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Go Home Reagan Worship Vs. Kennedy Worship

THE PLANK MAY 8, 2009

Reagan Worship Vs. Kennedy Worship

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

MSNBC's First Read comments:

Never mind the silly debate over whether Reagan should be used as an
icon or not. The issue of Reagan reminds us of the Kennedy-obsession
Democrats had for decades. One could argue it took the Democrats nearly
30 years to kick the Kennedy habit (maybe longer). So, this Reagan
issue may take the Republicans another 10 years to get over.

It's not a good comparison. The Democratic obsession with the Kennedys is/was primarily stylistic. It recurs whenever a young, stylish presidential candidate makes people feel inspired. It is not, and really never has been, common for Democrats to argue that a certain course of action is wise simply because a Kennedy once advocated it. But Republicans have been doing so with regard to Reagan for twenty years now. I wrote an article about this phenomenon in 2000. An excerpt:

On the pages of today's conservative press,
Reagan remains not only a frequent presence but an omniscient figure.
One conservative columnist urges Republicans to "reteach the lessons of
Ronald Reagan to a new generation." Another writes that "it is
optimistic visionaries who succeed, pessimists who fail. Mr. Reagan
taught us that." When conservatives fear they are on the brink of
failure, it is Reagan whom they summon to stiffen their ideological
resolve. "You could conclude that [Steve] Forbes's withdrawal proves
that the basic idea of a coalition of social conservatives and economic
conservatives, oriented toward liberty, is dead," the National Review
editorialized this year, "But that's not the lesson Ronald Reagan
drew." To associate an idea with Reagan is axiomatically to establish
its truth.

The Reagan presidency lives on in
conservative mythology as a bygone utopia peopled by titans against
whom the mortals of today must be measured. As conservative writer
David Frum observed in his 1994 lament, Dead Right, "Post-Bush
conservatives look back on the accomplishments of the early Reagan
years the way seventh-century Romans must have looked at their
aqueducts: to think that we once built all this!" When conservatives
debate the Reagan legacy, it is not to dispute its merits but to lay
competing claims to its mantle. Witness this year's intraconservative
debate over expanding trade with China. Proponents of permanent normal
trading relations pointed to Reagan's support for free trade; opponents
invoked his anti-communism. Had someone dug up a forgotten diary entry
laying out Reagan's position for such a future contingency, it might
have settled the argument then and there. The premise underlying such
debates was explicated by Reagan hagiographer Dinesh D'Souza, who wrote
that "the right simply needs to approach public policy questions by
asking: What would Reagan have done?"

Nothing like this can be found in the Democrats' Kennedy veneration.

--Jonathan Chait

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28 comments

Yeah, Kennedy veneration is essentially non-ideological.

For one thing, there isn't really a "Kennedy" political outlook. If it were possible to distill a "JFK 1960-1963" ideology, it wouldn't necessarily look like an "RFK 1968" ideology or an "EMK 1980" ideology, except insofar as they're all under the Democratic umbrella. (Throw in the father, and things get even weirder.) And even if there is one, it's not something that most contemporary liberals would get enthused about. If an informed person told me that he considers himself a "JFK Democrat," I'd probably take that to mean that he's relatively hawkish and centrist.

- Androscoggin

May 8, 2009 at 11:28am

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So WWRD?

- jemerk

May 8, 2009 at 11:36am

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Where is that bust from? It makes Reagan look like Alfred E. Neuman.

- parnest

May 8, 2009 at 11:49am

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Well, that's because conservatives are fundamentally authoritarian in their political mindset, and given how disappointing living leaders inevitably are, a dead hero is the perfect authority figure for conservatives to obey. Reagan may have been a great compromiser in office, but past facts are easy to ignore and meanwhile dead Reagan never has to compromise his ideals. George W. Bush's great mistake was not getting killed by terrorists prior to the 2004 election; if he had done so, he'd have become the Jesus to Reagan's Moses in the conservative pantheon.

