What do you mean where did it come from -- Reagan and the Reagan presidency have been Republican icons since before Clinton.
Reagan was a thoroughly shitty president, among the worst of the 20th century. That he's held up as the shining light of the Republican Party says far as much about the intellectual barrenness of that party as anything else possibly could.
2 -- oh agreed, definitely. I'm just saying the "holding up as a shining light" is nothing new.
True believers worship him. And I have a suspicion their pollsters tell them young people tend to have a soft spot for Reagan, however the logic of their lives is dissonant with what I remember Reagan stood for and enabled. I encounter this myself fairly often.
Pretty stupid! Does two thousand and fucking four ring a bell?
Yeah, Ogged, where have you been living the last twenty years?
The Reagan-worship I think is because really, he's the only Republican president in living memory who wasn't a complete p.r. disaster. What else are they gonna cling to?
"He has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan,'' Giuliani said.
It's the image. He might as well be saying "John Wayne". The Republicans are wistfully longing for the Reagan years, when the coalition that largely collapsed in the midterms last fall was really formed.
As a young person, I can tell you that Reagan is the only non-assassinated ex-president of the last 55 years who has been mythologized by the press, and therefore it's hard not to have an entirely fact-free soft spot for him.
I love Yglesias's bit at the end.
Just as more pointless meanspirited griping; why hasn't the Altzheimer's hurt his image in retrospect? When all of us liberals were calling him disassociated and out of touch, and it looks as though we were probably medically absolutely correct, how are people still looking up to him as Mr. Fearless Leader Dude? His picture is in the dictionary illustrating the entry for "Puppet".
(Obviously the Altzheimer's wasn't his fault. But it's pretty clear that at least in his second term he didn't have enough left going on to lead anything.)
9: I agree. Look, people my age who aren't politically involved remember Reagan as the guy who was President when they were in kindergarten, the guy who gave funny soundbites and jokes, and the guy who was very sick and subsequently idolized by the press. Too young to remember the details of the scandals. So you say "like Reagan" and most of us will hear "like in kindergarten", with cookies and milk and funny speeches.
It's not nice to make fun of old people, LB. They can't help it.
My point, you buttheads, is that we hadn't heard (I hadn't heard, anyway) explicit invocations of Reagan during the campaign so far, but at the debate last night, everyone was working off the same Reagan-loving talking points. It seemed bizarrely planned.
LB, what other man could have the pure strength of will to INSPIRE THE WHOLE WORLD TO TEAR DOWN THE BERLIN WALL AND THE IRON CURTAIN even when he was babbling incoherently and telling stories about office supplies whenever people mentioned the "cabinet"?
The myth lives on.
When I think Reagan, I think Central America. And then I think we ought to dig his ass up and ship it to the Hague to be tried posthumously.
Ogged, your link to Yglesias is a good read, not just the article but the comments:
"The conservative movement isn't ahistorical. It just relies upon iconography and oral history rather than peer-reviewed scholarly history ... I don't think the Philosophy department can explain this phenomenon. You need the Folklore department (La Follette)."
"You might also mention the deal the Republicans made with Khomeini in 1980 not to release the hostages while Carter was in office (Emerson)."
"The American position brought to Baghdad by Rumsfeld was rife with duplicity and double dealing, i.e., play the sides against each other ... A painful irony: It is the same position we now find ourselves in. As they say: "What goes around, comes around (yours truly)."
So you say "like Reagan" and most of us will hear "like in kindergarten", with cookies and milk and funny speeches.
And I will remember how in 1st grade I told Ari that my parents were probably going to vote for Reagan, and he started yelling that Reagan was going to nuclear-bomb the whole world.
at the debate last night, everyone was working off the same Reagan-loving talking points. It seemed bizarrely planned.
It wasn't necessarily planned, but as soon as the first guy mentioned Reagan, everyone else probably felt like they had to chime in with nostalgic comments too, lest they appear less than wholly dedicated to the conservative cause. It's a feedback loop.
My point, you buttheads, is that we hadn't heard (I hadn't heard, anyway) explicit invocations of Reagan during the campaign so far
You need to get your ears checked, I suspect. Part of it is probably that pointing to Reaganism is seen as distancing yourself from Bush. It's only recently that it has become clear that Republicans can and should do so.
I continue to have warm feelings for Reagan, though I admit, certainly, the fairness of Apo's #16. Really, the Dems should be looking up what various players in Republican politics said about Reagan at the time (esp. in the second term), and using it against the candidate said players support. Also, McCain should be referred to primarily as "Neocon John."
