-pressure medicine - and give Rush an embolism.)

Such debates can get rancorous in a hurry - which is what I think the Left and the media would like to see. Let me shift ground slightly and challenge the Reagan critics this way: Why do we study and praise Lincoln or Churchill? Because we think we're going to see "another" Lincoln or Churchill? Of course not: We study them for their example of practical political judgment. Britain didn't get another Churchill - they got Thatcher, for whom Churchill's examples (even his mistakes, such as his imprudent Hayek-inspired "Gestapo" speech of July 1945) made a strong impression. We are not going to see "another" Reagan. But we can and should learn from a close study of the man, and apply usable lessons to different circumstances.

Such a prospect seems remote at present, with Democrats ascendant and led by a charismatic young president. Political success for the GOP, we are sometimes told, will require adopting policies closer to those of Barack Obama than to Ronald Reagan. Here again, history is instructive.

Jack Germond and Jules Witcover wrote in their book about the 1984 American presidential election, "Democrats preferred not to face the evidence that their guiding light of half a century - the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and its successor mutations from Truman through Carter and Mondale - had been all but snuffed out by the voters as the preferred framework for governmental policy at the national level." Today, FDR and the New Deal are back with a vengeance, of course: Judging from his books, Obama clearly considers FDR a model and inspiration. In other words, conservatism finds itself in a place roughly analogous to liberalism's 25 years ago. Reaganism -in a modified or even high-octane form - might make a comeback, too.

We must also rightly judge the role of chance and contingency in human affairs and political fortunes. Brother Frum writes: "It was not Goldwater who made Reagan possible. It was Carter. Had Carter governed more successfully, the Goldwater disaster would have been just a disaster, with no silver lining. And there was nothing about the Goldwater disaster that made the Carter failure more necessary, more inevitable." There is something to this, as Reagan himself acknowledged. He told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before the Grenada invasion in 1983, "If Jimmy Carter had sent in two more helicopters to Iran, he'd be giving you this briefing right now."

We can apply this same lesson to Lincoln, Churchill, FDR, and others who come to mind. Only thoroughgoing Machiavellians think humans can control chance or fate; the rest of us should follow Churchill's counsel to "assume that the favorable and adverse chances equate, and then eliminate them both from the calculation." To which I would add that, like Reagan (and Churchill), I do not believe that Chance is indifferent to human excellence.

[taxguydave]

He also greatly increased government spending, especially on the military.

Ran huge deficits without actually paying for them (even with the tax hikes). Tripled the national debt. Fiscal conservatism, my a**!

Ronald Reagan, tax and spend Republican. Just like GW Bush.

[taxguydave]

One thing that conservatives always gloss over are the massive tax INCREASES that Reagan championed. While he did push for, and got, marginal rate cuts, he also:

Doubled the Social Security portion of the payroll tax.

Opened up much more income to taxation, by denying investors the ability to take all of their losses (the "passive activities" rules).

Revamped the Minimum Tax (now known as the Alternative Minimum Tax) so that the middle class would eventually pay the bulk of it (we're there now).

Denied landlords the ability to take all of their rental losses, through both a ridiculous cap on the amount, and by changing the rules for depreciation of rental properties.

Capped IRA contributions at $2000/yr, in order to hit the middle class with even more tax, while denying them the full ability to save for their own retirement (all the while trying to kill Social Security and Medicare).

There are even more tax provisions that he pushed for (and got) that actually raised taxes, especially for middle class business owners and investors. Some of these also raised taxes for the wealthy, but the tax increases overwhelmingly hit the middle class.

[leogorky]

What mystique? And please, hereami, don't pray for us. Pray for yourself to overcome your self-righteousness. But you are, Blanche, you are a hatemonger...

[hereami]

Am I confused???, because I thought we was in a recession because of G.W.?
and I thought clinton (Bill) fixed all of our deficit problems?
I am finding it hard to believe you far left liberals can blame both G.W. and Ronald Reagan.
for a lot of your posts...how dare you call conservatives hate mongers? I will pray for all of you. God Bless

[actornaught]

Thanks to addled ronnie, we've already had our first woman president, Nancy Reagan.

[Macsure]

Hindsight is always 20-20: I thought Reagan was great and as a staunch conservative crowed over almost all things he did. Then I got older, realized that Reagan was the vanguard of the Destroy Government through Over Spending Strategy.

I would like to discourage you, Mr. Hayward, from promoting the idea that any ideology is the "right" ideology. Truth is: these ideologies (of right, left and religious) are all scams aimed solely at fooling people into believing utopian myths. Political parties of any country (Germany, Brazil, China, the United States of America) are all evil. They never fail to propagandize, divide and degrade the populations of their own countries. And they turn on their own whenever it becomes needful in order to stay in power. (Ref. Lincoln, T. Roosevelt and J. McCain.)

The Democratic Party is... only a bit better. And they got a bit better because the Republicans pulled off the impossible: humiliating the Dems by getting that Moron, G. W. Bush re-elected. The Dems got a little wake up call and started asking for PUBLIC input on Dem Party principles and platform. This worked quite well (who woulda guessed?!). But right now, there are important Dems in Congress getting ready to fight President Obama's financial reform package - because they too (just like the Republicans) are in the pockets of the Rich Fat Boys Without Conscience.

