John Steele Gordon: What's in a Name? If It's "Reagan," Quite a Lot
[John Steele Gordon is a business and financial historian]
Scott Rasmussen has a new poll out regarding political labels. The public, it seems, doesn’t like any of them. “Liberal” continues its long slide, and only 15 percent now regard it as a positive. “Progressive,” which is what liberal politicians increasingly tend to call themselves to avoid using the ever-more-toxic “liberal,” is now positive to only 32 percent, down from 40 just after the last election.
“Conservative” isn’t doing a whole lot better, also at 32 percent positive, down from 37 percent after the last election.
Indeed, what voters like in terms of political labels, it seems, is “like Ronald Reagan.” Forty-three percent regard that as positive, and only 26 percent think it’s a negative (it was 44 percent positive and 27 percent negative last November).
What’s going on here, I think, is a growing disgust with the political class as a whole, and such a development is not new. In 1994, in a political earthquake that has never been given its due attention in American political history, the public threw out the governmental establishment. Even the Speaker of the House lost his seat, the first time that had happened since 1862. The new Republican majority enacted substantive reforms (but not enough of them) but then grew more interested in re-election than in reform. The people threw them out in 2006. Obama, in 2008, promised a new era, “change you can believe in,” post-partisan government. The people, desperate for exactly that, gave him a bigger percentage of the popular vote than any Democratic president had received since Lyndon Johnson was elected nearly half a century ago.
Instead, Obama has governed as the most partisan president in recent decades (just compare him with Reagan) and seems determined to cram a deeply unpopular health-care “reform” through Congress regardless of popular opinion.
Inside the Beltway, it’s becoming more and more like Versailles in the last days of the ancien régime. The inhabitants called it “notre monde,” because it contained everything and everybody they cared about. They were oblivious to the world beyond. I would suggest that the political class—liberals, progressives, conservatives, whatever—in Washington start paying attention to the world beyond.
They might want to remember what happened to those who lived in “notre monde.”
Read entire article at Commentary Magazine
Scott Rasmussen has a new poll out regarding political labels. The public, it seems, doesn’t like any of them. “Liberal” continues its long slide, and only 15 percent now regard it as a positive. “Progressive,” which is what liberal politicians increasingly tend to call themselves to avoid using the ever-more-toxic “liberal,” is now positive to only 32 percent, down from 40 just after the last election.
“Conservative” isn’t doing a whole lot better, also at 32 percent positive, down from 37 percent after the last election.
Indeed, what voters like in terms of political labels, it seems, is “like Ronald Reagan.” Forty-three percent regard that as positive, and only 26 percent think it’s a negative (it was 44 percent positive and 27 percent negative last November).
What’s going on here, I think, is a growing disgust with the political class as a whole, and such a development is not new. In 1994, in a political earthquake that has never been given its due attention in American political history, the public threw out the governmental establishment. Even the Speaker of the House lost his seat, the first time that had happened since 1862. The new Republican majority enacted substantive reforms (but not enough of them) but then grew more interested in re-election than in reform. The people threw them out in 2006. Obama, in 2008, promised a new era, “change you can believe in,” post-partisan government. The people, desperate for exactly that, gave him a bigger percentage of the popular vote than any Democratic president had received since Lyndon Johnson was elected nearly half a century ago.
Instead, Obama has governed as the most partisan president in recent decades (just compare him with Reagan) and seems determined to cram a deeply unpopular health-care “reform” through Congress regardless of popular opinion.
Inside the Beltway, it’s becoming more and more like Versailles in the last days of the ancien régime. The inhabitants called it “notre monde,” because it contained everything and everybody they cared about. They were oblivious to the world beyond. I would suggest that the political class—liberals, progressives, conservatives, whatever—in Washington start paying attention to the world beyond.
They might want to remember what happened to those who lived in “notre monde.”