How Reagan ruined conservatism (Gideon Rachman, Financial Times)

[swag]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d640855c-256a-11df-9cdb-00144feab49a.html

Battling my way through Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, last weekend, I began to wonder how American conservatism had come to this. Ms Palin’s book is smug, lightweight, nationalistic, entirely free of original ideas. How has this woman become the darling of the American right? How has she become so popular that some bookmakers make her the favourite to win the Republican party nomination in 2012?

And then I realised – the rot set in with Ronald Reagan.

This might seem an odd conclusion, since President Reagan is a conservative hero who won two presidential elections. But the ideas that are now known as “Reaganism” are, in fact, profoundly subversive of some of the most important conservative values. Traditional conservatives disdain populism and respect knowledge. They believe in balancing the government’s books. And they are pragmatists who are suspicious of ideology. Reagan debased all these ideas – and modern American conservatism is still suffering the consequences.

The most damaging idea propagated by the Reagan myth is the cult of the idiot-savant (the wise fool). You can see it in the very first line of Dinesh D’Souza’s admiring biography of Reagan, which proclaims: “Sometimes it really helps to be a dummy.” Mr D’Souza recounts numerous stories in which intellectuals – even conservative intellectuals – disdained Reagan. They scorned his tendency to spend cabinet meetings sorting jelly beans into different colours, and his taste for flaky anecdotes. But, Mr D’Souza concludes, the “dummy” was right and the pointy-heads were wrong.

A dangerous chain of reasoning flows from this popular version of history. Reagan was apparently stupid and often startlingly ignorant – but he was vindicated by history. Therefore, goes the theory, ignorance and stupidity are good signs. They show that a politician is in tune with the deeper wisdom of the people. Once you start thinking like that, it is but a short step to Sarah Palin.

. . .

[madrchsod]

1. reagan was a guy who took advantage of every situation that was before him

he knew the people who would do him the most good and he had the charisma to win them over. from the son of a drunk father and a devout christian mother he became president of the united states. he was given the script when he was a young boy and he played the part better than most actors could only dream of.

he married well.......

[AnOhioan]

2. All this time I thought the old coot ruined the country...

now I find out it was just conservatism he ruined...who knew?

[C_Lawyer09]

3. What provided Reagan with the massive political capital he needed

1. Failed Iranian hostage rescue which was a debacle

2. Failure of his cabinet to prioritize legislation, and get on the same page

Reagan was able to leverage the severe loss of faith in federal govt. that the Carter admin. spawned. Having said that, was Carter a bad president? Not neccessarily, he just happened to be in office as several events came to a head. Inflation, OPEC, hostage rescue, etc. He actually was responsible for the hostage release, but how many knew/know that? The Republican PR machine, i.e. Atwater, Rove, etc. has masterfully played the voting populus, for what it really is in large part. An uninformed mass, with a very short memory. Unfortunately, a John Kerry cannot resonate enough with the common voter to win an election. One liners an an affable attitude, i.e. "I forgot to duck" will do it every time. Especially if you are talking about a party that cannot galvanize, like the Democrats, vs. a party that continually successfully circles the wagons. We had the charisma in Obama for the election, but the follow through wasn't there. Was it an administration failure? I don't know, but the campaign based on change, started to smell fishy, as the Clintonian regime, and the Harvard connection took over. This two party system is destined to fail. The two parties are way too similar. This is only my opinion, but when Obama addressed the nation on health care, and obliquely said we'd pay for it by correcting inefficiencies in the current system, I cringed. That's what you have to bring to the table? I really do think Obama is trying hard. He's a definite improvement over Bush. Our system is crippled. Corporations elect the president, not the constituency.

[Ganja Ninja]

4. "the rot set in with Ronald Reagan"

Richard Milhouse Nixon would beg to differ.

[wizstars]

5. You answered your first question even before you asked it:

"How has this woman become the darling of the American right? "
A: she is "smug, lightweight, nationalistic, entirely free of original ideas."

That's exactly what the RW is/wants.