Ronald Reagan in Berlin, June 1987
Seems that the coming 6th of February is the Centennial of Ronald Reagan's birth. I've been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion of the 40th US President over at Chicagoboyz. I've been thinking about what to post, and haven't come up with much so I thought I would run if by my fellow barkeeps and our loyal clientèle and see what ya'll got to say about the subject.
I was in the audience during that particular Berlin speech, maybe five rows back and was very impressed at the time. He was of course addressing not only Berlin, but the whole world. I had voted for Reagan both in 1980 and 1984, but the gross illegalities of Iran Contra with commissioned officers destroying documents and refusing to answer questions or outright lying before Congress, not to mention the actions of Congressional Republicans in their lock-step support of these crimes, was too much for me and I left the Republican Party in 1986. I thought Ollie North should have been busted to private.
So Reagan's legacy? I'm thinking in terms of four main areas:
*The ending of the Cold War, but the continuance of Bacevich's "Washington Rules", which is a bit outside of Reagan's time, but his influence is still important.
*Ronald Reagan as the first real TV-age president. How image triumphed over substance? Some say that JFK was, but I think Reagan beats him.
*The redefinition of "conservative" as in what has become the Radical Right of today. "Government is the problem", but "government" redefined and limited to social programs. Massive defense and security spending is OK, but "government" seemingly does not include these aspects which form a sort of state socialism, that is seen as a normal and unquestioned "duty" or "obligation" of the state for unlimited intervention.
*Finally, and this is linked especially to the third point above, the hollowing out of government control over military/intelligence activities. Since William Casey, Reagan's DCI, we have seen a growing tendency to "outsource" certain questionable activities to preclude public scrutiny. This was a hallmark of Iran-Contra and it did not end there. The rise of Private Military Companies (PMC's) goes with this. From a Clausewitzian perspective this indicates a loss of material cohesion for the political authority, as well as numerous unintended consequences should the mercenaries gain too much influence. I see this as an element of the consolidating police state I have warned of.
All thoughtful comments are welcome. I'm looking for inspiration and I think I've come to the right place . . .
That the Soviet Union collapsed on Regan's watch is probably more a matter of timing than the man himself. Kenner was correct in that time was not on the USSR's side. When I was a student at the Naval War College in the early 90's, Richard Armitage said, during a lecture, "We can say we 'won' the Cold War, but in reality, the Soviets lost it by default. We simply woke up one morning and found they no longer had a team which which to play the game."
ReplyDeleteIt was during the Regan administration that the far right began it's definition of "Good" as merely being in opposition to "Evil", thereby leading to the necessity of having a serious "evil" to identify in order to be "good". That kind of thinking gave us, among other things, the Iraq War. While Regan did not allow the Neo-Cons to fully co-opt him into the "Evil Game" he did co-operate significantly.
I'd opine that the last of your points is his real "legacy" but would expand on that further.
ReplyDeleteReagan's "contribution" to the ending of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union was akin to the police precinct commander who is in his office playing Angry Birds on his phone at the time when the narco cartel HQ is destroyed in a massive explosion detonated by the narco's moronic chemist miscalulating the amount of ether needed to refine the coca. The Regeantots (that is, the modern wingnuts who were in junior high when all this happened - people like Malkin, Coulter, and Douthtwat) have swallowed the line that Reagan slayed the Commie dragon but in fact he just kept up Kennan's containment until the internal failings of the CCCP caused it to implode. If anyone, Gorby "ended" the Cold War by refusing to go all Stalin on the internal dissenters in his country and his own government.
I'd argue that between Kennedy and Reagan the office of the Presidency DID become more about image than substance, but that Reagan was more beneficiary than innovator. He did have good PR people, but that had more to do with how dissconnected Carter was with modern politicking than Reagan's own genius for the medium - remember "we start bombing in ten minutes"? A really savvy actor NEVER forgets that the mike may be on at any time.
No, the real genius of Reagan was the realization - and the subsequent indoctrination of the Nixon-era criminals that he employed, people like Cheney, along with the neocriminals like North, with this understanding - that the American public is not just an ass but is a stupid, gullible, utterly selfish ass that can be tickled along like a trout with the Big Lie.
So Reagan's legacy is the repulsive shit like the Welfare Queen, the Death Panels, the nonsense like the idea that Star Wars was going to work, that deficits don't matter, that defense spending isn't REAL deficit spending, that people who disagree with you aren;t just political rivals but are unpatriotic, treacherous antiAmericans. It is the conflation of a party with a nation, and the understanding that if you lie loud enough and long enough that you can get enough people to believe you that the rest of the people will be either drowned out or will retreat in disgust and frustration.
I can recall articles from the 80s that clearly show that the U.S. conservatives did not anticipate the Warsaw Pact's failure.
ReplyDeleteInstead, they wrote about late versions of the domino theory, such as 'they will eventually win because we are soft and they are tough, unless we become tough as well'.
If they didn't pretend to believe hat they were winning - how could the win be a result of their strategy???
Simple macroeconomic considerations also show that the Soviet Union was bound to fail due to lacking investment ("investment" and R&D for the military are almost exclusively state consumption in macroeconomic terms), demographic decline, horrible health statistics (alcohol abuse) and the inherent inefficiency of Siberia's economy (high transportation costs).
The only thing that kept the USSR going was a tyrannical regime that suppressed the private demand and the subsidies from exploited satellite countries (through COMECON).
You guys give way too little credit to the Soviet leadership. They knew their time was up and they carefully dismantled the Soviet empire while they still could. Not a moronic chemist but a EOD guy working on a smoking fuse.
ReplyDeleteThere was no great explosion. No rivers of blood. No civil war. And no millions of refugees. Think Yugoslavia, but twenty times bigger and with nuclear weapons.
Gorbachev even managed to keep his and his family's skin intact while doing it (although it came very close at the end).
Reagan was just a bystander.
They had their civil wars, too. Chechnya, Abchasia, South Ossetia, Berg-Karabach...
ReplyDeleteExcellent comments. Just what I expected.
ReplyDeleteAgree with the "Soviets beat themselves" argument, but Ael does bring up a good point. The collapse could have been much messier, but as with East Germany and elsewhere, the people essentially stepped in and said, "enough"! As with 9 November 1989 and the demos in Alex right before, the fact that Yeltsin was able to so quickly mobilize Russian popular support and turn the tables on the August 1991 coup plotters precluded turning back to the old way.
Still, there is the lead up to all this and Reagan did play a part in that. Mitterrand had convinced Gorbi in the mid-1980s that Reagan was a person he could negotiate with and not the "clown and fool" that Gorbi had portrayed him as previously. This set up Reykjavik in 1986 which in turn set up the INF treaty. Without this relationship between Reagan and Gorbi there would have been no treaty and Gorbi would have shelved much of his reform program since it would have been impossible to face his domestic opposition (the Soviet Military industial complex or "VPK" and the state security apparatus) without having the road open to negotiation with the US.
At the same time I think the long experience of the Cold War infected us with the Soviet "virus" which was their civilian state/military relations/strategy, but more on that later . . .
FDChief and all-
ReplyDeleteYou'll notice that I've added a fourth point which goes along with something Chief brought up and which I had mentioned but not followed up. Note the link added . . .
"Massive defense and security spending is OK, but "government" seemingly does not include these aspects which form a sort of state socialism,"
ReplyDeleteDefence spending under Reagan was essentialy flat.
It was 6.19% of GDP in 81 and 6.26% in 89.
Its projected to reach that level again, primarily through war fighting costs, but has been down to 3.56.
Entitlement spending, pensions, healthcare and welfare, was 9.21% of GDP in 81 and 8.56% of GDP in 89.
Its currently sat just shy of 15%
There is a myth that the defence budget is out of control.
Its just that, a myth. It falls apart under even the most basic examination
Others
The Soviet Union effectively spent itself to death, true enough,
But WHY?
"The People" rose up and said enough, but why did that specific group of people rise up and why did they do it then?
Its easy to say Reagan was lucky, but was he?
I dont know enough about internal US politics to say for sure, but for the UK at least.
When Solidarity Members were being disapeared, it was the policey of the UK's big Unions that the Poles should join the Official Unions.
Had Callaghan won in 1979, that would almost certainly have been the Policy of the UK Government.
Raging Tory-
ReplyDeleteWelcome.
Notice the present tense in my quote you refer to. This refers to military spending today, not that under RR. The connection with RR is more ideological as the context of the 3rd point indicates. Also calculating military spending in terms of GDP is a bit of a suckers' game: how does one compute GDP? What is included under "services"? What was the US-calculated GDP of the USSR in 1985? Of Russia in 1992? Do those numbers make any sense?
""The People" rose up and said enough, but why did that specific group of people rise up and why did they do it then?"
So what do you think? There are soooo many theories on this one . . .
Can't say much about British Labour Unions, but later plenty on the Tory side were slow on the uptake in regards to German Reunification . . .
