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I guess it's true that Reagan set the stage for an administration like this, and it's possible that they would try to be the imperial presidency as much as shrub has if they had had the full Right Wing Noise Machine in play like it is now. But somehow I don't even think so. Reagan actually won elections big and had much more of a mandate than shrub will ever dream of having, and didn't pull the stunts of shrub administration.
I think that what we need to understand is that while Reagan had charisma... he was an actor, after all... the people really wanted what he was offering. They wanted fewer regulations on businesses because they felt that the regulations were preventing businessmen from making as much money as they could have. They really wanted the U.S. to use its clout to put an end to the Soviet Union and communism which, for some reason they saw as even worse than fascism... probably because of the "godless" thing. They really wanted an end to welfare because they felt that they were paying for lazy people to live comfortably and were sacrificing their own comfortable life to do that.
I don't think that the "Right Wing Noise Machine" is so much a cause as it is an effect. There are a group of very frustrated, very right wing folks out there who got organized, which is why Bush is where he is.
Somehow, among other things, these folks have to understand that wealth is not unlimited. For a while, the U.S. had a new land to exploit, but at this point there is no frontier. There are limits... unless we take over the resources of the rest of the world. For every dollar a businessman gets, there is a dollar taken out of a poor or middle class pocket, whether in the U.S. or somewhere else in the world.
Some Americans don't care if their prosperity is built on someone else's back, but it's coming to the point where some Americans will be building their prosperity on other American backs. If middle class Americans want to avoid that, they have to be convinced that it could happen. I don't think they are so altruistic that they are willing to become impoverished so a few others can be fabulously wealthy. The sad part is that right now, many actually think that wealty will eventually trickle down to themselves... despits all evidence to the contrary. Maybe we ought to start teaching about the robber barons and how the rest of the people lived back then.
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