The New Republic

Marty, I hope you don't think this is off topic, but have you spoken recently with your friend Al Gore?  The need for him to endorse Obama has increased exponentially over the past several days, since Bill Clinton -- after having sullied the office of President (literally) -- has now diminished the traditional role of an ex-President.  Al Gore could, by endorsing Obama, and speaking positively about Obama without attacking Hillary, set an example of statesmanship.  He could also subtly justify why he was absolutely correct, contrary to the conventional wisdom, to bench Bill Clinton back in 2000.

- LDuncan

January 23, 2008 at 7:56pm

Funny, Mr. P, but I remember vividly TNR essays back in the Reagan era-- I was trying to learn how to write well, and copying and memorizing high points of the more memorable pieces from Irving Howe, Krauthammer, Wieseltier et al-- skewering Reagan as a reactionary BS artist.

If and when TNR's archives are ever made searchable again, I'll be able to find Irving Howe's masterful conceit of the Reagan administration as a cast of villains lifted from Dickens' inventory of mid-Victorian grotesques: Meese as Podsnap, Watt as Squeers, Haig as Murdstone.

Not quite "individualism", as you put it now, but something rather more foul and repellent. Perhaps age is mellowing all of us. But I'd still appreciate it if we could search the archives for these gems.

- teplukhin2you

January 23, 2008 at 8:06pm

He also purposefully introduced new paperwork intentionally designed to confuse welfare recipients in order to drop some off the welfare rolls, reversed Carter's CAFE limits which led to our *re*-dependence on foreign oil, and intentionally tied the hands of future presients via "starve the beast" budget deficits.  Reagan gets credit for moral clarity on the cold war.  But generous?  Maybe to Latinos and the rich whites who employ them.

- Lymon1

January 23, 2008 at 8:24pm

Teplukhin2 makes an excellent point.  

But the canonization of Reagan has emerged triumphant.  So much so that former critics - liberal politicians and even political commentators - find themselves seeing Reagn in much more generous light lest blasphemy undermine their other arguments.

And the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed liberals to be more generous in crediting Reagan for moral clarity.  At the time, this "clarity" was seen as provocation.

That said, it would be fair (but not popular) to point out that the Bush administration and its disasters are a direct product of the worst aspects of the Reagan legacy - defecit spending, the courting of theocrats and a political culture of passing the buck, sound-bites over substance and  phony patriotism.

Yeah, I think we'll be  debating Reagan's legacy for a long time - if we're allowed to do so.

- citizenghost

January 24, 2008 at 7:25am

Can't wait for future TNR editors writing nice things about Bush.

Reagan was a catastrophe -- for domestic political process, domestic policies, and for foreign policy...Today's Right, at least in part, comes out of the "Reagan Revolution," as his worshippers  call it, along with the Democrats caving into it...The country and the world will be paying the price for a long time. Enough with the fond recollections, Peretz.....

- LISAH

January 24, 2008 at 10:52am

Oh for god's SAKE - did anyone actually watch Obama?  A proud progessive liberal (how may are there of those in public life?) endorsing Reagan?  Please.  He admired Reagan's ability to create a movement and inspire people to great change, sound familiar? Obama's compliments were entirely tactical with nothing to do with philosophy or ideology.  Whatever you think of Reagan, it's hard to argue against Obama's point.  It goes without saying that Reagan's movement is dead and gone, rigor mortis set in around 2002 (which Obama could have helpfully pointed out).

As far as tweaking Clinton, old Bill has it coming you have to admit. What we can argue about forever from Obama's comments was whether the third way stuff had a big philosophical impact on governing (well of course it did, name one candidate not running on it or one Western European leader who didn't win on it).  Obama was just picking on Bill, which he should do more of.

- Wandreycer1

January 24, 2008 at 11:34am

While I think that Reagan deserves to be treated fairly in historical assessments, I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over: Bitburg, Neshoba, ketchup as vegetable, vetoing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, opposing renewal of the Voting Rights Act, Iran Contra (which really ought to go down as far, far worse than anything Nixon or for the love of God Clinton did, yielding to terrorism after the Marine bombings, his clear reluctance to support the MLK Holiday except for the clear threat of veto, rising poverty in a supposed era of plenty, ghastly debts . . .

dcat

- derekcatsam

January 24, 2008 at 11:37am

Surprising and welcome comments from the Spinester's on this.

The  propaganda coup for Regean's legacy is his defeat of the evil empire. Not so.

The CIA told him that the Soviet threat was overhyped; even Nixon told him he could slash the defence budget and still balance the books.

Instead he played into the Soviet hardliners hands with the military build up. This extended the Cold War at the cost of domestic growth.

The Gippers legacy is paper thin. Leave this idolatry to the right wingers.  

- The Ignorant Populist

January 24, 2008 at 3:06pm

His domestic record was all in all pretty bad. His foreign policy record was mediocre, with one huge exception: per the Soviets I've talked to, incl the head of hte USA-Canada Institute, Reagan's SDI program scared the sh*t out of the Politburo. Combined with the missile placements, the huge military buildup, the harsh rhetoric, and perhaps most important of all, America's extraordinary leap forward in semiconductor technology during Reagan's time, SDI convinced the Politburo that the arms race was lost, for good. hence they took a gamble on an obscure hick politician who couldn't even speak Russian well, the rube from the south called Gorbachev and his "new Thinking" that amounted to nothing less than waving a white flag.