Btw, I attended the memorial for John Lennon at the Lincoln Memorial in DC in 1980 (my grad school days). The crowd was singing "All we are saying is . . ." followed by "Make 'em hear it at the NRA!" and "make 'em hear it in Congress!" . . . I yelled, "make 'em hear it in Poland!" and all I got was dirty looks . . . I wasn't joking either - typical for me and Liberals.
Btw, and I mean this only half seriously, what is the difference between a "Raging Tory" and a "Monarchist"? Remember as Americans, "Tory" for us has an historical meaning . . .
After hearing what Richard Armitage had to say, a classmate later commented with something like, "You know, crediting ourselves with 'victory' was probably natural. It's important to be able to believe that when something you had worked toward and hoped for is achieved that you are the reason why."
ReplyDeleteI think there is merit in that Naval Officer's comment. Regan benefits from a significant "halo effect". I am willing to credit him with maintaining the course, but beyond that, I can not offer real credit.
Tory:
When Ronald Regan was President, my generation was still working, and the Bush Medicare Prescription Medicine program did not exist. One can see the roots of the current crash and resulting welfare costs in Regan's deregulation obsessions. Giving him credit for low entitlement spending is like giving me credit for the sun rising because it happens about the time I get up in the morning. There may be correlation, but no causation.
cont:
ReplyDelete3. I think one can make a case that Reagan may have planted the seeds for today's radical right, but I think it's more the case that, as noted in one of the links above, he planted the seeds for big-government conservatism, which is a bit of a different animal. When people on the radical right today talk about Reagan, it soon becomes apparent they are speaking about their own mental image of him and not necessarily the man as he was. Reagan, wasn't, for instance, the kind of religious social conservative that is the foundation of the radical-right today. In many areas he'd be considered a RINO today.
Finally, I think the hollowing-out of intelligence can trace its roots to before Reagan though Reagan obviously made some colossal mistakes in that area. A lot of that blame, IMO, rests with Congress which seemingly wants the impossible - perfect intelligence about our enemies and perfect warning about impending threats as long as we don't don't pay any bad people or do any bad things - oh, and you'd better not make any mistakes either. The result has been the development of a risk-averse, bureaucratic intelligence system that is eager to outsource activities with the potential for political embarrassment.
I was too young, dumb and full of you-know-what at the time to really appreciate Iran-Contra, but looking back on it now I agree that Ollie should have gone to the brig and been busted to private.
Anyway, that's about it I guess. IMO Reagan needs to be viewed in the context of his time and also in relation to his contemporaries. Reagan and Gorbachev needed each other, Reagan's relationship with Thatcher was instrumental, etc.
Could someone check the spam filter, I think the first part of my comment may be trapped there.
ReplyDeleteHmm, Reagan...voted for him in 1980, and woke the hell up by 83 and voted against him (at the time, all cast away votes usually went to the Libetarians), however Reagan had one thing going for him that, so far, only one Democrat ever had, Charisma.
ReplyDeleteHowever, considering that when Reagan took officer in 1980, defense spending in 2005 dollars was ~$325.1 billion dollars, and by 1987, rose to a remarkable ~$456.1 billion dollars, of which ~$137 billion of it was ear-marked for procurement speaks volumes about hiding the actual costs of defense in terms of GDP percentages.
Hard numbers, Republicans really don't like them.
Secondly, Reagan outspent the Russians, and in that he has the credit of forcing the Russians to increase their tactical forces, along with the threat of "Star Wars" and the "MX PeaceKeeper" along with other programs associated with the "Milstar" that proved to be too much of a challenge to the Russians.
Hence the reason why so many espionage cases exploded in the US...the Russians had a hell of a time trying to stay abreast that they had to rely on "other means" to keep in touch.
However, as far as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only credit that Reagan can claim was that he was able to borrow a greater amount against our financial future than Russian could ever hope to borrow.
That loan would be repayed by a future President Clinton who was able to balance the budget and actually put the country back in the black.
The key issue here for all of us is that there is no free ride...there is a pay day some day, and we must remember that borrowing against the future means that at some future date...the bill collector will show up on our door step and demand payment.
A nations security isn't based on it's defense budget, it's based on whether the country as a whole is solvent or not.
Today, 86% of our GDP is accounted to interest to our national debt...at one point is was up to 90% of our GDP...something to keep in mind when Sun Tzu spoke about prolonged wars and the cost on the country that doesn't resolve them quickly.
Andy-
ReplyDeleteNo posts in the spam folder.
The Regan legacy? Perhaps part is reflected below.
ReplyDeleteThe Wall Street Journal reports that "Beginning in March, the agency (US Postal Service) will start the process of closing as many as 2,000 post offices, on top of the 491 it said it would close starting at the end of last year. In addition, it is reviewing another 16,000 -- half of the nation's existing post offices -- that are operating at a deficit, and lobbying Congress to allow it to change the law so it can close the most unprofitable among them."
Does a nation that makes local postal service a function of the local post office's ability to turn a profit deserve to survive? The USPS's $8.5 billion deficit amounts to $28.33 per American. Is this such an onerous burden for providing this key piece of infrastructure?
Al,
ReplyDeleteThanks for looking. I'll try to post the first part again.
Part 1, then part 2 (part 3 is posted above):
ReplyDeleteI probably have a different perspective than most here for a couple of reasons - first, I was a kid during most of Reagan's presidency. I was too young to vote in either the 1980 or 1984 elections. Secondly, my undergraduate education was primarily in Russian history and language. Third, I was in Moscow in 1991 during the Gorbachev coup.
So I don't end up writing an essay here, I went through my bookmarks and found two pieces that I generally agree with. The first represents a Russian/Soviet view of the Cold War and its end. The second is a book review of "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History" (which I have not read).
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteSo, some quick comments related to Seydlitz's four areas:
1. Regarding the cold war, I would some everything up by quoting this from the Library of Conress:
"Soviet views of the United States changed once again after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in early 1985. Arms control negotiations were renewed, and President Reagan undertook a new series of summit meetings with Gorbachev that led to arms reductions and facilitated a growing sympathy even among Communist leaders for more cooperation and the rejection of a class-based, conflict-oriented view of the world."
Reagan's role was important in that he recognized the change that Gorbachev represented and favorably altered US policy in response. Counterfactuals are always difficult, but one wonders if the 1991 coup would have gone differently (or happened earlier) had Reagan (and GHWB) exploited the situation differently by ratcheting up pressure and doubling-down on the "evil empire" theme. Reagan's substantive engagement with Gorbachev worked to weaken the hard-liners in the USSR - for that I think he deserves recognition, in addition to signing or beginning negotiations on some of the most important arms control treaties in the post-WWII era.
2. I don't think image necessarily triumphed over substance. Reagan was not as dumb as his detractors claimed, but more importantly, image matters. Politics isn't merely a debate between competing technocratic visions - image, personality and the ability of a politician to connect with the people is not something that should be belittled. Clinton had the same gift - his "I feel your pain" moment was completely believable because of his ability to empathize with people.
Part of Reagan's popular appeal was his ability to sell the narrative that frugality isn't a virtue - that "greed is good" (quoting Gordon Gecko) - to the self-centered boomer generation which lapped it up like hungry little puppies. Probably a topic for a different time, but I put a lot of our problems today squarely at the feet of the boomer narcissism and the politicians that have pandered to them for several decades now.
So, some quick comments related to Seydlitz's four areas:
ReplyDelete1. Regarding the cold war, I would some everything up by quoting this from the Library of Conress:
"Soviet views of the United States changed once again after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in early 1985. Arms control negotiations were renewed, and President Reagan undertook a new series of summit meetings with Gorbachev that led to arms reductions and facilitated a growing sympathy even among Communist leaders for more cooperation and the rejection of a class-based, conflict-oriented view of the world."
Reagan's role was important in that he recognized the change that Gorbachev represented and favorably altered US policy in response. Counterfactuals are always difficult, but one wonders if the 1991 coup would have gone differently (or happened earlier) had Reagan (and GHWB) exploited the situation differently by ratcheting up pressure and doubling-down on the "evil empire" theme. Reagan's substantive engagement with Gorbachev worked to weaken the hard-liners in the USSR - for that I think he deserves recognition, in addition to signing or beginning negotiations on some of the most important arms control treaties in the post-WWII era.
2. I don't think image necessarily triumphed over substance. Reagan was not as dumb as his detractors claimed, but more importantly, image matters. Politics isn't merely a debate between competing technocratic visions - image, personality and the ability of a politician to connect with the people is not something that should be belittled. Clinton had the same gift - his "I feel your pain" moment was completely believable because of his ability to empathize with people.
Part of Reagan's popular appeal was his ability to sell the narrative that frugality isn't a virtue - that "greed is good" (quoting Gordon Gecko) - to the self-centered boomer generation which lapped it up like hungry little puppies. Probably a topic for a different time, but I put a lot of our problems today squarely at the feet of the boomer narcissism and the politicians that have pandered to them for several decades now.
ok, part two of my comment has now disappeared. Please check the spam again if you don't mind.