However, two Reagan priorities Democrats need to pick up for their own: delegitimizing nuclear weapons in the hope of establishing a nuclear-free world; and currency reform to eliminate the $1 bill and thereby save the public several hundred million dollars. I'd even be willing to put Reagan on a coin -- preferably the quarter, with Washington moved to the dollar -- to accomplish the latter. We can always twist the knife a bit and put the Reagan Building in DC on the back of the Reagan quarter, or perhaps an American horse seen from slightly behind.

- rhubarbs

May 8, 2009 at 11:54am

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Disagree Jon. Kennedy was venerated as a virtuoso, not simply a good looking hip guy. That's why you heard things like, "if Kennedy had not been killed, we would never have had the Golf of Tonkin resolution", as for example espoused by Clint Eastwood's character in "In the Line of Fire" etc. Irrespective of the merits of these counterfactuals, they clearly arose (and continue to arise), not from any meaningful evaluation of the evidence, but from Democrats longing for a leader they could look up to as they did Kennedy.

Which is why this analogy actually does work with Regan. By now, conservatives  have ascribed to him policies and results for which there is very little evidence, if not that patently contradict the evidence. Regan negotiated and signed a huge increase in payroll taxes to strengthen Social Security and passed other significant tax increases that would have had him excommunicated from today's GOP faster than you can say Huckabee. What's more, the gelatinous bedrock upon which Republican economic principles stand remains the boom years of the 1980s following Carter's years of stagflation- so much so that they worked out cockamamie theories of how the 90's boom was also attributable to Regan. This is what Kuhn would've referred to as the crisis preceding a shift in paradigm. And boy is that shift a long time coming.

Point being Republicans can find any number of wingnuts to espouse their pat worldview. It can be summed up in a few words of Germanic etymology. They are obsessed with Regan not for that, and certainly not for 'keeping a lid on spending', which was supposedly dubya's sin, but for many of the same reasons Democrats were/are with Kennedy: he's the face of their pipe dream.

- I Majorajam

May 8, 2009 at 12:10pm

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I actually seem to remember Republicans using Kennedy worship as a means of persuasion when it came to the first Bush tax cuts. "JFK cut taxes for the rich, so you should, too!" That line of attack didn't work that well, but I see now why they thought it would.

- benjamin81

May 8, 2009 at 12:16pm

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Rhubs:  What will stippers do with no $1's?  Can't forget the strippers.

- mghogwild

May 8, 2009 at 12:43pm

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mghogwild, we'll always have the two-dollar bill. Or at least Bill Yard will. So you should think of it as a raise for the strippers.

- rhubarbs

May 8, 2009 at 12:57pm

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Can we put the mysterious W. Yard's face on the newly-resuscitated $2 bill?  I mean, Jefferson already has the damn nickel so why give him face time on two pieces of currency?  And I bet that Yard never fathered illegitimate offspring with his slaves!

- wildboy

May 8, 2009 at 1:05pm

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I think the phenomenon of Reagan worship is more complex than that 2000 article suggests. As we've seen lately, the current GOP orthodoxy includes a defense of torture in the teeth of the UN Anti-Torture Convention that Reagan negotiated and signed (and whose principles he explicitly reaffirmed in other statements). So in order to arrive at their current position on torture, Republicans have to *ignore* what Reagan thought about it. If they were somehow forced to confront Reagan's view, they'd presumably have to explain it away by suggesting that Reagan was, in effect, naive: He failed to foresee the post-9/11 world or the ruthless terrorism of al-Qaida, etc.

By the same logic, I don't think a lost Reagan diary entry would settle anything, for the same reason that Jesus' commands that we love our enemies and turn the other cheek have any influence on right-wing Christianists. Reagan's own statements would only be evidence of what the actual Reagan believed -- but the GOP doesn't venerate Reagan, it venerates "Reagan," an imagined construct made from projecting current party orthodoxy back onto a mythical founder-figure. As Rhubarbs says, this is fundamentally authoritarian, although in the same sense that Christianists are authoritarian in their reading of the Bible: not that they actually mean to do what the Bible says, but that they want to legitimize whatever they're already doing by associating it with sacred authority.

