Reagan’s Legacy
- At June 11, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
7
While the so-called liberal press caps a week of servile eulogizing of former President Ronald Reagan, I thought it might be useful to point readers toward one of the few counterpoints in this orgy of Gipper nostalgia. New York Newsday ran the following op-ed piece yesterday: Urban suffering grew under Reagan
Reagan is often lauded as “the great communicator,” but he used his rhetorical skills to stigmatize poor people, which laid the groundwork for slashing the social safety net – despite the fact that Reagan’s own family had been rescued by New Deal anti-poverty programs during the Depression.
During his stump speeches, Reagan often told the story of a so-called welfare queen in Chicago who drove a Cadillac and had ripped off $150,000 from the government using 80 aliases, 30 addresses, a dozen Social Security cards and four fictional dead husbands. Reagan dutifully promised to roll back welfare. Journalists searched for this welfare cheat and discovered that she didn’t exist. Nevertheless, he kept using the anecdote.
The full article by Peter Dreier, director of the urban and environmental policy program at Occidental College, is well worth reading.
couscous1021
Thanks for the link- can always use some fuel for my eye rolling as I pass by the coverage.
I’m still trying to figure out how much of this mildly infuriating sanctification has to do with the man himself as opposed to our incessant need for leaders to function primarily as figureheads.
I’m also trying to figure out if the approval rating upon his departure (something like 65, 68 percent) was a result of Americans believing his two-faced rhetoric or, most troubling, recognizing their own passive hatred of the poor and applauding, say, the Iran-Contra affair for its “good intentions”. I was quite young when he left office- it is hard for me to piece together the puzzle when I have so few tangible memories of the Nation’s attitude and level of dissent.
This excerpt from BBC gives me some hope that some of us have simply been performing an act of bullshit romantic posturing this week:
“….Economist Mark Weisbrot says the adulation in the wake of Reagan’s death is natural.
“Past presidents look a lot better when compared to the present,” he told BBC News Online.
Even Richard Nixon – forced to resign in disgrace – was remembered as a great statesman when he died, rather than as the architect of Watergate”
The article also holds out hope that history, at least in the case of the Reagan administration, is not as mutable and as subjective as this funeral nonsense would suggest.
I hold less hope. I can only guess that your level of optimism is a few slivers thinner than mine.
steelbrassnwood
Re: We’ll see when Carter dies
The acid test will be whether Jimmy Carter will be lionized as a smart and decent human being, or whether there’ll be jokes about killer rabbits and unfair mischaracterizations of the “malaise” speech.
couscous1021
Re: We’ll see when Carter dies
Yes, I hadn’t thought of that, but you are right. It seems quite tough to measure the declining slope of public opinion in the wake of a death.
admin
I think the Reagan love fest is a consequence of at least two things: people’s natural reluctance to speak ill of the dead, especially after a protracted illness; and, the right-wing propaganda machine cranked up at full volume. If you repeat a lie often enough, people start to believe it. If you can infect the mainstream media with it, so much the better.
admin
I don’t think you can say that Reagan, despite his many flaws, was a figurehead. He may not have known the ship of state’s exact position on the chart, but he decisively steered it to starboard for eight years. I think the most recent president you could call a figurehead would be Gerald Ford.
As the Weisbrot told the BBC, even conservatives find Dubya deeply lacking compared to Reagan.
admin
Re: We’ll see when Carter dies
I think that history will treat Carter much better than his contemporaries did, and Reagan much worse.
admin
And this very good letter in this morning’s Washington Post: