Nixon's the One

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Wed May 15 10:56:19 PDT 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Gordon Fitch" <gcf at panix.com>

Nathan Newman:
> > What was the Reagan Revolution, other than large defense spending and big
> > deficits starving the public sector?

-I was thinking of the public legitimation and acknowledgement -that it was all right to despise and abuse or ignore the poor. -Certainly there were many people who felt that way before -1980, but the preponderance of public opinion was, I think, -still pro-Welfare, at least when Welfare helped White people. -Consider that before -Reagan, threatening Social Security was absolutely unthinkable; -now, it's just daily life.

Reagan without question restricted welfare spending, but if it had been a complete repudiation of it, he wouldn't have backed off from attempts to cut food stamps, school lunches and many other programs for the poor. Just as the Gingrichites were pulverized in public opinion in 1995 for their assaults on the poor. Folks sometimes mistake successful political organizing on policy changes for epic ideological successes-- when liberals are winning, public opinion is often not on their side as completely as they think, and when they lose it often doesn't mean some kind of hegemonic revolution in thinking among the public.

Politics matters-- the Right did organizing to take over government and implemented policies that a lot of the public didn't like or wouldn't like if it wasn't cloaked in nice rhetoric. Good evidence that the public has not turned against the poor as a class is that Gingrich and anti-welfare folks usually cloak their arguments in that "dependency" is hurtful to the poor themselves. We can say this is just disingenuous rhetoric-- although some of it is similar to leftwing critiques of the welfare state - but the fact that they feel compelled to use such rhetoric means that their is a soft middle that is not anti-poor and needs to be assurred that such changes in welfare are not all about being nasty to the poor.


>Reagan also began the important work of relegitimating militarism
>and imperialism, without much success in his own reign; but
>his work bore much fruit for his successors, and today the
>occasional invasion and destruction of foreign countries has
>once again become an unremarkable event.

This is the more interesting change and I would agree a deliberate policy, but they succeeded by learning the lessons of Vietnam, targetting their message in new ways, and actually dealing with some substantive criticisms by developing weapons that could reduce both US military casualties and foreign civilian casualties. They carefully build support through limited wars, from Grenada to Panama to the Gulf War and onto Afghanistan with a strategy to convince wavering moderates that their approach was moral and made sense in the new world.

Unfortunately in my mind, the current peace movement still uses the same rhetoric from the Vietnam War and seems to have little strategy about targetting the moderates who were swayed by the militarists.


>I suppose one might say that Reagan and Reagan Revolution were
>not a cause, but an effect (of the leading edge of the Boomer
>wave hitting middle age, middle management, middle income,
>and the polls).

Some of it was part of such trends and global economic changes that encouraged neoliberal policies worldwide. But some of it was just poor political organizing by the left in the US. The corporate Right made specific alliances with working class whites around guns and god issues, while the Left largely abandoned any strategic vision of electoral politics. Specific groups like unions and the NAACP still work hard at them, but a lot of the Left sees majoritarian politics and the compromises needed to win control of government as ideologically suspect.

So it's hardly surprising that the Right has done so well taking over government. That doesn't mean they've won any conclusive ideological battles, although control of government does help at times in those kinds of struggles. But it is a mistake to mistake policy success -- especially in a system as closely balanced and divided on many issues for years -- with seismic shifts in public beliefs.

-- Nathan Newman



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