ReplyDeleteSven,
ReplyDeleteChechnya, Abchasia, South Ossetia, Berg-Karabach are mere echo's of an explosion that didn't happen.
There was no war to keep the Soviet Union together. The wars mentioned above are comparatively petty insurrections within splinters of empire.
There are several ways we can look at defense spending. We already know that in terms of GDP spending has largely been flat. GDP is problematic though - for example, defense spending looks lower in the 1990's than it actually was because our GDP was inflated by a bubble economy.
ReplyDeleteYou can look at it as a portion of total government outlays, for instance here. However, this is also a bit deceiving because our government outlays in some areas (mainly medicare and SS), have grown 2-3 times the rate of inflation for a few decades now. They are eating up an ever-bigger chunk of the federal pie, which in turn makes military spending appear smaller on that chart.
There is defense spending adjusted for inflation. While useful, this doesn't take into account anything else, like the size or wealth of the country, etc. For example, it takes a lot more resources (ie. taxes) to get $500 billion worth of defense in 1950 than it does in 2005 because the country had a smaller population.
My personal favorite is to combine the inflation-adjusted spending and look at it on a per capita basis. In other words, the amount of money spent on defense for each person in the USA. This is one of the few charts I can find that looks at it from this perspective. I think it's a bit cheesy in that it tries to add in defense-related debt, but if you take that out, I think it shows as good a metric as any for the defense budget over the years.
Andy-
ReplyDeleteReleased two of your posts from the spam filter.
Imo RR's role was in making the deals with Gorbi and allowing him to then in effect destroy the USSR. US military spending had little to do with it. The USSR could have continued on for some time had not Gorbi taken his big gambles. Ligachev or even Gorbi could have returned to the hard-line as late as 1987-88 and the whole thing could have lasted maybe another ten years. Maybe we're in agreement here, don't know.
As to intelligence/PMC's, bureaucracy is how government operates, is actually a requirement for control as well as oversight. Having "cowboys" run their own operations is contrary to both control and oversight and usually leads to illegalities and other unintended consequences. Part of the problem we have today imo is that the intelligence community has become simply too large and unaccountable.
"There is a myth that the defence budget is out of control.
ReplyDeleteIts just that, a myth. It falls apart under even the most basic examination"
You're using entirely wrong metrics. Everything falls apart if investigated wrongly.
A budget is at the very latest too high if it is greater than its utility. It's already too high if its return on investment is inferior to alternatives.
It's difficult to compare so-called U.S. "defense" spending utility with other budgets' utility, but it's extremely easy to see that no national security issue does even remotely require that much spending. In fact, the U.S. could cut its military spending to $ 50 billion and would still be safe, being allied with several of the top 20 military powers including two nuclear powers and bordering no no militarily significant countries.
All those "threats" that supposedly justify U.S. military spending are really troubles that are based on meddling in other's affairs on other continents, mostly quite distant from notable allies. Other supposed threats are not threats to the U.S., but to allies who could be dropped from ally status at no cost. Taiwan, for example, doesn't even bother enough about the PRC to keep its industry from becoming entirely depending on cross-strait trade or modernise its 1960's army.
U.S. military spending is grossly inflated and everybody who can't see that has at least one problem.
Now probably you'll respond that the world is so safe because the U.S. is so militarised. I respond that the world is so messy because the U.S. is so militarised. Good luck in the attempt to prove anything in this belief-based contest.
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the spam-assistance.
My last on military spending isn't really related to RR and was just a response to some of the earlier comments about relative defense spending.
I think we're mostly in agreement. I don't think the Reagan military build-up was decisive, but I don't think it was irrelevant either. A specific example was the GLCM which, along with the decision to deploy them and the pershings to Europe, was instrumental in leading to the INF treaty. In other words, the build-up got us some negotiating leverage. Whether that was the original intent for the build-up, I don't know. Some of RR's staff claim it was, but AFAIK, those claims were made after the fact and could be self-serving. Either way I think the build-up contributed but was not the decisive element that changed Soviets.
Like I said, I give Reagan credit for seeing the opportunity that presented itself when Gorby tried to reform communism and then capitalizing on it. That's a contrast to the neocons who, at that time and now, insist that negotiating with enemies is weakness.
On intelligence, of course government needs bureaucracy and intelligence specifically needs oversight - it's a question of degree. See the latest over at Pat Lang's place - I agree with his description of the problem though I disagree with his apparent support. The first two priorities for most of the IC these days are: Protect the budget and CYA. Lang is exactly correct when he says that competence is a low priority.
Al-
ReplyDelete"Does a nation that makes local postal service a function of the local post office's ability to turn a profit deserve to survive?"
It's just a little thing isn't it? A part of state infrastructure that has always been there, but when the local post office is too much for the budget - and everyone just yawns when it gets closed down, you really have to ask yourself - what's happened?
Andy-
ReplyDeleteJust call me a country boy, but I have a whole lot of problems with commercialized intelligence collection. Clearances are one thing. You say that's easy because they're all former military or intelligence services, but then that makes the government the trainer for such enterprises who then reap the benefits leaving the cost of training/clearances to the taxpayer. Not to mention how are you going to keep your good ops on the farm when they can make big $$$ working for a PMC? PMC's don't make the problem of competence better, they make it worse . . .
Then there's problem of your PMC or rather PIC in this case having a conflict of interest. He works for you but also these other clients and they want to know what he knows, but you don't want them to know . . . so what do you get?
Intelligence collection, especially Humint, is an art which does not lend itself to market approaches (just as many other human activities don't). There is no direct link here between "efficiency" and "effectiveness" . . .
All, Andy..you might find this interesting, if you don't know already:
ReplyDelete"....statistics from the Office of Management and Budget clearly show that while federal defense spending as a percentage of the GDP did, in fact, decrease following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, defense spending as a percentage of the GDP increased throughout Carter's presidency -- from 4.7 percent in fiscal year 1979 (October 1, 1978, to September 30, 1979), to 4.9 percent in FY 1980. Congress again increased military spending from 4.9 percent GDP to 5.2 percent GDP from FY 1980 to FY 1981 (the final budget approved during the Carter administration). Over the entire course of Carter's presidency, spending for national defense increased from 4.7 percent GDP to 5.2 percent GDP."
Hat tip to Sven for outlining that Defense $$$ as they relate to GDP is not, on the surface meaningful. Also, The Trickster and The Fumbler naturally Decreased DoD funding post Vietnam. Resources like drugs (in the splendid Seventies),were borne by the troopies. Similarly, Troops who desert do not rate their pay....to be cont'd
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteWho is arguing for privatizing intelligence or PMC's or said anything about "markets" in relation to intelligence? Certainly not me. My point is simply that the IC is way over-bureaucratized to the point that producing relevant intelligence has become secondary to bureaucratic concerns. Read Lang's "Artists vs Bureaucrats." It's an accurate description of today's IC.
While much of his first term was a disaster, there was some strategy, luck and evil: we cash starved the Soviets. Precious minerals were cheap, the Iran/Iraq War dried up oil income (and wiped out Texas), and we gave arms away to everyone looking to buy from the CCCP.
ReplyDeleteMathias Rust and Cherynobyl had more to do with finally kicking the can over and allowing Gorby to push out the old guard. I think Reagan gets credit for maintaining the policies, building all the weapons programs Carter actually started, accelerating them some, and engaging Gorby when it drove the neocons and hard right to want LaRouche's fainting couch.
fasteddiez-
ReplyDeleteWelcome as always . . .
Andy-
Just a chance for me to say my peace . . . I've downloaded Col. Lang's paper and will have a read. I do see a link with RR in this regard though . . .
srv-
Don't disagree with what you comment, but RR's openness to negotiation did allow Gorbi to clear the decks at home, which is my point. Rust and Chernobyl only made the military's/nomenclatura's position worse. Still do you think Soviet collapse in or about 1991 was inevitable, or could Gorbi/another hard liner have won more time?
Ronnie had a few things going for him (tiny Plus signs on the equation).
ReplyDeleteHe had Cap Weinberger for Defsec.
He pulled US forces out of Lebanon after the McFarlane induced Fiasco (intel FAIL, Big Time) went Tango Uniform. Can you see Dubya or Obama doing something similar
He used Marine Barracks Kaboom as a stepping stone to free the people of Grenada.
Hello Muddah
Hello Fadduh
Here I am
in Camp Grenada
He thought FDR was the greatest.
He was head of a union (as you know he did not like the Commie penetration of same).
.....well, I ran out of pluses...I know someone on this blog's august body can provide more.
Couple of thoughts:
ReplyDelete"Over the entire course of Carter's presidency, spending for national defense increased from 4.7 percent GDP to 5.2 percent GDP."
