Verbalism Personified

Hail to the Chief

The life of Ronald Reagan is a story of unlikely successes. Born to a poor family, he came of age during the hard economic times of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Yet he was able to achieve great success in two quite different fields, one as an actor and the other in politics.

Reagan’s political career began soon after his acting career ended. In 1964, he was elected governor of California and twice sought unsuccessfully, the Republican nomination for Presidency. It was not until 1980 that he was elected the 40th President of the United States on November 4th. At the age of 69, he was the oldest man and the first movie star ever sworn into Office.

During his two-term presidency, Reagan helped raise the nation's spirit as he oversaw the creation of large budget and trade deficits and ultimately effected a historic truce in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

In his inaugural address on January 20, 1981, President Reagan scoffed at those who spoke of a national malaise. To him, it was "time for us to realise that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams." Reagan paid homage to heroes of past wars and stressed a few easily understood economic grievances, such as inflation and a burdensome tax system. Playing to the widely held disillusion with public policy, he declared that "in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem."

Over the next eight years, through recession and economic recovery, cold war and detente, Ronald Reagan forged a powerful bond with the public. Even when a majority of citizens opposed specific administration programs, such as efforts to ban abortion, the support of anti-communist guerrillas in Central America to budget cuts in education, most Americans continued to express confidence in his presidency. Reagan's popularity seemed so unrelated to success and so undiminished even by failure or scandal that Colorado Representative Pat Schroeder dubbed Reagan the "Teflon President."

Reagan was dubbed the Great Communicator, a genial performer before audiences of one sort or another since college days. Being master of the one-line quip, here was a man who entered politics in early middle age after winning fame in Hollywood, the most American of institutions. He rose to presidency largely because he was able to articulate a personal ideological view on television more forcefully than anyone else. Once in office, Reagan was as vivid a figure to millions around that world as he had long been to millions of Americans, dominating television screens not only domestically but internationally.

Critics have seen him as more of a ceremonial king than a president, stating that he was the first modern president whose contempt for the facts was treated as a charming idiosyncrasy. Journalists chronicled weekly presidential gaffes, such as blaming redwood trees for air pollution or insisting that nuclear missiles could be recalled after launching. But Bill Moyers hit nearer the mark when he observed that "we didn't elect this guy because he knows how many barrels of oil are in Alaska. We elected him because we want to feel good."

Ronald Reagan's favourite speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, sensing the president's desire to "cheer everyone up", drafted many of his best received lines, such as the famous "It's morning in America again." His rapid recovery after a failed assassination attempt evoked optimism and appreciation among Americans. Eager to suspend judgement and wish him well, the public and Congress increased their support for his initiatives.

By the summer of 1981, the public favoured passage of the administration's 'Reaganomics' program by a margin of two to one. It basically called for a reduction in the growth of government spending, a reduction in labor and capital gains tax, reduction in regulation and reduction in inflation by controlling the growth of money supply. Since the late 1950s, Reagan had criticised high taxes and governemtn spending. As president, this was his chance to initiate major policy changes to increase saving and investment, increase economic growth, balance the budget, restore healthy financial markets and reduce inflation and interest rates.

The rational was that lower taxes were supposed to fuel a major economic expansion which, in turn, would cut unemployment and provide more tax revenues to lower the federal deficit and pay for higher defence spending. Although advertised as an economic program, Reaganomics was in fact, a form of symbolic politics, a means of liberating middle-class Americans from government tyranny and eliminating "immoral" deficits.

Reagan also had a plan to counter inflation. He asserted that by increasing productivity, it made it possible for industry to modernise. In calling forth the pent-up energies of entrepreneurial capitalism, the Reagan plan offered to reduce and eliminate inflation through sharp budget cuts in the public sector, the unleashing of investment and a wide deregulation of business and social sectors.

Consequently, the economy turned around in 1983. The inflation rate declined from 14 percent in 1980 to under 2 percent in 1983. 18 million jobs were also created between 1983 and 1989, while stock prices almost tripled in value. Though insisted upon by the Reagan administration as the result of Reaganomics, the combined efforts of the massive defence buildup and the financing of the growing budget deficit pumped hundreds of billions of dollars annually into the economy.

In all, it could be argued that massive federal expenditures for defence, deficit financing and broad deregulation, rather than market forces, pulled America out of recession. So large was this that it managed to fuel the recovery well into the 1990s. When Reagan left office, a large majority of Americans agreed that the final six years of his term marked a period of broad prosperity.

One of the popular appeals that carried Reagan to his decisive election victories were enhanced by the fact that he had proclaimed a hard and uncompromising anti-Soviet line. For all his tough talk, Reagan initially gave low priority to foreign affairs. He preferred to concentrate on his Reaganomics brainchild. Equally important, he felt that he needed to achieve high economic growth so that he could later out-negotiate and out-build the Soviets from a position of strength.

The unprecedented peacetime build-up of American military might during Reagan's first four years in office, was employed as a major means of signalling renewed American vigour and firmness of purpose in international relations. The impetus for a massive program of defence modernisation and expansion came from analysis by the Reagan administration that American defences had fallen dangerously behind those of the Soviet Union.

Tied inextricably to its expanding defence program was the administration's policy on arms control. Reagan adopted the position by impressing on the Soviet Union, the determination of the US to match Soviet defence spending and development across the board. That signaled a clear message that, regardless of the resources expanded on defence, no advantage over the US could be gained or tolerated. Arms control, only when negotiated from a position of strength, was an integral part of Reagan's defence policy.

During his first term in office, Reagan described the Soviet Union as the "focus of evil in the modern world", led by men who reserved the right to "lie, cheat and steal" their way to world domination. He went so far as to insist that a Soviet conspiracy "underlies all the unrest that is going on. If they weren't engaged in this game of dominoes, there wouldn't be any hot spots in the world."

The Reagan Doctrine, as it became known, formulated the administration's willingness to confront the expansion of Soviet power and a 'roll back' of influence by sponsoring wars by proxy in states that were friendly towards Moscow. Nicaragua and Grenada served to demonstrate America's willingness clean out its South American backyard, while Afghanistan demonstrated a direct confrontation by giving the Soviets their very own Vietnam.

There was an affirmation of American solidarity with countries struggling to prevent their own incorporation into the Soviet empire, or to regain their freedom. This was followed by the reassertion of the moral superiority of liberal democratic institutions and pluralist society.

In particular, Reagan's $1.6 trillion military buildup shocked the Soviets. To Americans, that reaction had seemed sheer hypocrisy. Nothing did more to destroy detente than the Kremlin's insistence on piling up weapons beyond any legitimate need. However the Reagan administration believed that a stepped-up arms race would beggar the Soviet Union. To a degree, this ultimately proved true, though at great cost to America as well. During this period, the United States substituted an arms budget and covert operations for foreign policy. The administration invested heavily in weapons and even formulated plans to fight a winnable nuclear war.

In March of 1983, Reagan unveiled his updated secret weapon, the "Strategic Defence Initiative." By having an anti-missile system, Reagan expounded as to how SDI would render nuclear weapons obsolete. Those very words sent a chilling ring through the Kremlin. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was what qualified the Soviet Union as a superpower. Twenty years spent achieving strategic parity with the US had been the principal Soviet doctrine. Now in a single technological stroke, Reagan was proposing to erase everything that the Soviet Union had bankrupted itself into accomplishing.

Yet in his final year as president, Reagan presided over a dramatic improvement in Soviet-American relations. By the time he left office, