×
Josh Patashnik asks:
The final question at the GOP debate tonight asked the candidates whether they believe Ronald Reagan would have endorsed them. Within the span of four minutes, they told the audience that Ronald Reagan wouldn't have supported a candidate who changed his position on key Republican issues, wouldn't have supported amnesty for illegal immigrants, would have reduced the size of government, and would have reverted to the gold standard. The jury's out on whether these men are qualified to be president, but they sure aren't qualified to teach eleventh grade American history.And yet, it will pass unnoticed. One of the more impressive bits of historical revisionism has been the successful effort to rewrite Reagan as an unshakeable ideologue rather than a charismatic pragmatist. In order to live up to Reagan's ideal, contemporary Republicans have to be far more conservative than Reagan ever was, or ever thought of being. This is a guy who raised taxes six years in a row, sat down with the Soviet Union with no preconditions, passed a massive amnesty bill, wildly increased the size of the federal government, exploded the deficit, saved Social Security by instituting a large payroll tax, retreated from Beirut after a bombing, and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit. Not to say he didn't have his conservative dogma humming along quietly in the background, but the last seven years of his administration saw him somewhat chastened, and far more deal-oriented.I was trying to think who the Reagan analogue is for liberals, and couldn't come up with much. FDR, of course, but no one compares themselves to him -- he's passed too far into myth. Some try and grab hold of Kennedy's aura, but that's associating with a sort of cool charisma, not checking how you'd treat to Soviet missiles in Cuba. Maybe Lyndon Johnson would get the honor, had he not trashed his legacy in Vietnam. But he trashed his legacy in Vietnam. So liberals have no real ghost of purity past. The Democratic candidates need more questions, I think, on why Paul Wellstone would have endorsed them.