My PEBD is 29 DEC 1980; I was a private in what was essentially Carter's Army, and I can tell you that "Reagan's" effect was fairly cosmetic. The reforms were already hitting the VolAr by the late Seventies, and all the horror stories about dopers and equipment shortfalls were pretty much done by 1982, way too early in RR's first term to have been any of his doing. Likewise much of the procurement such as the GLCMs; a lot of this stuff went back to Nixon's time. Reagan was willing to negotiate, but I'd argue that this flexibility is NOT part of his legacy. The intellectual heirs of Reagan have fetishized his "standing up" to the USSR and forgotten about his willingness to compromise on the SALT/START/INF treaties that helped Gorby soft-land the CCCP, so we get the nonsensical current-GOP talking point that negotiating - or even discussing issues - with your enemies is tantamount to surrender.
(con't)
"He pulled US forces out of Lebanon...(h)e used Marine Barracks Kaboom as a stepping stone to free the people of Grenada."
ReplyDeleteHey, I am one of the Grenadian-Freeing Heroes my own self! (Takes an elaborate bow). Let me remind you that my division (82nd) was once famed for getting more medals than there were bodies on that paradisical island. The XO of 407th Medical Battalion famously jumped on a C-141, flew down there, delievered the battalion's mail, flew home, put himself in for a Bronze Star and CMB. Stud-o-licious.
Anyway, having been there at the time, I fee free to say that the two were VERY much unrelated.
Lebanon was a fuckup pure and simple. The USMC had no mission, we (not for the first time) were confused about what "peacekeeping" was and is (there was no peace to keep in Beirut), and made the mistake of siding against the Muslim factions without realizing the implications of same. When the BLT commander completely fucked the dog on his security arrangements Reagan DID make a move that does sort of qualify as a "legacy", only not a proud one - he essentially "took the blame" and allowed the USMC chain to skate, rather than allow a military commission to establish that the US intel community was utterly and completely clueless, the direction from the National Command Authority either missing or confounding, and the "mission" a complete fiasco from beginning to end. The chain from Beirut to Tora Bora isn't a straight line, but the linkage is sure as hell in there...
Grenada, OTOH, was a pure target of opportunity. Reagan had wanted to pound on the New Jewel Movement for a long time, but ugly memories of Caribbean imperial adventures kept his hands off the place until the Grenadians themselves fucked everything up. Even then, the mission was a classic all-arms goatscrew; it should have been done as a USMC/Navy show, but all the services wanted a piece of it and Ronnie, to whom all warfare was just "Hellcats of the Navy" except with real dead guys, sat back and let the Chiefs have their way.
"Reagan was not as dumb as his detractors claimed, but more importantly, image matters."
I won't argue the dumbness - I'll let Chris Hitchens do it for me (http://www.slate.com/id/2101842/) but as far as the "image matters" thing the Reagan image is, IMO, among the WORST elements of his "legacy". It wasn't JUST "greed is good"; it was the entire Nixonian tradition of smearing his opponents (Nixon famously won his first race in California helped by a flier about Helen Gahagan Douglas prints - on PINK paper!!), of lying and then never, ever backing down from the lie, of openfaced, shameless, clueless weapons-grade stupidity. Reagan's dumbness opened the door for every shoeleather-stupid moron, every Palin, every O'Donnell, as surely as Jackie Robinson broke the color bar in the Bigs. You're right, Andy, image DOES matter ,and Reagan's enduring legacy is that a jelly-bean craving slow-bus-rider is qualified to sit in the nation's highest executive office.
WASF.
Chief,
ReplyDeleteThat article should be called the stupidity, or perhaps dishonesty, of Christopher Hitchens. Two claims he makes in the opening paragraphs I know are wrong - Reagan never said "May the force be with you" at the end of his "Star Wars"/SDI speech, and he never said that ballistic missiles could be recalled. When Hitchens further writes, in reference to the latter, "not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault" he's wrong there too - there are such things as non-ballistic missiles. Who knows if any of the rest of it is remotely accurate (a quick google search revealed to me that yes, South Africa was an ally during WWII) - it's not worth the effort to try to separate fact from Hitchens' transparent hatred of Reagan.
Seydlitz
ReplyDeleteGDP is a far better measure than "inflation adjusted" numbers, because its, fairly, constant.
Petrol is up 80% since I started driving, inflation adjusted £'s are up 20%.
But the point stands, in 1981, Entitlement Spending was 150% of Defence Spending.
Today, its more like 250%.
At one point, is was 400%
How about this for an example, interest on my mortgage is about $500 a month.
If my take home pay is $750 a month, I'm in trouble, if my take home pay is $7500 a month, I'm not.
Defence Spending has "gone up", but no quicker than national wealth has, and considerably slower than Entitlement Programs.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/
Data from there.
"So what do you think? There are soooo many theories on this one . . ."
Honestly, I dont know, I'm not old enough to remember the wall coming down, the only Pole I know who is old enough to remember was already over here "plating jigs" (whatever that means, some building term) for BAE.
"Btw, and I mean this only half seriously, what is the difference between a "Raging Tory" and a "Monarchist"? Remember as Americans, "Tory" for us has an historical meaning . . . "
Erm, my name should be read as "Angry Member of the Conservative Party" rather than "Commited Monarchist". I'm a Libertarian.
Aviator
"Giving him credit for low entitlement spending is like giving me credit for the sun rising"
I wasnt giving him credit for anything. I try to be as factualy correct as possible, and its factualy correct that Reagan did little to alter spending, it was essentialy flat across the board. He increased it a bit in the middle of his reign, but it was back down by the end.
I think honesty matters. Reagan didnt roll back government, he held it to a no score draw.
My comments on Entitlement Spending were just to demonstrate what "out of control" looks like.
Andy
Thats a pretty cool way of looking at it
Raging-
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected as to your objective in the entitlements citation.
GDP - what is it a measure of? Does rising GDP tell us our lives are better? Hurricane Katrina added billions upon billions to the GDP. I can't seem to see where those billions upon billions are indicative of a better life for those suffering from the Hurricane. What about the billions spent to clean up toxic waste, or the BO Gulf oil rig fiasco?
GDP is far over rated as to what it can be used to measure, other than the flow of money. Does GDP show the increasing concentration of wealth at the top? Does GDP show how many 10s of millions of Americans have no health insurance?
Andy: I stand corrected on the missile quote. The source appears to be from a visit that he made to NORAD where he made some comment about there "having to be a better way" of dealing with incoming missiles than just strking back - this is what Hitchens bullshits into his supposed thinking that the missile strikes could be called off.
ReplyDeleteWhat I do remember, though, is that the guy was pretty much a simpleton about a lot of political issues. That's not always a liability in a politican - sometimes simple belief overcomes complex understanding; it worked for Godfrey of Bouillon. But Reagan's simplicity has legitimized simple as a political attribute, and I'd argue that we're the worse for it.
As for Hitchens, he's a mean ol' drunk and clearly hates Reagan. But that doesn't mean that some of his observations aren't valid.
RT: I think seydlitz' point was that prior to the "Reagan Revolution" the axis of the party had been what are now castigated as "Republicans in name only", the sort of people who accepted that government had legitimate business in all sorts of matters, including not just armed might but in providing a sort of bottom floor for society to prevent the sort of scary-revolutionary-Commie-badness that FDR had feared back in the Thirties when he kicked off the New Deal. Those Republicans were ushered in by Eisenhower, battled by the Goldwater faction in the Sixties, and were overcome by the Reaganite "government is the problem", greed-is-good faction in the Eighties. The defenestration is now complete, and the RINOs are now "blue dog" Democrats.
ReplyDeleteAs for entitlement spending, well, there are a host of reasons for that, but a hell of a lot of it is the immense increase in Medicare caused by a combination of increased coverage and increased costs. But that's really another topic entirely...
@TRT:
ReplyDeleteA heavy SUV is less thirsty than a 20 ton truck.
So what? Both serve completely different purposes.
The lower mpg of the 20 ton truck does NOT in any way mean that the heavy SUV is not too thirsty.
Likewise, it's utterly irrelevant how the relation of their mpg figures developed over time.
You need to compare the utility of the SUV to its costs. You need to further compare the SUV to actual alternatibves, such as a sedan.
The big truck is not relevant. It's a smoke bomb. Truck-related issues are separate and separate issues should be discussed separately. The world is already complex enough without people dragging irrelevant information into topic-specific discussions.
I am an economist by university education, and I tell you that one of the greatest mistakes of economics laymen (and ressource allocation is about economic optimisation unless you want to end up with avoidable gross waste!) is to consider irrelevant info in decision-making.
The sunk costs fallacy is merely a specific example of this general probelm in decision-making.
seydlitz89 -
ReplyDeleteChernenko was the beginning of the end of that line, Gorby was already a star - supposedly Andropov wanted him to succeed him, that might be myth, but he played a part in Gorby's grooming.
I think Mondale would have been happy to help Gorby, and Carter/Mondale would have continued containment/Afghanistan/GLCM/Pershings with perhaps less rah-rah and lower body count in LA. If another Republican had won in 1984, I don't think they'd have been as clownish as St. Ronnie's first term.
I think any theory that they would have lasted longer would be dependent on the wall not falling in 1989, and that Ronnie's speech was pivotal to that event. Can't say I know enough about East/West German politics to know.