- JSmith125

May 8, 2009 at 1:14pm

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This conservative veneration of Reagan (on ideological grounds) is highly amusing.  Republicans completely rewritten their own history.  Here's a guy who raised gas taxes (1982), who immediately reversed some of his own vaunted tax cuts (1982), who saved and strengthened Social Security by raising payroll taxes on business and individuals (1983), who raised business taxes (1984), and who raised taxes again on business (1986).

And on top of those, he compromised with the Soviets on arms control, expanded the Federal bureaucracy by 61,000 personnel, and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for poor people (the WSJ's "lucky duckies").

Being a Democrat, I admire some of these policies.  But it kills me -- if a Republican politicians tried to do any of these things today, they'd be burned in effigy.

- prendergast

May 8, 2009 at 1:15pm

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I had a buddy in the Army who gave a stripper a two dollar bill, and she bitched him out for passing counterfeit money.  Bouncer threw him out the door, even.  True story.

- ratnerstar

May 8, 2009 at 1:31pm

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"And I bet that Yard never fathered illegitimate offspring with his slaves!"

Hey, I'll take that bet.

Yard?

- WoodyBombay

May 8, 2009 at 1:44pm

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Regarding my Reagan-Kennedy item below , Ramesh Ponnuru snarks : Jonathan Chait explains that conservatives'

- Anonymous

May 8, 2009 at 1:46pm

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It is not really Reagan that Republicans worship or adore.  Rather, they adore and worship that long-ago and far away world in which a personage such as Reagan could be popular.  Kennedy never ignored reality; Reagan spoke as if he ignored it, but ultimately compromised as needed to deal with it.  Bush just ignored it, hoping that some adoration and worship would follow if you could just pretend the world away.  That didn't work out so well, so there is a Republican nostagia for that world in which ignoring reality worked.

- DDovenbarger

May 8, 2009 at 3:45pm

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No, I did not. I've long been a proponent of progeny-proof porking. We (a slave and I) did make a mobile out of her failed intrauterine devices, however. I can still remember those little Dalkon shields, drifting in the breeze coming through my kitchen window.  We didn't have enough IUDs just using hers, so she borrowed a couple from a gal who worked in the same, um, facility that she did.

Jewell, wherever you are, if you're reading this: Call me. (That's an order.)

Meanwhile, I'd-a loved to have heard Marilyn sing this:

"Happy birthday to you..."

"Happy birthday to you..."

"Happy birthday, Little Willie..."

"Happy birthday to you..."

It has a certain je ne sais quoi...

- williamyard

May 8, 2009 at 3:58pm

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williamyard, I am always left without speech (or thought) whenever you serve us with one of these tasty fictional (or not) morsels. To possess such a talent for re-arranging certain facts into such richly-embroidered little napkins!  You are a lucky lucky person. I would like, though, to ask, after the manner of Mr. Bennet,  whether these pleasing concoctions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous musings?'

- noga1

May 8, 2009 at 4:28pm

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Reagan was surprisingly effective, most conservative presidents leave the country in the ditch..

- CraigMcGil

May 8, 2009 at 4:49pm

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The Kennedy-Reagan comparison is certainly interesting but like Slugger Chait, I still maintain the this Tourette's incantation of Reagan 20 years after his departure from office is decidedly different from the shock of a murdered leader. If I recall, the Democrats had a JFK video in 1964, which was entirely appropriate and needed, but I do not recall a JFK show at the 1992 convention or at any convention since. And remember, JFK and RFK were brutally murdered, which shocked a nation and that kind of wound takes a while to heal.

The GOP's quotidian referencing of Reagan is certainly based upon their belief that the senile old fart's administration was successful - an arguable position for sure - but it goes beyond that. Reagan wasn't murdered, we have had 2 Republican Presidents since she left office, and both of those administrations have paid appropriate fealty to the Icon, and W. Bush certainly followed the Reagan line on taxes...and it was a disaster. This whole Reagan obsession is just so weird and it really hints at some deep and bizarre Grandpa complex within the current GOP.