Dude, the event was held in the Reagan Library, where Reagan is entombed. Nancy Reagan was in the front row, with Ahnold at her side.
It seemed bizarrely planned
Randi Rhodes was saying yesterday afternoon as I was driving home that they would compete in adulation for Reagan. This far out, for this narrow a base, it's obvious, and boring.
It's definitely deliberate. Here's Kevin Drum's take on why Reagan is the model for what a GOP president should look like:
After all, what choice do they have? Bush Jr. is radioactive; Bush Sr. was an apostate; Ford was an accident; Nixon was a crook; Eisenhower was practically a socialist by modern Republican standards; and Hoover was....
Well, let's not even go there. The less said about Hoover the better. But the bottom line is that aside from Reagan, there's literally no Republican president in the past 70 years that Republicans really feel comfortable with. The unpopular ones (Hoover, Nixon, Bush Sr., Bush Jr.) are toxic and the popular ones (Eisenhower, Ford) are far too moderate for today's crew. So Reagan worship is in full swing because, really, they don't have any other choice, do they?
the event was held in the Reagan Library
Oh. Well that answers my question, doesn't it?
why hasn't the Altzheimer's hurt his image in retrospect?
Because teh hero is untouchable until the next geneation. We're only just beginning to get a realistic picture of Churchill' second term (1951-55).
If it seemed bizarrely planned, it likely was. These people are smart enough to look at the polls. The national Republican party's thematics thrive on conjured tradition and recovered memory. Bush is a terrible albatross at the moment and so they look back into the reliably hazy memories of yesteryear and try to gin up some Reaganalia to blot out our current troublesome affairs.
The Alzheimer's hasn't hurt his image in retrospect because the same people who have an interest in Giant Bobble-Head Reagan as their flag-bearer have been able to spin it as the common man overcoming great trials to serve his country as long as possible, I suspect. On the other hand, I've never ever heard anyone seriously ask about it in the media.
really, they don't have any other choice, do they?
They even have to have invented the Reagan they worship. But it's expensive media-generated folklore by now, and until the end of time.
Heavens, cross-pwning abounds.
16: Me too.
24: Obviously a road trip is called for. Let's go visit the library together, and live blog the ensuing hijinks.
Democrats should take the opportunity to point out that the deficit spending model is still in place, and look at how that turned out last time around.
Please, you people hated Ronnie then, when you couldn't believe he was kicking your ass, and hate him still because of it. What you need to understand is the line from the John Ford directed John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin classic "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"- "When the legend conflicts with the facts, print the legend".
30: Yeah, I thought of that too, but the reality is that most people really don't give a shit.
When I think Reagan, I think Central America. And then I think we ought to dig his ass up and ship it to the Hague to be tried posthumously.
When I think of Reagan, I wonder when we're going to find out the real deal on this fucking shit.
31: Yeah, and we were right then and we're right now. So?
31: Nothing wrong with just disliking him for being a bad president, and turning into an icon blindly worshipped by a bunch of halfwits....
couldn't believe he was kicking your ass
Actually TLL, I'm totally credulous about the ease with which evil and stupidity thrive in the American political system. Nothing remotely surprising about it.
Long-18th scholars: Am I dreaming the passages in Pepys describing the public executions of the dug-up remains of Cromwell and his generals?
The first I heard of the Reagan lionizing movement was when they renamed Washington National Airport. I still can't say the new name of the airport, which makes it hard to book flights sometimes. Sometimes I say DCA. I'd really like to start calling it the "Striking PATCO Union Local 1 National Airport," but it would probably be a futile gesture.
Given that the only alternative in visiting my parents is flying into John Foster Dulles International Airport, I'm really in a tough spot.
32: Well, I wouldn't say that they don't give a shit, but rather that they're profoundly ignorant of what actually happened economically. Remember, amid all the eulogizing, when Reagan was getting credit for the 90s expansion? Pretty stunning.
35. Being right doesn't really matter much, as Karl Rove proves daily. In a democracy winning elections is what matters. Yesterday's pile up on poor Dennis shows that even on the left being right (correct) doesn't matter if you can't get elected. RR is beloved not so much for his actual legacy, as for the landslide.
it would be pretty hard to love him for his actual legacy. The fantasy version I can sort of understand.
41: Being right doesn't matter in terms of elections, no. It does kind of matter to those of us naifs who still care about things like the concept of the nation and all that other bullshit they used to teach in civics class.
Speaking of CIA dastardy, Salon's David Talbot just wrote a book about RFK's efforts to find out who killed his brother, and Talbot says that RFK was sure it was a CIA/Mafia/anti-Castro conspiracy. Not that this is a new theory, but the stuff about RFK is pretty interesting.
