Lincoln Mitchell: Remembering Reagan
[Lincoln Mitchell is an Associate at Columbia University's Harriman Institute. From 2006-2009, he was the Arnold A. Saltzman Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics at Columbia University.]
A few days before the 1988 election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, I attended a rally on the University of California campus where I was enrolled in my last year of college. Although it was reasonably clear by then that Bush was going to win the election, we still held out hope that Dukakis could somehow make a surprise comeback and bring about the end of the Reagan era. One of the speakers at that rally was the mayor of Santa Cruz, the town where the university was located. The mayor, who was probably about 15-20 years older than most of the students in the room, began his comments by saying, "You think you're tired of Ronald Reagan?" After pausing for dramatic effect, he continued, "Well, Ronald Reagan signed my diploma from UC Santa Cruz."
The students burst into applause as the mayor, a well-liked progressive, summarized the feeling of exhaustion and frustration, which a generation of progressive Californians felt towards President Reagan. Between 1967, the year I was born, and 1989, a few months before I graduated from college, Ronald Reagan was a constant presence in California. He had been our governor, our president or a candidate for president for a generation or more. Reagan's extraordinary ability to put Hollywood polish on the politics of the Western version of the far right made him a uniquely Californian political presence; and by 1988 we were anxious to be rid of him.
Today, 23 years after leaving office, almost seven years after his death and 100 years after his birth, Reagan is a legitimate American icon. While all of the elements of his legacy, including winning the Cold War, bringing about morning in America and restoring America to its greatness, can, and indeed must, be challenged, it remains true that in death, Reagan is above reproach.
Much of what Democrats and progressives hate most about the Republican Party, including the class warfare that has shifted enormous amounts of wealth to the rich while economic conditions have gotten worse for most Americans, radical social conservatism and enormous defense budgets that both create massive debt problems and ensure an aggressive and often disastrous US foreign policy, have their origins in the Reagan years. However, Democrats understand that Reagan's enduring popularity means that Reagan can never be criticized and that the rather obvious point that the roots of many of today's problems lie in the Reagan presidency cannot be mentioned, without incurring significant political consequences....
Read entire article at Huffington Post
A few days before the 1988 election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, I attended a rally on the University of California campus where I was enrolled in my last year of college. Although it was reasonably clear by then that Bush was going to win the election, we still held out hope that Dukakis could somehow make a surprise comeback and bring about the end of the Reagan era. One of the speakers at that rally was the mayor of Santa Cruz, the town where the university was located. The mayor, who was probably about 15-20 years older than most of the students in the room, began his comments by saying, "You think you're tired of Ronald Reagan?" After pausing for dramatic effect, he continued, "Well, Ronald Reagan signed my diploma from UC Santa Cruz."
The students burst into applause as the mayor, a well-liked progressive, summarized the feeling of exhaustion and frustration, which a generation of progressive Californians felt towards President Reagan. Between 1967, the year I was born, and 1989, a few months before I graduated from college, Ronald Reagan was a constant presence in California. He had been our governor, our president or a candidate for president for a generation or more. Reagan's extraordinary ability to put Hollywood polish on the politics of the Western version of the far right made him a uniquely Californian political presence; and by 1988 we were anxious to be rid of him.
Today, 23 years after leaving office, almost seven years after his death and 100 years after his birth, Reagan is a legitimate American icon. While all of the elements of his legacy, including winning the Cold War, bringing about morning in America and restoring America to its greatness, can, and indeed must, be challenged, it remains true that in death, Reagan is above reproach.
Much of what Democrats and progressives hate most about the Republican Party, including the class warfare that has shifted enormous amounts of wealth to the rich while economic conditions have gotten worse for most Americans, radical social conservatism and enormous defense budgets that both create massive debt problems and ensure an aggressive and often disastrous US foreign policy, have their origins in the Reagan years. However, Democrats understand that Reagan's enduring popularity means that Reagan can never be criticized and that the rather obvious point that the roots of many of today's problems lie in the Reagan presidency cannot be mentioned, without incurring significant political consequences....