- thejauntyboulevardier

May 8, 2009 at 4:50pm

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nogal, thanks for the kind words.

To answer your question: often both. I am always writing in my head, and sometimes elsewhere. This morning at 6 a.m. I ran from the shaving sink to scroll something on a steno pad that ended up in my backpack, then into my car, then onto my desk, and finally, with alterations, below Michelle's post on church and prayer. It worked out, in other words.

Doesn't always. I'd say that a majority of my blatherings have to be made up on the spot. I give them a quick edit or three, then I hit "Submit." Usually I regret doing so within a minute when I see something I would change, if TNR gave me the ability to do so.

A few years ago my mind became quite liberated when I realized with a start that I was closer to death than to birth, and that that fact did not bother me. I could die today and I will have witnessed more than my share of wonder. What more can I ask? Meanwhile along the way I was blessed a terrific education in writing, in particular, and a life full of a cornucopia of astounding people and events (usually just regular stuff happening to regular folks, but still...)

So once the fear of death was out of the way I lost what vestiges of self-consciousness remained, started hitting the espresso big-time, and jumped into TNR whenever my real job (I'm a technical editor at a biotech company) gets too boring, which is about ten times a day.

Commenting on these blogs is some of the best therapy I can imagine, and I learn something from just about everyone who posts. I have changed my mind many times--no easy feat--because of things I've read here. I admit that I can sometimes turn a phrase, but my depth of knowledge about most subjects pales next to any number of the regulars, not to mention the hired help. It's an honor to be amongst y'all.

- williamyard

May 8, 2009 at 5:01pm

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"(usually just regular stuff happening to regular folks, but still...)"

I had a friend who possessed the same gift, to see things in everyday life that would give her pause to chuckle and she could re-tell the most humdrum episode with such wit and sparkle that I would often wish I had her life.  Her mother was of the same turn of mind. She was 77 years old and was affronted when once someone deigned to refer to her as "elderly". The fact is, I, too, was surprised by the comment.

Thanks for the explanation. Imagine, the secret life of a technical editor ! Wonders will never cease.

- noga1

May 8, 2009 at 5:21pm

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I remember the lack of 1 dollar bills in Canada becoming an issue a few years back when I went to a Montreal strip club (which the guy outside charmingly promoted as having "more contact than American football").  I asked one of the girls there what the customers do without any singles, and she claimed that they usually just use fives, though I have my doubts.

- AlanSP

May 8, 2009 at 5:30pm

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Yard,

Thanks for the glimpse into the process that produces all of those comments and and the "origin story" (is it weird that I'm using superhero terms? Seems appropriate).  Your comments are one of the things I enjoy most about the TNR blogs.

- AlanSP

May 8, 2009 at 5:37pm

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...also of course I would note my well-known humility, but modesty prevents me...

- williamyard

May 8, 2009 at 5:58pm

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Alan, I understand Canadian strippers dispense change for the fivers.  Not sure you can do much with the twonies, though, other than recycle them at the same bar ...

- icarusr

May 8, 2009 at 9:41pm

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Churchill said of Attlee, "Mr. Attlee is a modest man.  And he has much to be modest about."

You, Sir, Mr. Yard, are not Mr. Attlee; no need to be modest about thing you need not be modest about.

- icarusr

May 8, 2009 at 9:44pm

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BEYOND THE ICONS.... In light of the silly Republican in-fighting this week over whether or not to obsess over Ronald Reagan, MSNBC's "First Read" said, "The issue of Reagan reminds us of the Kennedy-obsession Democrats had for decades. One could...

- Anonymous

May 9, 2009 at 10:50am

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Do men actually go to strip clubs? I thought it was something dreamed up by movie directors.

- noga1

May 9, 2009 at 11:05am

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