No, I don't want ANY of the current ideologies or isms ruling my life: the Republicans brought two major cycles of diminishment to "average Americans" like me - essentially killing my dreams and ruining my life. The first cycle was started / promoted by Reagan, the second cycle by G. W. Bush. Funny - the Republicans main claim to fame is their "fiscal genius" - which is the biggest myth ever perpetrated on any American generation.

The only ideology I'll tolerate is that coming from historical figures like Benjamin Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt: both founded on HONESTY and FAIRNESS to ALL Americans. You latter day ideological crusaders (i.e., "Bloggers") can take your dishonest crap with you on your way out.

[bdillar1]

Wow NEWCO123, great quotes. We all know Reagan disliked government. It was an easy platform to run on. But I don't see where he even attempted to fix the issues he complained about.

[bdillar1]

I wonder if Reagan were still alive and of clear mind if he'd be able to see the irony that this fairy-tale legacy of his was actually created by a market driven propaganda machine rivaling anything the Soviets could have ever produced? Naaaa...

[johnbrown8888]

Looks like it was the USA that Ronnie bankrupted, not the Soviet Union.

Russia is doing pretty well these days.

The US is mired in an endless recession.

Thanks, Ronnie.

[actornaught]

I feel so... trickled on...

[actornaught]

ronnie was my introduction to politics. I voted for the first time, and it was against this phony. During his first 2 years they continually talked about reagan dems and how much the middle class loved him. All the while, with EVERYTHING ronned did, he stabbed those working stiffs in the back. Remember Sin Taxes? Unfunded Mandates? Union Busting? And then there's the Cold War Myth/Lying Point, and maybe worst of all, NEOCONS... guh...

[actornaught]

Ford, Reagan, Bush, bush... Why do the 'pubs like weakminded presidents so much?

[Bigheader]

I have to agree. Here is a man who has grown into somewhat of a mythical figure. Closed the State run centers in California and let so many mentally ill and developmentally disable who have become a large homeless population. Credit for ending the cold war? Maybe 80 years of Soviet misrule and poor governing had a little to do with the collapse? I served on the New Jersey, a poor out dated weapons platform. Reagan the Tough Guy Cowboy as soon as Marine Barracks were destroyed he was gone. No hanging around like the little idiot Bush. Grenada was low hanging fruit. Let us remeber the 10-12% unemployment. I saw him speak in New Britain CT. Very inspiring, Great Guy, lousy President. Best President ever? Hardly.

[matuliska]

Do conservatives have any idea who Reagan is? Huge government spending, huge deficits, gave weapons to our enemies and future terrorists, and slept through important policy meetings (Source: Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA).
What is Reagan, really? He's a symbol. The truth doesn't matter. The man does. He was a good looking hollywood actor who made great soundbites that still resound today.

[mnbrant]

I can't read all of that but wasn't he the one who tried to build the trillon dollar ray gun? I just wikipedi'd Lyndon Larouche and he apparently was the one who first came up with that gem. I mean I liked the movie Star Wars like everybody else but come on! I actually had a chance to stand in formation to here the Gipper speak but unfortunately my boots looked like mud so I was banned. I did have dreams about the guy when I was sleeping nearby however.

[sjc_1]

2 million homeless left in the streets, $2 trillion further in debt, $100 billion for Star Wars that went no where, $1 billion for the battleship Missouri, 50 years out of date, $3 billion each for the doomsday B2 with no mission. The list goes on and on showing what a complete failure Reagan was. However, we have Carter that began a synthetic fuel program 30 years ago, ignored by Congress that would have reduced oil imports substantially today. It is good to get the facts straight and not be under any illusions.

[jarvir]

Not liking President Reagan is a freedom he himself would love and defend but not telling the truth is somthing he hated-The $1 billiion for the Missouri is just not telling the truth, It was $1.7 Billion and it was for all four of the battleships to bring them up to date and the 96th congress voted to spend the money which had a 58 seat majority in it.

[ubrew12]

We have spent $1 trillion paying the INTEREST on the debt Reagan left us since he left office, roughly the cost of the Iraq War, but going to globalized rich folks who lent us the money in the first place rather than to infrastructure, war, education, or ANY tangible benefit. And this leaves the $3.8 trillion Reagan debt PRINCIPLE to be paid by our grandchildren and HIS great-grandchildren.

THAT is the Reagan legacy, and I find it more than symptomatic that you'd devote an entire article to Reagan's legacy and fail to mention it. Your failure to do so fairly BROADCASTS why the American public no longer find the GOP relevant. You can burn up an entire page and thousands of grey cells wondering about Reagans legacy, and never touch on this singular fiscal 'gift' to our present and future. Remarkable 'head in the **s' thinking there. I expect nothing less from the NRO, thanks for living down to my expectations.

Here's another statistic that Reagan made possible. Just before Reagan came to office, the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans made 20 times the average income of the poorest 90% of Americans. Today, thanks in no small part to Reagan, the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans make 80 times the income of the poorest 90% of Americans. Where does that excess money, in so few hands, go?? Well, it buys the best corporate-friendly government money can buy, is one thing. And pays, no doubt, for the NRO to publish propagandized rubbish week after week.

[co2user]

And where does Jimmy Carter figure into your well thought out plan to demonize Reagan? Your statistics for the widening gap of the wealthiest doesn't take into consideration that Carter tanked so many jobs and lives before leaving office. Also, assuming your statistic is accurate, the growth in income throughout working America grew during Reagan due to tax cuts increasing revenue to the government.
The exact opposite of what this administration is doing now.