* I know Mondale did adopt the Nuclear Freeze position, but I think that was 1984 politics. If Carter had been re-elected he would have been stuck continuing most of Jimmy's war toys.
ReplyDeleteHave to go along with FDChief's description, just would remind everyone of the four points in the original post, plus there's something else . . . Robert Hughes mentioned it in the "Culture of Complaint" as how RR left the country more stupid than he had found it. Consider how presidential debates became under RR more about "Zingers" than about substance . . . . Not only that, but issues which prior to RR were considered politically neutral became over time "Leftist" and thus highly questionable for the new "conservatives", actually the Radical Right.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why the GOP has been steadily shedding conservatives for years. But that's only part of what I'm talking about. It has to do more with individualism and how it was somehow connected with solely capitalism and especially cashing in and selling out.
Mises argued that "bureaucracy" was only present in government, but not in business ignoring Max Weber's view that bureaucracy actually started with capitalism and spread to government . . .
srv-
ReplyDelete"I think any theory that they would have lasted longer would be dependent on the wall not falling in 1989, and that Ronnie's speech was pivotal to that event."
Waiting until November 1989 to turn things around would have been too late. The real turning point was in the spring when the Hungarians opened the border to Austria essentially. The turn would have had to come before that, latest 1988. A hard line show of strength to show the Warsaw Pact that the Soviet Army would in fact march . . .
I don't think RR's Berlin speech in 1987 was really that important at all, rather his willingness to deal honestly with Grobi, which in turn allowed Gorbi to ruthlessly deal with his own domestic opposition. To go for the big stakes Gorbi had to have his international flank clear - and RR provided that . . . In other words RR assisted Gorbi in his drive to destroy the USSR, although at the time he thought he was "reforming" it . . .
seydlitz89 -
ReplyDeleteI don't think another hypothetical 1980/1984 POTUS would have waited. Someone would have to convince me that only Ronnie could go to Iceland.
Maybe Gorby didn't come to power in 1984 because of a backlash by the hard-liners against Raygunisms. So Carter/Gorby in 1984 might have gotten the ball going earlier.
If Reagan's NSC staff (at least the important ones) came around to Gorby, I think any democrats would have also (many of the same folks, including some Jacksonians - of both types).
srv-
ReplyDeleteYes, but it wasn't any American who convinced Gorbi that he could actually deal with RR, that took a Frenchman . . .
Mitterand was only necessary because they bought the image and thought Ronnie was a nutjob. The French were a bit brighter on Hollywood than Americans or Soviets.
ReplyDeleteThat stroking would not have been necessary sans Ronnie.
Maybe they were right, maybe RR was a nutjob in their eyes at least, and a very convinced/convincing nutjob at that. RR played into their stereotypes of what American imperialists were . . . anyone else would have been seen as simply a puppet, a stooge of the real power operating in the shadows, the Sovs were like that. Whereas RR was seen as the real McCoy . . . ?
ReplyDeleteSurely someone has perused the KGB archives in the UK and written on RR's dossier?
ReplyDeleteI think Andropov probably understood RR as well as Nancy did. Chernenko and crew, sure they probably only saw Hollywood.
S.O
ReplyDelete""Massive defense and security spending is OK, but "government" seemingly does not include these aspects which form a sort of state socialism,""
That was the comment I was questioning.
Reagan didnt alter defence spending by a large amount, or permanantly.
At best, you can argue he reinforced existing policy, but that isnt really true either, because defence spending had recently been much higher.
Reagan also didnt alter entitlement spending to any degree either.
Its simply not true to say he (or thatcher) cut government spending, they didnt.
Not even a little bit.
Addendum
ReplyDeleteIf anyone really cares why %age of GDP is the best number, look up Zimbabwe.
Military expenditures in "cash" terms were through the roof, simply because the currency used to pay the wages was being devalued like mad.
Here's the kind of thing I'm talking about, this from digby (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/learning-from-ronnie.html):
ReplyDelete"On Election Day (1982), voters punished him by taking 27 House seats from his Republican Party, including most of the ones gained in 1980. That gave the Democrats a 269–166 seat advantage—far greater than the 51-seat advantage Republicans enjoy today.
The day after that woeful election, Reagan’s aides sent him into a press conference with defensive talking points. He tore them up. “We’re very pleased with the results,” he said, claiming that the GOP had “beat the odds” for off-year elections (he went back to 1928 to make the claim). “Wasn’t he in worse shape for 1984?” he was asked. “I don’t think so at all,” he replied. Hadn’t it been a historically uncivil campaign? He agreed—because of all the opposition did to “frighten voters.”
Don't get me wrong, Presidents had lied before, had lied all that way back to Polk lying us into war with Mexico if not earlier. But these lies were TREATED as lies. They were hidden, veiled behind a smokescreen of bullshit. When and if they were exposed (and they usually weren't - the press was pretty compliant outside of a few muckrakers back in the day) they could be tremendously damaging to the politician's position.
Reagan was, IMO, the first American President to recognize the value of the Big Lie. Never apologize, never explain, never retract. Pretend you were right all along. If they push you, double down on the lie! That way you get to sell arms for hostages, you get to enrich all your savings-and-loan cronies, bankroll Honduran and Salvadorian death squads...and everyone will remember you as the square-jawed but kindly sage.
Faugh.
As far as I'm concerned, the most damning legacy of the Reagan years was to legitimize as a political maneuver the tactic of the husband who gets busted balls-deep in the babysitter and who doesn't even yank up his trousers as he bawls at his furious wife "Well! What are you gonna believe, me, or your lyin' eyes!?!"
Raging Tory-
ReplyDeleteMy quote is in the present tense, not referring to RR's time but today. He simply started the ideological ball rolling. The long-term tendency of the Radical Right (and their "moderate" allies) has been to dissolve any connection between government and the social-economic well-being of the individual citizen. What remains of the US social net is there due to political inertia and various corporate interests in whose interest they are continued. In fact any services that the government does with the partial exception of defense and state security are better done by the market according to the Radical Right view (including something basic like postal service as Al mentions). To disagree with this radicalism is to be labeled a "Leftist", that in spite of the basic fallacy of Mises's view as I pointed out above and the basic corruptibility of this whole approach.
Compare this to current massive (massive in relation to the actual threats involved) US defense and security spending which to me is indistinguishable from state socialism. The Soviets did the same thing in regards to their VPK's (military industries) which were lavishly funded (in Soviet terms) whereas social services and consumer goods were considered much less important, or even unimportant.
Seydlitz
ReplyDelete"My quote is in the present tense, not referring to RR's time but today. He simply started the ideological ball rolling."
What ideological ball do you think is rolling?
The US spends less of its wealth today on defence than it did 50 years ago, it spends less on defence than it did it Reagans day, who spent less than the guy before him, and so on and so forth.
Were it not for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its likely that defence spending would be lower than its been for a century.
To believe otherwise is to deny the facts.
What remains of the social net? As I've pointed out, its doubled in cost since Reagan ran around pulling food out of babies mouths.
I wont argue its spent badly.
But it was ****ed up the wall before, during and after Reagan.
No one has yet presented evidence of what he changed, its just been repeated that he changed everything.
In reality, he did no such thing.
"In fact any services that the government does with the partial exception of defense and state security are better done by the market according to the Radical Right view"
I'd argue Defence doesnt need to be under state control, its quite an anomoly actualy. Mercenaries are normal.
But I digress, The US has Charter schools, these are schools ran by the market, and they are far far far and away the best schools in the country. So effective, the UK is stealing them.
The US entitlement budget is near as damn it $1trillion a year.
If you simply put that money in envelopes and handed it to poorest 20% of the country, it would be $16,000 for every man woman and child in whats laughably termed 'poverty'.
Thats $70,000 for a 2 adults 2.4 children family.
Then you wonder why people say government is the enemy?
"Compare this to current massive (massive in relation to the actual threats involved) US defense and security spending"
Well, now you have a better arguement, but its still fairly poor.
"Threats" change far quicker than anyone thinks possible.
In the mid 30's, the UK was expecting war with France the and the US, so we looked the other way when Germany rearmed and sold Japan pretty much any naval technology they wanted.
Its easy to say the US doesnt face any threats, but a year from now, Europe could have collapsed economicaly in a more extreme version of the US Great Depression, the Arabs could have unified in an alternating Nationalist/Theocratic Federation and China and India could have signed a None Agression Treaty and carved up [s]Poland[/s] South East Asia.
Again, thats not to say the US Armed forces dont waste money, but they waste no more than they have done historicaly, and the threat picture is hardly fixed and easily massaged one way or the other.
Raging Tory-
ReplyDeleteLess in terms of GDP, right? But nobody here, besides you, thinks that's a very good comparison, since what exactly is the US GDP today and how much of that is made up of Wall Street "transactions"? To get an idea of the kind of spending we're talking about consider that the costs of both the Iraq and Afghan wars will probably run to $2-3 trillion, this not counting other defense spending, homeland security, intelligence services . . .
