Anthony Painter pays tribute to Ronald Reagan; though a right-winger, one can admire him as a leader if not admire him for his politics.
In the hit 1985 time-travel blockbuster Back to the Future the veracity of Marty McFly’s claims to be from the future are tested by a doubting Dr Emmett Brown:
Emmett Brown: “Then tell me, “Future Boy”, who’s President in the United States in 1985?”
Marty McFly: “Ronald Reagan.”
Emmett Brown: “Ronald Reagan? The actor? [chuckles in disbelief] Then who’s VICE-President? Jerry Lewis? I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady! And Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury!”
And much of the world still has the same attitude. It is as unbelievable that Ronald Reagan could be president as the suggestion that George W Bush could be. That says more about us than him. Reagan was president. And he was successful.
The easy thing is to go with your political convictions in assessing the standing of a president. The left likes Kennedy and Roosevelt (Franklin); are ambivalent about Johnson (Vietnam) and Clinton (a triangulating politician and flawed man who could nonetheless make us swoon); Carter is ignored and deliberately forgotten (a better ex-president than president); Truman launched Enola Gay; and the jury is out on Obama (oh, how we crave betrayal.)
Bush, Bush, Nixon, and Reagan are generally placed in the political dock. That leaves Eisenhower: more an independent than a Republican and he called out the Military-Industrial Complex and sent the troops in to de-segregate Little Rock Central High School so had his good points.
Much of this is perfectly justifiable. With Reagan though there’s something unsatisfactory about it. There is an important contextual point that must be made: it is possible to disagree with someone politically and yet admire them as a leader. And on his own terms, Reagan was a successful leader. His record though is rightly and heavily contested.
He had two focuses for his presidency: peace and prosperity. On the economic front, he reduced tax rates across the board, he stemmed the increase in federal spending (and shifted it towards defence), de-regulated the US economy and got a grip of inflation through control of the money supply. By the time he left office the top rate of tax was 28% rather than 70%; the top rate of corporation tax was 34% rather than 48%.
Of course, deregulation had some disastrous consequences such as the savings and loans financial crisis.
Productivity increased, unemployment fell, inflation fell, but inequality increased and a federal deficit remained despite economic boom times. In 1980, Reagan had campaigned on the question:
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Watch it:
By 1984, he was proclaiming that it was morning again in America in this iconic commercial:
There are interesting parallels here in today’s British political context. Essentially, the 2015 election will be a battle between Reagan 1980 and 1984. Labour will be asking: “Are you better off now than in 2010?”; the Conservatives will wish to do a Reagan 1984. Reagan’s statue was unveiled today. His political messaging defines our own political times.
But it was his presence on the global stage that has led to his memorial in Grosvenor Square. He insisted that Mr Gorbachev “tear down this wall”:
His aggressive rearmourment is seen as being the hammer blow that broke the Soviet economic back. His promise of the “advance of human liberty” was a siren call that beckoned the Soviet Union towards the rocks. Crushed by economic power and seduced by freedom the Soviet bloc crumbled.
There is more than a dash of mythology in this popular narrative. Leon Aron contends this the conclusion that the Soviet revolution was externally caused in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Like the Arab Spring, the Soviet spring had it roots in domestic corruption. Life in an autocratic state gets you down over time. The Tunisians cried: “Dignity before Bread.” And so did the Soviets and others across Eastern Europe.
And no account of Reagan’s actions on the world stage would be complete without mentioning the small matter of the Iran-contra affair where cash from arms sales to Iran (!) was used to finance the Nicaraguan Contras. Reagan’s administration was no means ethically pure.
Reagan’s record will be debated endlessly. Each side will approach him coloured with their own political hue. But there is something magnificent about him. He had a moral clarity of voice, a wit, a warmth, a charm, a comforting story-telling manner, and a glint in his eye. It’s easy to see why Dr Emmett Brown scoffed. It’s also important to understand why he was wrong.
There have been two legendary post-founding father presidents: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan is not in that category. He’s not really close. However, he certainly is one the most important 20th-century US presidents. We can admire him and question him in equal measure. He is worthy of his statue in Grosvenor Square. Here’s to the Gipper: his kind light up our political world.
51 Responses to “Here’s to Reagan: his kind light up our political world”
Anon E Mouse
Jamie – You’re tripping if you don’t believe the reason the Soviet Union collapsed was due to Reagan arming West Germany and having massive popularity at home. It’s what Gorbachev said at the time as I remember but I may be wrong.
Your problem is you haven’t grown up Jamie and still actually believe Socialism has something to offer people and that’s why you dislike Reagan. No offence but you probably voted for Gordon Brown which hardly shows political awareness does it?
Reagan was a star – and I’d have voted Democrat if I was an American…
Jamie
@Anon E Mouse – You’re tripping if you think that the Soviet Union resembles a Socialist state. Also I notice you only responded to one of my points which concerned the one thing Reagan had supposedly done right concerning foreign policy. Not any of his blunders. Is this due to hypocrisy, ignorance or willful neglect of his record? Or alternatively you may think his actions were justified.
I don’t like to use Wikipedia as a source but I can’t really link to books. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
This article doesn’t even mention Ronald Reagan once so small was his contribution to the break up of the soviet union. I am in no way a supporter of the Soviet Union.
I don’t understand what my personal voting has to do with Reagans record. I voted for the Labour party with a heavy heart at the last general election (and labour/green at Scottish level) not Gordon Brown, that is how the U.K. electoral system works. I voted labour due to a lack of more leftist/liberal candidates.
I do find quite offensive the presumption that I “haven’t grown up”. Not really because of your apparent arrogance that young adults (I’m 25) have nothing to contribute to politics but mainly because it’s from a person who believes someone’s personal voting habits impact on their ability to understand politics and the historical record to which you seem unaware .
On your last points Ronald Reagan was a star but then he was President. Personality doesn’t make a good President. On your “and I’d have voted Democrat if I was an American…”. Firstly the difference between Republican and Democrat policies are paper thin, even worse than the political hemogeny in this country. Secondly as covered above you seem to be re-emphasising that voting patterns somehow back up an argument (a point i simply can’t understand).
If you’d like to respond to Reagans record rather than a dismissal based on a flawed understanding of Socialism and history or respond without resorting to quite pathetic personal attacks I’d be interested. But maybe that’s too much to expect from someone who (form their posts) appears to find personality more important than substance much like Reagan and most of his supporters.
Jimmy
Oh for Heaven’s sake, the Soviet Union collapsed because oil prices fell through the floor in the 80s and they ran out of money. Why the right insists on crediting the Berlin Wall coming down with a president who’d been out of office for a a year and probably out of his mind for many months before is beyond me.
James Bloodworth
To quote Christopher Hitchens,
“Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had “stood beside us in every war we’ve ever fought,” when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war. Reagan allowed Alexander Haig… to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O’Neill and the Democrats of “scuttling.” Reagan sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn’t sold them (and hadn’t traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck. Reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too. Reagan then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher’s intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan’s request, we might still not know about this.)”
matthew fox
I don’t see why someone who put 2 trillion dollars worth of debt on US taxpayers, get a statue.