I Guess The Clinton Campaign Can Run The Negative Ads Now
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Reagan Derangement Syndrome | Ronald Reagan | The Clintons — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
This candidate clearly praised Ronald Reagan. He gets what's coming to him:
It was a remarkable moment: A young, free-thinking presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton sat down with reporters and editors at The Post in October 1991 and started saying things most Democrats wouldn't allow to pass their lips.
Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan's "rhetoric in defense of freedom" and his role in "advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back."
"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton declared.
Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included "a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure," but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond "the brain-dead politics in both parties," as he so often put it.
His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton a few days later for daring to "set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan." Clinton's "readiness to defy his party's prevailing Reaganphobia . . .," the paper wrote, "is one reason he's a candidate to watch."
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I Guess The Clinton Campaign Can Run The Negative Ads Now 6 Comments (0 topical, 6 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Remember that that same Congress nearly bankrupted us under the Nixon and Carter presidencies.
Actually, the peacetime deficits were fairly modest before the Reagan administration (http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FederalBudget.html), and grew to their largest under Reagan, Bush, and Bush. A largely Democrat-controlled federal government managed to successfully prosecute the largest war in our history (WWII) and still bring the federal budget back in line. And over the last few years of a largely Republican-controlled federal government, well, not so much...
But to return to the question at hand: How is it possible to give Reagan credit for the military spending that bankrupted the Soviets without also tagging him with blame for the deficits?
1. Defense increases
2. Tax Cuts
3. Domestic spending cuts.
He got two out of the three out of congress. On domestic spending cuts he instead got spending increases. The combination of defense increases and domestic spending increases killed the budget.
He chose and quite correctly the more important of the three. The tax cuts let our economy start growing again after the stagnant 70's.
Reagan gets credit for the plan, and making it work. Congress gets credit for being congress.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
He just didn't cut defense spending, Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
You can't make a difference.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
It has become conventional wisdom that Reagan spent the Soviet Union into failure through an arms buildup. But he responded to criticisms of deficit spending by arguing that the President can't spend a dime. That has always seemed to me like an effort to have his cake and eat it, too. If the President can't spend a dime, then he deserves no credit for the military buildup. But if he can take credit for the spending, then he has to take at least part of the blame for the deficit. It's worth keeping in mind that the military spending we used to bankrupt the Soviets came through a Congress that was largely controlled by Democrats.