Allen Barra on the Myth of Ronald Reagan

[babylonsister]

This is a book review, but still interesting.

Allen Barra on the Myth of Ronald Reagan

Posted on Feb 13, 2009

By Allen Barra

“The aftermath of Reagan’s presidency,” Garry Wills wrote in a famous introduction to his 1987 book “Reagan’s America,” “has proved, over and over, that Reaganism without Reagan is unsustainable.” In the two decades since Wills’ book was published, a significant portion of the press and public seems to have forgotten that. William Kleinknecht is on a mission: In “The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America,” he is out to demonstrate that Reaganism with Reagan never worked.

Kleinknecht, a veteran crime correspondent for the Newark Star-Ledger and the New York Daily News and an American Society of Professional Journalists award winner, is angry. But unlike many writers who have taken scatter shots at the Reagan legacy, Kleinknecht hasn’t lost his temper—in Henry James’ words, he has found it.



In a fiery and lucid introduction he writes, “This book is born of annoyance: a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It gives voice to a vast swath of psychically disenfranchised Americans, millions of them, lumped most thickly in the urban areas on either coast, who never understood Reagan’s appeal.” Kleinknecht’s thesis is nothing less than that Reagan was the “obvious enemy of the common people he claimed to represent, this empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling. ...” The great conundrum “is this: none of unmistakable harbingers of American decline is being laid where it belongs—at the door of Ronald Reagan” .

In the tradition of most previous Reagan critics, Kleinknecht doesn’t try to draw a bead on Reagan from an ivory tower. He goes after Reagan from the blue collar on up: “He enacted policies that helped wipe out the high-paying jobs for the working class that were the real backbone of the country. ... His legacy—mergers, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, privatization, globalization—helped weaken the family and eradicate small-town life and sense of community.”

Reaganomics did create fortunes, but mostly for those at the top of the economic ladder; it also brought “a reversal in the slow gains that the working class and the poor had made in the previous two decades.”

more...

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20090213_allen_barra_on_the_myth_of_ronald_reagan/

[EFerrari]

1. This is the founding myth of the modern Republican Party.

Racism, Aids, homelessness, union busting, torture and dirty wars in Southeast Asia, Latin America, North Africa.

We should never have allowed his weeklong funeral here. He was an anti-American sociopath.

[theoldman]

2. It took many years for the myth of Reagan to come out.

I have never understood why so many people, including Democrats, were fooled by his smooth talk. Doesn't anyone remember the housing crash and the stock market crash that occurred when he was president?

[EFerrari]

4. I was just a teenager then but my mom was in real estate and her whole crew

had t-shirts that said "We survived the market of '87".

[Baby Snooks]

8. Everyone wanted to believe in the shining city on the hill....

In the beginning, he made everyone feel good - don't forget he was an actor. The bottom line was politics was just another stage to him.

Katherine Graham actually liked him. She just could never connect the person with the politician. Neither could anyone else. Probably because there was no connection. He was just on stage in Sacramento and Washington. He forgot his lines from time to time. No one realized why.

I cannot think of him as evil. Sorry. But I do think of him as terribly naive and misguided in his attempt to please everyone around him his whole life. He was a people pleaser who in the end pleased very few.

His administration brought the shadow government out of the shadows - the government of the Bushes and their military-industrial complex and the oligarchy it established in this country.

And it brought us the Republicrats who now rule. "Of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation."

[MajorChode]

3. I would even take issue with "Reaganomics did create fortunes"

All of Raygun's economic successes were really due to lifelong Democrat Paul Volcker who was originally appointed by Carter.

He signed one tax cut and seven major tax increases and the net effect on the middle class was higher taxes when he left office compared to when he started, and still he managed to triple the federal debt (after criticizing Carter for doing nothing to lower it).

He greatly increased the military budget and renewed the cold war despite the fact that the CIA told him on his first day of office that the Soviets were swirling the drain.

He funded and fully supported terrorists all over the world and we're still paying for those mistakes today.

In fact, I can't think of one significant thing that Raygun did well.

Raygun was easily one of our worst presidents. In fact, I'd place him close to Bush II in terms of damage that he did to the US both at home and abroad.

[Berry Cool]

5. Wonder how this book compares to Will Bunch's "Tear Down This Myth."

They both sound like books I'd like to read. I never liked Reagan from the get-go and am still upset about what a good job he did of selling the country a bill of goods.

[pansypoo53219]

6. if not for the democrats,

he would have been a complete failure.

[madrchsod]

7. reagan was an opportunist all his life

he sucked up to the swells when he was a kid in dixon. became a fdr democrat because his dad and brother found steady work,then hollywood. c list actor married twice way above his station ,sold out during the 50`s ,and true to his childhood sucked up to the right wing conservatives. they needed an actor/front man and he read his lines well enough to fool a nation. after someone tried to kill him the boys in the basement were in totally in charge of the government.

he was a perfect tool for the money class to destroy of the middle class in america. they continued their destruction until the nation woke up and realized there was very little left for them.