No SDI, no Gorbachev, no "New Thinking", no restraint in Oct 89, no end to the Cold War. Peggy Noonan's view is the same as the old sovki's view: the USSR didn't fall; it was pushed, and Reagan pushed it harder than anyone. That alone ensures his place in history. But the rest of his record is mediocre at best.

- teplukhin2you

January 24, 2008 at 3:11pm

This piece by Marty was surprisingly stupid. Not provocative - stupid.

In the '80s I was living in Communist Romania under a mad dictator, Ceausescu, and thinking only of how to emigrate from a crazy, anti-Semitic and bankrupted Romania . Reagan's actions had zero effect on Communism,. Communism crumbled because its contradictions, because of massive alcoholism which impaired defense capability and economy at the same time and because of the courageous leaership of Gorbachev. Reagan had nothing to do with it.

Even as we (the circle of friends I was in) were hoping to escape Commuism and see it destroyed, Reagan was no model. We knew Reagan to be a phony individual who consulted astrologers. We also knew that the economic inequality of Communist countries, in which nomenklatura was well-off and most others were very poor, was emulated by Reagan in the US. This  is why there are so many filthy-rich men in the US now - people like Dick Cheney are not so rich because they invented some new product. They're rich because they got no-bid contracts to companies that employed them precisely because of their political power. They're rich becaue they're not taxe enough - and that was Reagan's main idea. Well, that's how nomenkltaura got rich too.

To see that nasty windbag Reagan  lionized here is a bad surprise. But it comes from Peretz, who liked George W. Bush. Great, isn't it? Why don't you to The National Review, Mr. Peretz? Take Peter Beinart with you too, so that he can continue hugging Joanh Goldberg or other assorted crooks.

- sleepyavl

January 24, 2008 at 4:17pm

A couple of points:

1. Regean did scare the shit out of them, but at best this made them realize that their 70's view of a "correlation of forces" was wrong. Very wrong and SDI did do this.

But, they never built up their military forces to try and match Regean's. So their defence burden never really increased during the Regean years. This is further evidence that they were nearing the end, regardless.

2. It can be argued that the rhetoric and posture did help create conditions for the rise of Gorb, but that is very different to claiming that those actions deterministically led to only one possible outcome. I

n fact, Regean increased tension to such a needless point that it very nearly resulted in a nuclear confrontation in the fall of 83. If the Soviets had ordered a counter-alert, as they were very, very close to doing, Western intelligence would have noticed and their would have been a nuclear war. Luckily, Soviet intelligence officers leaked the war scare to their British compatriots and steps were taken to reassure the Soviet leadership that Regean was not about to try to win a "first-strike war". In short, we got lucky and the threat was raised to a pointless and dangerous level with little or no benefit.

3. Regean's champions point to his toughness as the reason for the end of the Cold War. But it was far from linear. His moderation was at least as crucial. Three other factors are rarely mentioned: The campaign for human rights in Eastern Europe; US policy was moderating even before Gorb took power and finally Regean and Bush flexibility and moderation. The US peace movements role in helping create this flexibility is also under estimated.

So, the toughness of Regean and the military build up is grossly over rated, simplistic and in fact created unnecessary risks of nuclear war.

Then again he's the Gipper and a cowboy and the Sandinistas are armed to the teeth with Soviet pitchforks.

- The Ignorant Populist

January 24, 2008 at 4:20pm

Iggy, 'twas the sovs who put the SS-20s in E Europe (talk about needless provocations) at the end of the 70s. It was that German Socialist Helmut Schmidt who demanded we respond in kind.

Reagan's PR touch re the European left could have been improved, but by 1981 it was absolutely essential-- and a majority of W Germans saw this, even if clueless left-leaning Britons did not-- that we replaced the shambles that was arms control with a serious and strategic counteroffensive to  the Soviets' very aggressive moves across the planet.

Detente had failed, long before Reagan took office. Hell, it was dead by the end of the Ford administration. Even liberals like Galbraith admitted that arms control was (JKG's phrasing) "a sham." Or as Perle said, "If we build, the Soviets build. If we don't build, the Soviets build."

- teplukhin2you

January 24, 2008 at 6:12pm

Look, you guys can intellectualize this all you want.  But, Carter and the Democrats in Congress all waffled in the face of the Soviets in the seventies and the 80s.  

Reagan didn't waffle, and was unambiguously steadfast in the face of Soviet intimidation, even as the Democrats in the 80s Congress wrung their hands and complained of his "provocations" like answering Soviet intermediate missiles in Europe by emplacing our own there.

At every turn, the Democrats begged Reagan to be "reasonable" with the Russians, to deal with them, to not make them angry, or frightened.  Well, Reagan, yes, stayed the course.  And acted like a man.  Not like an equivocating wimp (Peter Sellers' presidential essay in Doctor Strangelove comes to mind whenever thinking about the Democrats of the 70s and 80s).

Now you guys can say that the Soviets defeated themselves.  And it was a foregone conclusion that they would fall of their own weight.  Yadda yadda.  But, the fact is, it's while Reagan was in there and being resolute that Gorbachev emerged and came to the table.  It was Reagan who got Gorbachev to negotiate and make concessions.

And it was under Reagan that the soon to be coming fall of the Soviets became clear.

Ultimately, it will also be seen that the resoluteness of George Bush was the right response to the events of 11 September.  And all the whining and naysaying of another generation of Democrats in Congress will come to be seen as Chamberlanian.

Rationalize all you want, my embarrassed friends.  You can't unpaint yourselves from your historic corner.

- ChanRobt

January 25, 2008 at 2:36am