America's 40th president is revered by Republicans as a folksy cold warrior, but on this centennial, what is his true legacy?
What's the real meaning of the Reagan "centennial"?
Life and USA Today recently published special commemorations of the life and political career of America's 40th president. And a movement is afoot to name at least one major landmark in all 50 US states in his honour. But amid mass joblessness, and widespread fear about the country's economic future, political hero-worship isn't high up on most Americans' list of leisure activities.
For conservatives, though, the former Hollywood actor and anti-communist union-buster remains an icon. Sarah Palin regularly invokes his name, and suggests that the father of the "line item veto" and the balanced budget amendment would be appalled at how much Republicans have come to resemble their "tax-and-spend" rivals.
Really? In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control", the deficit had reached almost $74bn, the federal debt $930bn. Within two years, the deficit was $208bn; the debt by 1988 totalled $2.6tn. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.
It took Bill Clinton, of course, to rebuild the nation's budget surplus. But don't expect Palin or any other conservative to acknowledge that. They'd rather beat up on Obama for raising the deficit ? after another two-term Republican, George W Bush, put us back in the red.
Part of the cause of the big Reagan deficit ? and the one that followed under Bush ? was massive defence spending. Reagan launched what's come to be known as the "second cold war" ? an attempt to outspend and out-arm the Soviet Union, ostensibly to bring the "evil empire" to its knees. The Soviet system did fall apart on Reagan's watch, but the jury's still out on how much Reagan and his policies were the cause. Many believe that the Soviet system, already overextended by the 1980s, was collapsing internally. If anything, the Reagan rearmament may have forced the Soviets to retrench, and actually kept the Berlin Wall standing longer than it would have.
Reagan is also credited with ushering in a "conservative revolution" in domestic politics, reversing years of liberal dominance in policy thinking and practice, and forcing even Democrat Bill Clinton to embrace his legacy with welfare reform, on Nafta and other "heretical" policies. But Reagan, thanks, in part, to his continuing embrace of big government, never came close to emerging as the full-blown radical conservative president his most ardent supporters had hoped for.
But for most of the world, especially Europe, Reagan's still best remembered for his unbridled nostalgia for America's unfettered imperial past and his near-pathological denial of the broader economic and political trends that were rendering American "hegemony" obsolete, even as Reagan was declaring a "new American century". And where is that nostalgia today?
However much Palin and her fellow Tea Partiers invoke American "exceptionalism", the nation is no longer the economic or political envy of the world. And its military might, which looked vulnerable as early as 1982, when 250 Marines lost their lives in the Beirut embassy attack ? a tragedy that reportedly anguished Reagan for years ? has been challenged with increasing frequency, and success. Reagan extolled America as a "shining city on the hill". But post-9/11, it's a besieged, isolated and increasingly fragile citadel. And a financially crippled one, too.
In fact, some tiny measure of "reality" may finally be settling in. And in the strangest of places. You can see it in the rising chorus of Tea Party protest against the GOP's ? and Reagan's ? holy grail of defence spending. An unlikely alliance of citizens groups ? everyone from Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Group to the national Tea Party organisation FreedomWorks ? has formed to push Congress to implement deep cuts in the US defence budget. Some Tea Party leaders have even begun suggesting publicly that we accelerate our withdrawal from Afghanistan, all in the name of cutting the federal deficit. And last week, Tea Party-supporting Senator Rand Paul, like his father Ron, an arch libertarian and critic of US military intervention, scandalised the entire foreign policy establishment by calling for a reduction in US aid to Israel.
Reagan, of course, would never have countenanced a frontal assault on the very defence budget he did so much to bloat and distend. His trademark motto ? "peace through strength" ? never questioned the need for a robust and expanding global US military posture. And unswerving support for Israel was a foundation of his administration's foreign policy.
But don't expect conservatives to abandon their hero. Their party is in turmoil, and despite some success in the midterms, still deeply distrusted by most Americans. No national leader of Reagan's stature is on the horizon, and they know it. Reagan's not only a reminder of America's glory days, but of their own. They're still trying to win one for the Gipper.
Robert Schumann Energy Redrow Mexico al-Qaida Consumer spending
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