Current US military spending is based on the notion of maintaining US hegemony, has been since the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, but when in history has permanent hegemony ever been achieved? So the strategy is incoherent, and the spending based on that strategy makes sense?
The problem with Public Education in the US is much more complex than you imply, the barkeeps have run threads on that subject.
As to the market running everything, it has achieved a good bit in destroying the rail system in your country. I work with a lot of Brits, and almost everyone, even the odd Conservative, thinks Thatcher was a disaster.
You mention a whole list of rather imaginative threats - forgetting a Martian invasion of course - but none of them are very likely for the simple fact that no middle or great power sees military force today as a useful political instrument . . . In any case the US would still have very significant force projection with half of what we currently spend. That's not going to change very quickly unless we go into resource wars and then it won't matter anyway.
I think you need to rethink Mises, he got some of the fundamentals wrong.
Rereading Raging Tory's last comment, I had to ask myself, who would have been making this argument 50 years ago? That current defense spending was in fact so low, that government was the problem, that the market . . . Probably nobody, which shows us how much in fact the ball has rolled . . .
ReplyDeleteChief,
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure Reagan was the first "big liar." What about Nixon? What about Johnson, who knew Vietnam was a doomed enterprise? What about Wilson whose campaign slogal, "he kept us out of war" was thrown out the door a couple of months after he won the 1916 election? In terms of lies it seems to me Iran-Contra, bad as it was, pales next to Vietnam.
Seydlitz,
Robert Hughes mentioned it in the "Culture of Complaint" as how RR left the country more stupid than he had found it. Consider how presidential debates became under RR more about "Zingers" than about substance
Isn't this a chicken-and-egg argument? Did RR make the country "more stupid" was RR a consequence of the country becoming "more stupid." I tend to believe the latter - that politicians tend to reflect the values of the people and, in particular, the cohorts with the most political influence. This was part of the reason I mentioned the boomers earlier. Consider this research for example:
In the survey, Boomers are more likely to name more “definite responsibilities” of government, yet they are less likely to believe that they owe the country certain obligations, including military service, paying taxes, and paying attention to political issues.
and
The differences among Boomers, Silents, and GIs ["greatest generation"] on social issues is a further illustration of how Boomers will continue to regard political participation as a means toward personal ends, and less for larger goals. The fact that boomers are more open to social arrangements and behaviors that their parents would rarely consider points to an idea of politics that has less to do with regulating or prescribing behavior and more to do with allocating resources. The self-interest implied in this politics of resource allocation is evident in Boomers approach to entitlements. Although they are more liberal on certain moral and social issues than their predecessors and expect a lot of things from government, this does not necessarily translate into support for social welfare programs or traditional entitlements. Boomers are less likely than GIs to favor welfare programs for lower income people and far more likely to support privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Read the whole thing, it's pretty interesting. Point being I think it's likely that the dumbing down of the US is not a consequence of bad leadership, but one of politicians reflecting society or exploiting society's values - specifically the influence of the boomer cohort which, not coincidentally IMO, were instrumental in Reagans' victories. Politicians today are likewise reflecting the dissonant desires of the boomers. Even though these policies are driving us off a cliff, I don't see any stomach among our political elites to face the fact that this country is headed toward a cliff. I think the Reagan legacy is as much about the boomer generation as anything else.
I think I've got another one in the spam folder.
ReplyDeleteRaging Tory wrote: But I digress, The US has Charter schools, these are schools ran by the market, and they are far far far and away the best schools in the country.
ReplyDeleteBefore you offer any superlatives to the charter schools, I'd suggest you present some facts to back it up. To date, no legitimate study has found them to be far far far and away the best schools in the country.
You might take the time to read this comprehensive 2009 study from Stanford. The executive summary states:
The group portrait shows wide variation in performance. The study reveals that a decent fraction
of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students.
Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local
public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly
worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.
These findings underlie the parallel findings of significant state‐by‐state differences in charter
school performance and in the national aggregate performance of charter schools. The policy
challenge is how to deal constructively with varying levels of performance today and into the
future.
The "Market" is not necessarily the answer to all social needs.
Andy - post released
ReplyDeleteAndy-
ReplyDeleteYa caught me with the Hughes comment. Actually wanted to bring in Christopher Lasch, but couldn't find an appropriate citation. His classic "Culture of Narcissism" was written in 1979 and a lot of the problems we associate with RR Lasch identifies in that book. So as to making the nation more stupid, let's say it's probably TV . . .
The British Conservative Party's goal is in step with the NATO requirement of Defense Spending at 2% of GDP . . . which explains the massive cuts now being made . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11570593
Here's what the current Conservative PM had to say about these cuts . . .
He said the country had to be "more thoughtful, more strategic and more co-ordinated in the way we advance our interests and protect our national security".
That's how Conservatives speak and act. We used to have conservatives in the GOP. What happened?
Andy-
ReplyDeleteAlmost forgot, you actually brought up two distinct points. The first was Hughes, as I mentioned, but the second, the Zinger, was Postman . . .
Postman was referring to the 1984 Presidential debates . . .
"The men were less concerned with giving arguments than with 'giving off' impressions, which is what TV does best. Post-debate commentary largely avoided any evaluation of the candidates' ideas, since there were none to evaluate. Instead, the debates were conceived as boxing matches, the relevant question being, 'Who KO'd whom'? The answer was determined by the 'style' of the men - how they looked, fixed their gaze, smiled, and delivered one-liners. In the second debate, RR got off a swell one liner when asked a question about his age. The following day, several newspapers indicated that Ron had KO'd Fritz with this joke. Thus, the leader of the free world is chosen by the people in the Age of TV". "Amusing Ourselves to Death" p 97.
Elsewhere Postman refers to RR and lying and how people became accustomed to it. (pp 108-9) which supports Chief's view . . .
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteRegarding Postman, I agree, but that is mainly inside baseball to elites who follow politics. Most people don't and [url=http://www.chrishayes.org/articles/decision-makers/]most people don't follow "issues"[/url] hence image and style count for a lot.
srv-
ReplyDelete"Chernenko and crew, sure they probably only saw Hollywood. "
Laughed out loud at that. So true. Nice.
The usual suspects did some heavy lifting on this thread . . . looks like I got plenty to chew on . . . thanks gentlemen . . .
ReplyDelete"I'm not so sure Reagan was the first "big liar." What about Nixon? What about Johnson, who knew Vietnam was a doomed enterprise? What about Wilson whose campaign slogal, "he kept us out of war" was thrown out the door a couple of months after he won the 1916 election? In terms of lies it seems to me Iran-Contra, bad as it was, pales next to Vietnam."
ReplyDeleteLet me try again but this time I'll type r-e-a-l s-l-o-w...
"Presidents had lied before, had lied all that way back to Polk lying us into war with Mexico if not earlier. But these lies were TREATED as lies. They were hidden, veiled behind a smokescreen of bullshit. When and if they were exposed (and they usually weren't - the press was pretty compliant outside of a few muckrakers back in the day) they could be tremendously damaging to the politician's position.
So, yes, I already went through the requisite admission that Dutch didn't invent official lying.
But
Here's what I said after that: 'Reagan was, IMO, the first American President to recognize the value of the Big Lie. Never apologize, never explain, never retract. Pretend you were right all along. If they push you, double down on the lie!
So no, Reagan didn't introduce lying to the Presidency. But what he helped do, and he and his cronies, including especially people like Snowflake Donny Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney who have been transmitting the Reagan ethos to the rest of their party, DID do was move Presidential and official lying into the 21st Century.
Up into the Sixties what press coverage that wasn't fawning was excluded. Upton Sinclar and Sam Clemens never had a chance at getting a peek inside the McKinley or Taft or TR Administrations. First, the governments were too small to provide real access. Second, journalists were "outsiders", and the notion of a government official spilling the beans was almost unthinkable. Officials who lied were not really in danger unless they doublecrossed someone inside the loop. Exposure was unthinkable. Look at things like Teapot Dome; it wasn't exposed by the press, it took a Congressional investigation to expose it (and, in a nice pre-modern twist, the chairman of committee that exposed the fiddling that blackened Harding's name was a fellow Republican. Good luck finding THAT now!). Everything from assassinations, coups, to JFK boning mob mistresses in the White House happened out of the public view.
A lot changed in the Sixties and Seventies, but the beginnings of the 24-hour-crap-news culture we have now was beginning. Vietnam threw a wrench into the cozy government-press relationship when the newsies began to realize that the pols were spinning them and lying to them. Stuff like the Pentagon Papers began to emerge, and the old-school backroom pols like Johnson were finished.
Reagan realized that despite the ever-increasing likelihood of being caught in a lie, at the same time the news organizations were being pounded by the Right for being "traitors", were losing circulation as advertisers pressured them to be more "balanced". Maybe because as an actor he had no investment in the truth of the lines he read - he just read them, whatever, and left it up to the audience to supply the meanings, Reagan "got" that getting caught in a lie didn't mean the same things anymore. There was SO much shit flying around that if you just stayed on message you stood a good chance of getting away with your trickery.