RR is beloved not so much for his actual legacy, as for the landslide.
Whoa. TLL says something I agree with.
I get almost as cranky about the Kennedys as I do about Iowa.
RR is beloved not so much for his actual legacy, as for the landslide.
I think you're really on to something there. (although, "you people?!")
My parents are big Reagan lovers (my mother called, crying, when he died) and hand-in-hand with the Ronnie love goes disdain for Carter - the two presidents are never, never discussed separately. The 70's recession was pretty long and nasty, and the 80's recovery was a serious relief for a lot of people (this is certainly what's at play with my folks) who mistakenly give Reagan credit for it.
So the Mormons did it? I guess that's the CIA part.
Yeah, people underrate how much the 70s and early 80s sucked, I think.
39 - The fuckers said they would defund various things on the Metro if all the maps weren't changed to say "Reagan National", but they wouldn't kick in any money for the changeover. Go Congress! Has the movement to put Reagan's face on money gone away yet? What about the put-a-Reagan-memorial-in-every-county ridiculousness?
I'll say this for Reagan: even if he got the idea from The Day the Earth Stood Still, his whole little green men disarmament notion proved to have much better real world effects than the insanity the Team B neo-cons were cooking up.
37 "I'm totally credulous about the ease with which evil and stupidity thrive in the American political system."
A great line but not without a bit of parsing. Those who are stupid don't actually see themselves as evil; and the electorate lets them off the hook by reason of stupidy because the electorate is itself stupid. Now that may sound very undemocratic and elitist, but how else can one explain these phenomena?
45 -- you guys see this Rolling Stone piece that just came out? Fucking crazy.
RR is beloved not so much for his actual legacy, as for the landslide.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at in 8. The landslide lasted, to a certain degree, until the midterms last fall, and the Republicans want to go back to the good ol' days.
My parents are big Reagan lovers (my mother called, crying, when he died)
You know, one of the best lessons I learned as a kid was when Reagan was shot. I knew my folks hated him, and my initial expectation was that they'd be pleased, but my mom was genuinely shocked and upset and the first words out of her mouth were "I hope he's okay." It really stuck with me.
41: That Kucinich thread didn't say what you think it said.
Fuck Reagan. The only good thing that came out of that man's time in office were a higher profile for Jelly Bellys, and the astronomical bond rates that could be scooped up in the mid-80s because he'd fouled up the budgets so terribly that even Volcker couldn't clean up the mess.
My parents were able to buy up bonds with 14% yields that paid for my college. Even thinking about what kind of macroeconomic mismanagement could lead to those kinds of rates after stagflation was supposedly tamed blows my mind.
Also, Central America and Central Asia. Apo has the right idea.
16: When I think Reagan, I think giant lizards on Guadalcanal.
"He has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan,'' Giuliani said.
I'm reminded of Cary Grant's remark that he didn't know what it was like to be Cary Grant.
It just occurred to me that the contrast between the mythical Reagan the Good I was brought up on, and appalling hypocrisy that I became aware of when I decided to read up on the Iran-Contra scandal during the Clinton impeachment was probably the single most important ingredient to my repub-to-dem conversion experience.
60: I wonder how much of it is ignorance (willful or otherwise) like that.
I've gotten a couple of fundraising solicitations from the Reagan Library. (Why? The demographics of my zip code, I'm guessing -- old people sure loves them some Reagan.) Along with the weepy, hagiographic written materials, they included a "frameable" 8 1/2 x 11 photo of the USS Ronald Reagan, presumably because the recipient already has a framed photo of the Great Man himself and doesn't need another. So completely hilarious and awesome and wrong.
Thank god this thread is going again; we fell down the name hole for a while. Anybody got a memory for my 38?
I vaguely recall it, but more in a 'that sounds right' kind of way than actually remembering the passage. Didn't someone put Pepys online one entry at a time as a blog?
62. I have always felt that the latin motto for the USS Ronald Reagan should be "Gravis Eventus". At the UN Security Council they always talk about serious consequences, when they mean sending a carrier battle group to straighten your ass.
Would there be room on the device for "Mistakes were made?"
68. Certainly more appropriate. I guess my suggestion will have to wait for CVN 83 USS Hilary Clinton.
Two els, TLL. Give her one of yours.
69: The persistence of the myth, and the iconography of Reagan. If you've been brought up on the `Reagan the Good' nonsense, and never had reason to question it, you might honestly believe it is true. And these days, you might be careful not to dig too deep in case it turns out not to be.