The Republican Reagan Fetish
The Republican Reagan Fetish
- Robert Hillard Patillo II, Esq.
With Former President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday fast approaching there has been much fervor on the American political Right to rewrite history and place the “Gipper” into the Pantheon of great American statesmen. Scant a day passes where a member of the Republican Party or Tea Party does not wax poetically of the utopia which existed in the 1980’s under Reagan’s watch. In this articulation of history taxes were low, the military was strong and the American Dream was in reach for all as freedom and equality rained down in a mighty torrent washing away the excesses of the liberal oppression of the past.
At the forefront of this effort to revise history, for obvious reasons, is Ronald Reagan’s son Michael Reagan who recently penned an article “Ronald Reagan — More of a Friend to Blacks Than Obama?” He is not alone. Many on the political Right now run all decisions through a pseudo “Reagan Rubric” to determine if the policy fits into the Dream of Gipper. To the Right, Reagan is a figure on par with the most towering figures of American history and deserves nothing less than enshrinement upon Mount Rushmore and a National Monument. This Reagan Fetish has resulted in the twisting and bastardization of Reagan’s true legacy.
There is a reason that Reagan is held as such a shining beacon of conservative values. That is because he is the only decent conservative President in U.S. History. Think about it, both Presidents Bush were national embarrassments, Ford was shunned by his own party, Nixon was forced to resign and Eisenhower was so liberal that Martin Luther King, Jr. and many other Civil Rights activist supported him because of his social policies. Hoover, Coolidge and Harding sank the World into the Great Depression. Taft was incompetent. Teddy Roosevelt was a social and economic Liberal. McKinley died from being stubborn. And the rest, stretching back to Lincoln were incompetent, ineffective, corrupt or simply lost to history. Even Lincoln himself would not be a member of the modern political Right (do you really think the Confederate flag waving, anti-government factions of the Tea Party would embrace the “Great Emancipator?”).
So Reagan is all that the Right has in the entirety of American history. Thus you cannot really blame them for attempting to turn lemons into lemonade, or in this case lemon jelly beans, with Reagan. In truth, Reagan was the first in a now long line of intellectually dank politicians on the Right. Similar to the “Know Nothing” Party of the Mid-19th century, the modern Right prides itself on nativism, conservative core-values, a lack of compromise and pedantic political machinations with no foresight as to any long term impact. The Right lauds Reagan’s record of cutting taxes and “winning” the Cold War and criticizes the current President for the massive deficits that the country currently faces. However, they do not seem able to make the casual connection that decreasing revenue while massively increasing spending will leave you in debt. And further that if you continue this policy for several decades you will be in a lot of debt. And that the guy that shows up at the end to clean up after your 30 year spending rager cannot really be blamed for excesses of the past.
These conservative Know Nothings have fundamentally distorted Reagan’s record. In truth, Reagan ran massive Federal deficits, almost bankrupted American with the “Star Wars” program, propped up brutal dictators, ran one of the most corrupt administrations since Ulysses S. Grant, failed to address AIDS, failed to address Crack and the American drug problem, locked up and entire generation to appear tough on crime, his laissez faire economic policy caused massive future debt and he was more than likely fully senile during the latter stages of his term in office.
That is all to say that this current Reagan fetish is not unlike other fetishes. It is based upon living out a fantasy. In this case, the fantasy that things were somehow better way back when.
Robert Patillo is an Attorney and commentator at The Patillo Law Group, LLC in Atlanta, Ga. He can be reached at 706-464-9839 or via email: rpatillo@robertpatillo.com. www.robertpatillo.com
