So, instead of a blunt recognition of Reagan's responsibility for crises, the 30-year reference slides in as if something mysterious about the early 1980s explains how later catastrophes originated. There is no who-done-it in these mysteries; Reagan must be kept enshrined as the genial ex-actor who revived the American spirit after those trying days of the 1970s.
However, if future historians are fair (and that is no sure thing), the re-evaluation of Ronald Reagan should start with a reassessment of the "failed" presidents from the 1970s -- Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. All may deserve more credit than they got for trying to grapple with problems that now bedevil the country.
For instance, Nixon, Ford and Carter won scant praise for addressing the systemic challenges from America's oil dependence, environmental degradation, the arms race, and nuclear proliferation -- all issues that Reagan essentially ignored and that now threaten the future of America and the planet.
These presidents also followed a generally moderate course on economic policies, finding bipartisan approaches to challenges like inflation and budget deficits, which were a tiny fraction of today's numbers.
Nixon -- despite his ugly paranoia and noxious bigotry -- helped create the Environmental Protection Agency; he imposed energy-conservation measures; he opened the diplomatic door to communist China. Nixon's administration also detected the growing weakness in the Soviet Union and advocated a policy of dà ©tente (a plan for bringing the Cold War to an end or at least curbing its most dangerous excesses).
After Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal, Ford continued many of Nixon's policies, particularly trying to wind down the Cold War with Moscow. However, confronting a rebellion from Reagan's Republican Right in 1976, Ford abandoned "dà ©tente."
Ford also let hard-line Cold Warriors (and a first wave of young intellectuals who became known as neoconservatives) pressure the CIA's analytical division (the so-called "Team-B Experiment"), and he brought in a new generation of hard-liners, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
After defeating Ford in 1976, Carter injected more respect for human rights into U.S. foreign policy, a move some scholars believe put an important nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union, leaving it hard-pressed to justify the repressive internal practices of the East Bloc.
Carter also emphasized the need to contain the spread of nuclear weapons, especially in unstable countries like Pakistan.
Domestically, Carter pushed a
comprehensive energy policy and warned Americans that their growing
dependence on foreign oil represented a national security threat, what
he famously called "the moral equivalent of war."
However, powerful vested interests -- both domestic and foreign -- managed to exploit the shortcomings of these three presidents to
sabotage any sustained progress. By 1980, Reagan had emerged as the
Pied Piper luring the American people away from the tough choices that
Nixon, Ford and Carter had defined. [See Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
Sunny Disposition
With his superficially sunny disposition -- and a ruthless political strategy of exploiting white-male resentments -- Reagan convinced millions of Americans that the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good federal government.
In his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Reagan declared that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
When it came to cutting back on America's energy use, Reagan's message could be boiled down to the old reggae lyric, "Don't worry, be happy." Rather than pressing Detroit to build smaller, fuel-efficient cars, Reagan made clear that the auto industry could manufacture gas-guzzlers without much nagging from Washington.
The same with the environment. Reagan intentionally staffed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department with officials who were hostile toward regulation aimed at protecting the environment.
Reagan pushed for deregulation of industries, including banking; he slashed income taxes for the wealthiest Americans in an experiment known as "supply side" economics, which held falsely that cutting rates for the rich would increase revenues and eliminate the federal deficit.
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