Two months ago, the CBS network decided to shelve a mini-series about the life of Ronald Reagan due to criticism that he had been unfairly depicted. Conservatives were furious that in one scene Reagan was depicted as being unsympathetic to an AIDS victim.
The response to the mini-series shows the growing importance of the Reagan legacy in America.
There may be more to this than Republican loyalty to a conservative icon. While tax cuts and skyrocketing budget deficits were key characteristics of the Reagan administration, they also look more and more like the distinguishing features of the current Bush administration. And that was before the recent budget was announced.
The similarities between the Reagan administration and the current George W. Bush administration have been noted by politicians and analysts on both sides of the political aisle. What is interesting is that the similarities between these two administrations are not under much debate.
What is under debate instead is the interpretation given to the Reagan era.
Democrats and Republicans are now battling to have their respective readings of the Reagan administration accepted as historical orthodoxy. It is as though whoever wins the debate over Reagan’s policies will win the debate over Bush’s policies.
On the side of the Reagan boosters are not only senior figures in the White House, but also numerous journalists and political analysts. They have been singing the praises of Reagan’s strategy of huge tax cuts coupled with increased federal spending.
The Reagan boosters assert that this policy was greatly successful, creating the longest period of peacetime economic growth since the 1980s. Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh is one of the more enthusiastic supporters of Reagan, eulogizing that “the 1980s could and should serve as a model for our nation’s future economic policies for generations to come.
“And the image of Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for shaping that decade, should be carved into Mt. Rushmore.”
Strong stuff indeed, and music to the ears of the White House’s proponents of tax-cutting. If the economic record were unambiguously positive, you could be forgiven for wanting to climb up Mt. Rushmore and chisel out Reagan’s features yourself.
Reagan’s detractors see things quite differently. They contend that the boom period of the Reagan administration can be chalked up in part to a natural adjustment period of strong economic growth after a heavy slump in the U.S. economy from 1979 to 1982.
In other words, they say there is no evidence that the Reagan tax cuts were responsible for the economic boom. Of the Reagan era tax cuts, economist Paul Krugman asserts that “nothing in the data suggests a supply side revolution.” This leads to an equally damning assessment of President Bush’s tax cuts, which Krugman believes were “poorly designed as a demand stimulus.”
If there is dispute over the effects of the tax cuts, there is even more dispute over its progeny, the budget deficit. The deficit was astronomically high under Reagan and is growing larger every month under Bush. Here again, Democrats and Republicans disagree about what spin to put on the Reagan era.
In the recent furor over the publication of journalist Ron Suskind’s book about former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, an interesting vignette highlights attitudes to the Reagan legacy in the current administration. In Suskind’s book, O’Neill recounts his discomfort with the Bush administration’s mounting deficit.
On hearing O’Neill’s concerns, Vice President Dick Cheney is alleged to have said “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. We won the midterms, this is our due.”
Deficits may not matter if you wish to shrink the overall size of government programs, as many Republicans do. However, under Reagan, the problem was that expenditure did not fall dramatically. This meant a growing budget deficit, which could not continue indefinitely.
The burden for ending it fell on subsequent administrations, that of Bush’s father, who famously reneged on his pledge of “no new taxes,” and later on Bill Clinton’s. It is for this reason that the economic policies of the elder Bush, although he was a Republican, are not held up as a model.
Unsurprisingly, officials from the Clinton era who worked to reduce the deficit built up during the Reagan administration are worried about the current budget deficits and are reviving their criticisms of Reagan in the form of criticisms of Bush.
Last week, Robert Rubin, a former treasury secretary and the architect of Clinton’s economic policy, warned that the increasing budget deficit creates risks that are “very substantial and could have a severe effect on the economy.”
The budget revealed by Bush will do nothing to allay the fears of Rubin. It projects a deficit of $521 billion for this year and features the largest single-year increase in military spending since–you guessed it–Reagan.
This battle for the memory of the Reagan era continues, and while one side can win a battle of interpretation, the overall war has not been won. This is not only true of the debate over tax cuts and budget deficits, it is also true in the case of the controversial mini-series, which, though shelved by CBS, was broadcast all last month by its sister channel, Showtime.
The debate goes on.
