Jonathan Chait: Reagan Revisionism And Reagan Mythology
[Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.]
Politico has an interesting feature about the fear among conservatives that their campaign to canonize Ronald Reagan has turned their hero into a post-ideological hero, rather than an embodiment of conservative values. A specimen of this fear is Steven Hayward's National Review essay, Reagan Reclaimed," castigating liberals for an ideological kidnapping of Ronaldus Magnus.
Before I wade into this, I should summarize my view of Reagan. I don't think he was a great president. The main accomplishment which he's credited, winning the Cold War, is one in which his policies contributed a very small amount. The most important cause of the fall of the Soviet Union by far was its failed, unsustainable political and economic system, which would have eventually collapsed regardless of American policy. (It's interesting that conservatives' mania for crediting Reagan with the fall of the USSR has required them to downplay the inherent faults of communism, which you'd think they'd naturally emphasize.) The second factor, a distant second, is the postwar containment architecture, created by Harry Truman and maintained by every president through George H.W. Bush, which including a military commitment to defend Western Europe, a series of anti-Soviet alliances, military support for governments threatened with communist invasion and occasional diplomatic or military support for anti-communist guerillas. A third factor, far less significant than the second, was Reagan's incremental ratcheting up of the bipartisan containment policy, which may have slightly hastened the Soviet crackup.
Domestically, Reagan had two main accomplishments. One was to legitimize the religious right as a powerful Republican constituency, a change that has continued to reverberate through American politics. The second was to legitimize massive, non-emergency deficits....
Read entire article at The New Republic
Politico has an interesting feature about the fear among conservatives that their campaign to canonize Ronald Reagan has turned their hero into a post-ideological hero, rather than an embodiment of conservative values. A specimen of this fear is Steven Hayward's National Review essay, Reagan Reclaimed," castigating liberals for an ideological kidnapping of Ronaldus Magnus.
Before I wade into this, I should summarize my view of Reagan. I don't think he was a great president. The main accomplishment which he's credited, winning the Cold War, is one in which his policies contributed a very small amount. The most important cause of the fall of the Soviet Union by far was its failed, unsustainable political and economic system, which would have eventually collapsed regardless of American policy. (It's interesting that conservatives' mania for crediting Reagan with the fall of the USSR has required them to downplay the inherent faults of communism, which you'd think they'd naturally emphasize.) The second factor, a distant second, is the postwar containment architecture, created by Harry Truman and maintained by every president through George H.W. Bush, which including a military commitment to defend Western Europe, a series of anti-Soviet alliances, military support for governments threatened with communist invasion and occasional diplomatic or military support for anti-communist guerillas. A third factor, far less significant than the second, was Reagan's incremental ratcheting up of the bipartisan containment policy, which may have slightly hastened the Soviet crackup.
Domestically, Reagan had two main accomplishments. One was to legitimize the religious right as a powerful Republican constituency, a change that has continued to reverberate through American politics. The second was to legitimize massive, non-emergency deficits....