Ronald Reagan and the Corruption of History

The recent row between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama regarding Ronald Reagan raises the question of exactly what kind of president Ronald Reagan was.

Over and over again, I have read here and in the MSM comments like that in Today’s Washington Post, “Mr. Reagan’s historical importance and effectiveness in office are hard to dispute.”

I’d like to address the issue of Reagan’s historical importance. Even allowing for the excessive hubris endemic to its editorial page, it is not at all difficult to dispute “Mr. Reagan’s historical importance.”

As Paul Krugman wrote recently, “[h]istorical narratives matter.” If the unrelenting right-wing campaign to enshrine Reagan as a towering historical figure has accomplished anything, it has allowed a corrupted view of history to worm its way into the accepted wisdom.

I am not even speaking of the substance of Reagan’s policies, which formed the basis of Krugman’s critique and which were frankly atrocious and in some cases bordered on immoral, but on their historical significance.

When evaluating Reagan’s importance as a historical figure, the salient question is not to ask how he is perceived now – we lack the benefit of perspective -- but to try to project how he may be perceived a century from now, or two centuries from now.

What will the consensus of history remember Ronald Reagan for across the sea of time? Probably, not much.

Reagan did cut marginal tax rates. For the right wing, this policy is the most important thing in history, apparently, directly responsible for all goodness that has occurred in the universe since 1982 (and yet is somehow unrelated to the budget deficit that followed immediately).

Well, sure it is. They want more tax cuts.

But really, in a hundred years, will anyone care. Quick, I defy anyone to describe for me William McKinley’s tax policy?

Defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War? There are a myriad of reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union, and quite honestly, certain policies pursued by Reagan were a part of that, but so were the policies of every president going back to Harry Truman. Arguably, the seeds of the USSR’s destruction were sown in 1972 with Détente (not to mention foreseen by the Beatles in 1970!)

History, of course, will remember the breakup of the Soviet Empire, but Reagan’s contribution to this will likely be seen as no better, and no worse, than the seven other presidents who also handled part of that conflict. Certainly, not credible historian would conclude that Reagan was solely responsible.

Then there is the myth that Reagan ushered in an era of conservative dominance for a generation. But consider the record.

On the presidential level, we have had 5 presidential elections since Reagan. Democrats have won the popular vote in three of them, and are likely to take the next one. A winning percentage of 33% is hardly dominance.

While the Senate tilted the GOP way during the Reagan presidency, after Reagan left office in 1989, Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress for the next six years, and the Senate for two years after that. It was, in fact, the election of 1994 that created a short period of GOP rule in Washington that lasted 12 years.

Newt Gingrich was the driving force behind that, not Ronald Reagan.

Yes, Reagan and his party saw some electoral success during the election cycles once removed from Watergate (which put everything out of whack) and a period of economic expansion.

But put the GOP success into context. Going back to the election of FDR in 1932, Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency for 30 years, the GOP for a scant 8.

True transformative figures are not common in history. In the U.S., Lincoln was one.  FDR was one. Martin Luther King was one. These leaders left legacies that will likely transcend the narrow political and self-interests of the political parties of the generations that knew them personally.

Even a cursory examination of the historical record independent of a partisan political interest that find advantages in him reaching heroic status demonstrates that Ronald Reagan was not  a transformational figure, and at best a run-of-the-mill president.

I think it is a shame that both Clinton and Obama, apparently, have bought into the right-wing historical narrative that says otherwise.

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