The Presidency of Ronald Reagan gives pause to reflect on America in the 1980’s as a time of triumph over the evil of the Soviet empire but also as an era of missed opportunity for some Americans here at home.
Ronald Reagan, the conservative populist, rode into the White House in a stirring campaign against “Big Government”. Most Americans listened enthusiastically to the man and not the message. Indeed, Reagan was one of the most charismatic presidents of our time – one has to go all the way back to JFK to find his rival. He was affable, likable and hard to be mad at for very long, even if you disagreed with him in the most fundamental way. His winning personality and good-natured social skills had a way of disarming even the most vocal critic.
Yet we as minorities living in the big cities knew instantly what Reagan meant by “Big Government”. He meant to disable the social and economic programs that had been in place since the Great Society to help minority Americans climb out of poverty. The record I believe bears this out – government spending certainly did not decline (and neither did the size of the government) during the Reagan years. Instead, we ran up horrific deficits on defense spending and passed those enormous tax credits to the wealthiest Americans and businesses. Sure, the economy jumpstarted and the Soviet Union collapsed (it was going to anyway), but at what cost to the cities, unions and farmers? And was the recovery enduring?
It was the beginning of the politics of cynicism, a Republican playbook that is still being run today – say one thing and do something else, all the while hoping that voters won’t catch on. It’s been a winning formula for Republicans. Today’s brand of cynicism has reached new lows, with talk radio and talking heads continually engaging in closet racist code-word gamesmanship. Purveyors of such political trash talk are raking in fortunes as they continue to mislead easily misled non-thinking Americans down a disastrous path for our country.
I would argue that blacks and Latinos have never really recovered from Reagan’s onslaught. Take a look at the unemployment rates in urban black communities across America today and my point is proven. Better still, walk through the west side of Chicago or Detroit during any normal business day and see how many jobless men and women are out on the street corners. It is a staggering waste of potential and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for permitting this to continue in the greatest nation on earth.
I grew up in the 1970’s in a poor family in the Chicago area. We didn’t have much money but my family placed a high value on education. Fortunately, there was a government in existence at the time that was willing and able to lend a helping hand to families like us with reference to college financing and I was able to earn scholarships because of my hard work, grades and financial needs. I turned those advantages into a master’s degree in education at a good school and have been able to rise out of that poverty to help others. I can’t honestly say that students coming up in the 1980’s during the Reagan years and after had the same kind of help from the government, because those doors were being closed to finance the Reagan Administration’s other goals. It is much harder today for a poor person to finance a four-year college degree today and that is wrong, yet, it is a legacy of Ronald Reagan that few will want to acknowledge.
Reagan was truly a “Teflon” President in many ways. His popularity was so great that I doubt that a Clintonesque scandal like the Lewinsky affair would have hardly been front page news. Yet, his administration’s Iran-Contra scandal was a complete disgrace that should have had far more repercussions than it did politically. I am convinced that the sad irony of the situation is that the weapons Reagan’s people peddled to the Middle East are killing American soldiers today in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one will talk about that either and that is yet another national disgrace.
So now we have an African-American president and the playing field has been leveled, right? Far from it, I am afraid. President Obama was assailed by the right even before he took office, demanding that he repair overnight a morass they themselves designed and perpetrated on the American People and the National Treasury. The Politics of Cynicism elevated to the level of art form.
To obfuscate, delay and derail Obama’s earnest attempt at fixing eight plus years of Republican refuse, including a war in Iraq that should never have been fought, the right has thrown one road block after another in his path; financial reform, jobs, bailouts, healthcare, and immigration. The whole Tea Party movement is built on a mountain of lies and cloaked racism about Democratic government spending. Who threw open the doors of the National Treasury and allowed trillions of dollars to be poured into an illegal, unwarranted and unjust war in Iraq? Let’ see, repairing US infrastructure or nation-building in Iraq; which is a better idea? Yes, Saddam Hussein was an evil man; yes he killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people (so have we). Even George H.W. Bush understood that removing him would create a huge power vacuum that Iran only happily was willing to step into. Like they have!
The politics of this nation was built on the premise that political parties would come together to debate issues, compromise when necessary and construct laws and policies based upon a consensus. The politics of cynicism, introduced by the Reaganites, have subverted that idea into an all or nothing political debate ruled by the threat of filibuster, a concept the Founding Fathers did not even choose to embrace when they wrote the Constitution. It’s a senate rule! Yes, Washington is broken, and it has been such a state since 1981. President Obama is waging a brave fight against this busted play of a political game. He’ll make mistakes, but I support him and will do what I can as a private citizen to work for his success. Enough people in our country are still open-minded enough for him to succeed.
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