Why Not Let Ronald Reagan Be the Real Ronald Reagan?

[Wetzelbill]

This is from economist Brad DeLong's blog. -WB

Why Not Let Ronald Reagan Be the Real Ronald Reagan?

Jonathan Rauch commits The Sin Against the Holy Ghost of History:

Real Reaganites Raise Taxes: To reclaim President Reagan's legacy in the Obama era, conservatism may need to abandon the anti-tax dogma that it adheres to in Reagan's name.... How will we pay for, say, 24 percent government?... he creaky, inefficient income tax is barely able to raise even today's inadequate revenues.... By taming inflation, restructuring the tax code, and thinning regulatory undergrowth, Reagan made the welfare state sustainable, something liberals had proved unable to do. He wooed middle-class voters away from liberalism by stabilizing the modern entitlement state, not shrinking it.... Bartlett wrote recently in Politico, "Conservatives would better spend their diminished political capital figuring out how to finance the welfare state at the least cost to the economy and individual liberty." Just like Reagan.

There are two big things wrong with Jonathan Rauch:

The--very strange--claim that the fact that the "income tax is barely able to raise even today's inadequate revenues" is a structural flaw in the income tax as an instrument. That is simply wrong.

The headline--"Real Reaganites Raise Taxes"--and its associated claim that Reagan's aim was "stabilizing the modern entitlement state, not shrinking it." Reagan wanted to cut taxes, not stabilize them. Reagan did not especially care about cutting spending for its own sake. He would have, had he had the votes and had he known that cutting taxes required cutting spending. But because he had, in Margaret Thatcher's words, "not too much between the ears" he did not understand the inconsistency between his spending and his tax plans. And so it is a gross distortion of everything Reagan stood for to say that "real Reaganites raise taxes."

I realize what Jonathan Rauch is trying--for his own tactical political reasons--to do: erase the history of the real Reagan and replace it with something else. But I protest. The story of Reagan's bamboozlement is an important part of American history that we should remember.

From his diary:


http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/02/why-not-let-ronald-reagan-be-the-real-ronald-reagan.html

[11 Bravo]

1. I LOVE letting Reagan be Reagan. (Dead works for me.)

[Demeter]

2. Me Too!

In fact, if "someday it just may happen that a victim must be found, I've got a little list..."


Bonus points if you can identify the source of that quotation.

[TheCowsCameHome]

4. Stole my thunder, but I'll get over it.

[11 Bravo]

6. Gilbert and Sullivan?

[Demeter]

9. But of Course!

It is the introductory aria for the Lord High Executioner and former cheap tailor, KoKo. He was next to be beheaded (for flirting) and so he was appointed to his post, since he could not cut off his own head, which put an end to capital punishment (until the Mikado finds out that the town has been evading his decree).

[drmeow]

7. The Mikado

"and all third persons who on spoiling tête-à-têtes insist"

[DFW]

3. If you do that, the nut case right would melt

They have made him into some kind of benevolent conservative mythical hero
instead of the ideological protector of corruption and cronyism that he
really was (of course, to some, that IS being a hero:shrug: )

[Initech]

5. So when do we get to acknowledge that Reagan was a fuck-up?

Reaganomics failed BIG FUCKIN' TIME, and we're only now beginning to see the long-term effects of it.

[Sherman A1]

8. Precisely

The world in which we now live is the legacy of the 1980's and The Esteemed President Reagan.

[lpbk2713]

10. RayGun was a 'B' Grade actor and a 'D' Grade President.