So Reagan wasn't a bigger or more facile liar, he didn't somehow tarnish a spotless office with lies. What he DID do was recognize before most of his contemporaries that the U.S. public was largely credulous and stupid, something that a lot of people had pretended wasn't true between 1945 and 1975, and that the news media could be gulled, spindled, tricked, and seduced into taking your lies and putting them up on the screen or in print next to your opponent's truths and making the two sound very similar.
ReplyDeleteSo he and his coterie are hugely responsible for the political mendacity we live in today. Every time some fucking idiot mouths some fact-free talking point and doesn't immediately get slammed down, he's living the Reagan Dream.
And as I've said elsewhere - that's a problem, because any polity needs a sane conservative faction. But Reagan - by picking up the Goldwater mantle, among other things - helped assemble the coalition of birthers, Birchers, religious zealots, Israel-firsters, warporn addicts, and plutocrats that has taken over the Party of Lincoln, God help us. And where we go from here, I have no idea. Because you're going to spend a lot longer than forty years wandering the intellectual desert if your can't find better Moseses than Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, and Michelle Bachmann...
Seydlitz
ReplyDeleteNo one see's military force as a viable tool?
The Georgian Invasion of Ossetia?
The Russian Invasion of Georgia?
Iran/Israel proxy wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria
Sri Lanka / Tamil conflict
Is there anyone who DOESNT bribe some of the Taliban? India certainly sees Afghanistan as a knife at Oakistans back.
I said quite clearly it was an unlikely outcome, but the commentariat doesnt have a good track record of predicting the future.
Hitler was peaceful and had no territorial ambitions in Poland. (Peace in our Time)
France would Occupy Berlin in a month if war broke out. (The Times (UK) in the late 30's.
The UK doesnt have a free market rail service.
It Doesnt.
Again, to believe otherwise is to believe a lie.
The vast majority of the damage was done long before Thatcher took power in any event.
The current system works as such. There is a train line between two cities. The Government sets the time the trains need to reach each station along the way, the number of trains, and the number of carriages they carry.
All the private companies do is provide drivers and collect fares.
As for Thatcher, I'm fairly ambivilant.
Like Reagan, shes seen as this big defender of the free market, but she was no such thing.
Government spending as a proportion of wealth was basicaly flat under her as well.
The facts are there, look at them.
She changed some things, the big government owned tax subsidised monopolies were sold off and became tax payers, but most of its just bull from one side or another.
"who would have been making this argument 50 years ago? That current defense spending was in fact so low, that government was the problem, that the market . ."
Now here, I must protest.
I have not said Defence spending is too low, merely that Reagan DID NOT ALTER IT.
There is a marked difference.
I'd also question your time scale.
Go back 100 years, go back 150 years, go back 200 years.
You'll find my comments are fairly normal.
Yours, that government knows best, that the state must be allowed untrammeled power, are the product of the second world war.
Aviator 47
True, not all charter schools are good.
However, its my understanding, that you can choose NOT to attend a charter school.
Which you should do, if its bad.
Thats not the case in the UK, the school you attend is decided by your address, if the school is bad, tough luck. Its your school, deal with it.
Your only other option is private school, which is out of reach of the poor and even middle class, although the middle class have the option of buying houses near good schools, in one extreme case, houses with 110yards of the school gate sell for £100,000 more than those 150 yards from the gate.
Me, I'd divide the education budget and give it directly to the children (well, parents) they can buy a place at the local state school, or do whatever.
My Partners a Teacher, even after all the various employment taxes, she'd need to teach 10 children to earn more than she ever could at a state school, where class sizes are 30 minimum. She could literaly teach the children on our little street in our living room, they'd get a better education, she'd earn more money.
Seydlitz again
ReplyDeleteThe recent defence cuts amounted to little more than gross vandalism. He may have said that we must be co-ordinated, but in now way were the cuts co-ordinated, we ordered Carriers, but pulled the only aircraft we have that can operate fromt them. We ordered a new wave of medium tanks (FRES) for expeditionary warfare but pulled the amphib ships that transport and land them. We've kept our old low level penetrating strike aircraft, but to pay for it, we've cancelled the upgrades to make our new aircraft capable of low level penetrating strike missions.
FDChief
The Big lie is hardly Reagan invention.
What was the Spanish American war fought over exactly? Fantasy dreams of freeing an oppressed people? That was a lie and everybody new it, but it was a convenient lie, so it was repeated until it ctreated truth.
Goebbals makes Reagan look like an amatuer.
Raging Tory-
ReplyDeleteGeorgia is not "a middle or great power". Russia was attacked and responded in a limited manner considering. Proxy wars are exactly that because the powers behind the factions don't wish to be tied too closely to them because . . . obvious, isn't it?
So British railways are not in the state they are today due to lack of private investment in maintenance and simply squeezing a profit out of something which is better seen as a public asset performing an essential public service? Surprising how many Brits think exactly that, ain't it?
"I have not said Defence spending is too low, merely that Reagan DID NOT ALTER IT."
I did not say you did, I said "so low", which isn't the same as "too low", right? "So low" depicts your view accurately imo.
Two hundred or even 100 years ago the views would have been much more based on dogma, superstition, religion, blind following of questionable ideology . . . so yes, there are similarities between pre-Enlightenment thinking and the Mises view of the world.
But the fifty year line is important to this topic, which is the legacy of RR. RR played an important role in ending the Cold War imo, by the international cover he provided Gorbi so that he could focus on this internal opposition, who were far more dangerous than he thought RR to be. But that is just a small part of the story. If we had the economy we have today (and a lot of what has happened has to be laid at the door of Mises and his followers) the East Germans and the rest probably would have thought, "well things aren't so bad here after all". In other words the collapse of Communism had a lot to do with the apparent workability of the same system you trash. You don't have to be socialist to see that.
"Yours, that government knows best, that the state must be allowed untrammeled power, are the product of the second world war."
Where have I maintained that?! I in fact praised your party and your PM for their defense cuts which I find in line with a correct threat assessment.
Chief,
ReplyDeleteYou said, "Reagan was, IMO, the first American President to recognize the value of the Big Lie. Never apologize, never explain, never retract. Pretend you were right all along. If they push you, double down on the lie!"
I'm saying that wasn't unique to Reagan. Now you're saying something different - that the media environment changed and Reagan didn't change with it:
"Reagan realized that despite the ever-increasing likelihood of being caught in a lie, at the same time the news organizations were being pounded by the Right for being "traitors", were losing circulation as advertisers pressured them to be more "balanced". Maybe because as an actor he had no investment in the truth of the lines he read - he just read them, whatever, and left it up to the audience to supply the meanings, Reagan "got" that getting caught in a lie didn't mean the same things anymore."
Politicians haven't changed Chief, that's my point. The whole "lies were treated as lies" thing doesn't make any sense - are you saying that everyone knew the entire basis for Wilson's campaign was bullshit? Are you saying that everyone knew Johnson knew the war was unwinnable and he was continuing it for domestic partisan political reasons? Are you saying that if it came out tomorrow that Obama knew Afghanistan was similarly unwinnable he wouldn't suffer political damage?
Yes, often politicians do double-down on their lies when they are caught. The fact that they are more likely to get caught in today's media environment doesn't change the fact that politicians have been telling "big lies" for a long time and making no apologies. I also don't think your assertion is true that lies, once exposed, used to be more politically damaging. Just to give one example, a few months ago I went through the NYT archives reading press coverage of the Filipino insurrection. It sounded a lot like what we saw with Iraq - there was plenty of "spin." Advocates for the conflict changed their justifications for continuing the war once their original justification proved false, and made no apologies in doing so.
IMO, Reagan wasn't special at all and I think you make a mistake to suggest that Reagan is somehow responsible for today's political mendacity - by doing so, you imply that politics today would somehow be better or different had someone else been President.
cont.
Even if you were correct to split politics into a pre- and post-Reagan dichotomy, then Reagan or any other politician isn't the problem, which is my other point in this thread. You seem to be complaining that politicians aren't being held accountable for their lies to your satisfaction. Well, whose fault is that? You said yourself the public is "credulous and stupid" - well if that is true how is it possible to blame Reagan for today's political climate? You think Reagan is the first politician to exploit the public's ignorance?
ReplyDeleteYour arguments in this regard are self-contradictory - like Hitchens, I wonder if you are simply grabbing at anything in order to cast Reagan in the worst possible light.
I also think you are missing or misinterpreting a more fundamental change in US politics - namely the change from a patronage and clientele-based system of politics to an ideologically-based system. The nature of political identity changed and that transition was pretty much complete by Reagan's time. Reagan, nor any other politician, is responsible for that either.
Al,
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of education, have you seen this?
Andy Said:
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that everyone knew Johnson knew the war was unwinnable and he was continuing it for domestic partisan political reasons?"
He suspected victory was unattainable as early as 1964 (before grunts were committed). Recorded white House talks between He and Richard Russell and other luminaries confirmed this. His belief, as well as those of his interlocutors was that, should he not escalate, he would be accused of losing Vietnam, and be impeached for his troubles.
"What has become of our social peace in this context of power [between labor and capital]? The acrimonies of party strife are considerable among us. The absence of collectivist or revolutionary ideology among the workers does not save them from charges of being revolutionaries. Yet the business community accepts the general development of democracy in America with a certain degree of practical grace even while it wars against it ideologically. This is why we are so completely misunderstood in Europe. For Europe knows our semi-official ideology better than it knows our practical justice.
ReplyDeleteIt knows that our business men talk endlessly of liberty in accents which Europeans, particularly Continentals, associate with a decayed liberalism, transmuted into a vexatious conservativism. But Europe seems not to know that our business men sign five-year contracts with labor unions, containing 'escalator clauses' guaranteeing rising wages with rising prices. American business in practice has in short accepted the power of labor; it has even incorporated the idea of the necessity of high wages as a basis for mass production into its social philosophy. It acknowledges the 'right of collective bargaining' in the various creeds of liberty by which it seeks to popularize the 'American way of life.'
Some of our social peace must be accredited to the fluid class structure of American society. . .
Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Irony of American History", 1952, pp 101-3
What exactly happened? Something big did, and I suspect RR and the rise of the Radical Right had something to do with it . . . The "decayed liberalism" is of course the utilitarian/free market view which equated "liberty" almost exclusively with "property" and thought that political power was unnecessary, government, best kept "limited". But that isn't really what happened is it? Government became the captive of economic political investors who then used government programs to enrich themselves either directly or by removing government restrictions which were meant to saveguard the public good. A radical ideology has indeed taken over, our practical justice reduced to a frail ghost haunting the land . . . while the once fluid class structure hardens . . .
Andy: You've got it exactly backwards. The media environment had changed, and Reagan's genius - evil genius, IMO, but your mileage may vary - was that he DID suss it out. He figured out that by just continuing the lie he could introduce enough uncertainty ("He keeps saying that! Why would he say that if it's not true like THEY say it is? He sounds so convincing! There MUST be something there...") that the punishment for misbehavior - and lying - wasn't going to happen.
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't the case before because, by and large, the lies just didn't get exposed. FDR could lie his ass off about not wanting to get into WW2 because the possibility of exposur was so small. Johnson DID know - and its because of Elleberg that we now knew he knew - that Vietnam probably wasn't winnable by 1964! The difference was that Johnson thought that he, the press, and the public were still playing by the old rules. The idea that someone like Ellsberg would go public, or that any newspaper or TV station would broadcast his leaks...Johnson couldn't believe that, and he had no way to respond to it.
Reagan could have, and did. Look at all the scandals and skulduggery he survived; Lebanon, Iran-Contra, HUD grant rigging, Ollie and the multiple violations of the Boland Amendment, the Inslaw business, the S&L Crisis (Reagan's retroactice changes in the tax code bankrupted many real estate developments. Many S&Ls, which were taking advantage of Reagan-era deregulation, went down in turn requiring the FDIC to cover their debts and losses with tax funds.) One of the reasons he's not the 21st Century Harding is that Harding's people just relied on secrecy and when the secrecy was lost were pilloried for their public lying about secret crimes. Reagan's people's crimes were dragged into the daylight...and nothing happened. Reagan is STILL the idol of the Right.
Because Reagan had figured out the response to the change in how the news system worked. He wasn't responsible for the change - but he was the one who figured out how to navigate the change, and we're living with the results.
"...a patronage and clientele-based system of politics to an ideologically-based system."
WTF? Are you saying that the parties are less beholden to their contributors now than then? Other way around, if you ask me...
I agree that the partisan lines have hardened. But I'd argue that this is more a return to the U.S. norm. From about 1945 to about 1965 the parties wer a lot more fungible than before or since. The Dixiecrats pulled the Dems to the right, the Ike/Rocky Republicans pulled the GOP to the Left. Since then the Dixiecrats migrated over to the GOP and the GOP purged most of their moderates.
But the "system", ISTM, is based MORE on patronage and influence than ever.
Andy: re: the CAP report on education.
ReplyDeleteNo argument that school districts, like most bureaucratic organizations, are prone to throw away money on administration. So taking apart district management to find more efficient ways to run schools is always a good idea.
But beyond that I don't get much from their work other than the usual dispiriting litany of "less is more", "stretch the dollars", "reward success, penalize failure".
I keep hearing similar ideas along these lines, while I keep wanting to hear one of these reports find metrics that contrdict the EEOS (Coleman) study from 1966 that found that 1) economic background was the single largest predictor of academic success, and 2) kids from poor families tend to go on to have kids who are not good in school. Goldhaber, at UW, estimates that non-school factors like income and parent presence make up as much as 60% of the factors impacting school performance. Compare that to studies like Hanushek's that put teacher impact at between 7.5% and 20%.
My personal experience bears this out; kids from stable, middle- and upper-class homes tend to have the sort of stable, middle-class school behaviors that lend themselves to success. They are organized, prmpt, good listeners, capable of absorbing, analyzing, and reproducing information.
Kids who aren't, usually can't and don't
So the study isn't entirely useless, but it does seem to content itself with fiddling around with the furniture in the principal's office rather than trying to really get at ways to improve the classroom.
But boy howdy are we off topic!
Chief,
ReplyDeleteSo, you're saying that RR was a savvy (ie. "evil") politician who understood the political environment in which he operated and was able to exploit that environment for his own political benefit? If so, then I agree! That is, almost by definition, a good (meaning skilled) politician. I would just point out, however, that RR wasn't the only skilled politician in US history. RR wasn't different or unique - what was different was the political environment. RR didn't create that environment which allowed him to avoid most negative consequences for his actions. I think most savvy, skilled politicians would have acted similarly (oh, and look, they have done pretty much done so since).
Not to belabor the point, but it's backwards to hold RR responsible for the political environment that allowed him to get away with his shenanigans. He didn't create that environment. That responsibility rests with the people who were not outraged enough by RR's actions to do much about it.
Secondly, you misunderstand what I said about patronage. The patronage and clientelism of the past was based on personal loyalty to specific people. The best examples are the Jacksonian spoils system, Tammany Hall, and the Chicago machine. That kind of partisanship doesn't exist anymore - at the national level anyway - having been replace by ideological partisanship. It's my contention that the "rules" of ideological partisanship are different and there are many fewer constraints on bad behavior by political actors.
Finally, on education, I largely agree with what you wrote. It's nice to have some data, though, to back up my long-standing contention that lack of funding has little to do with problems in our education system and that we aren't getting good value for what we pay compared to other countries. Speaking of which, I have a meeting today with our school principal who is saying that the school PTO needs to provide funds to the principal's discretionary account because of budget cuts. That should be interesting.
Bacevich on US Defense Spending . . .
ReplyDelete"The Pentagon presently spends more in constant dollars than it did at any time during the Cold War — this despite the absence of anything remotely approximating what national security experts like to call a "peer competitor." Evil Empire? It exists only in the fevered imaginations of those who quiver at the prospect of China adding a rust-bucket Russian aircraft carrier to its fleet or who take seriously the ravings of radical Islamists promising from deep inside their caves to unite the Umma in a new caliphate.
What are Americans getting for their money? Sadly, not much. Despite extraordinary expenditures (not to mention exertions and sacrifices by U.S. forces), the return on investment is, to be generous, unimpressive. The chief lesson to emerge from the battlefields of the post-9/11 era is this: the Pentagon possesses next to no ability to translate "military supremacy" into meaningful victory.
Washington knows how to start wars and how to prolong them, but is clueless when it comes to ending them. Iraq, the latest addition to the roster of America’s forgotten wars, stands as exhibit A. Each bomb that blows up in Baghdad or some other Iraqi city, splattering blood all over the streets, testifies to the manifest absurdity of judging "the surge" as the epic feat of arms celebrated by the Petraeus lobby.
The problems are strategic as well as operational. Old Cold War-era expectations that projecting U.S. power will enhance American clout and standing no longer apply, especially in the Islamic world. There, American military activities are instead fostering instability and inciting anti-Americanism. For Exhibit B, see the deepening morass that Washington refers to as AfPak or the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations. . . ."
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/01/27/cow-most-sacred/
The collapse of strategic thought has led to the current situation of soaring (and self-defeating) defense spending on a force structure with no relation to our strategic situation.
Direct connection to RR, part of his legacy? Don't think so, although his influence as a sort of "Totem" remains . . .
How about some data? I like data!
ReplyDeleteDefense spending based on GDP.
Defense spending in constant dollars (what Bacevich says above).
Defense spending per capita in constant dollars.
Andy-
ReplyDeleteYour Data's nice. It does give a good view of the problem, but not really the cause . . .
What exactly have we been spending all this $$$ to achieve since 1992?
My contribution to the Chicagoboyz Ronald Reagan Roundtable . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://chicagoboyz.net/archives/19960.html#more-19960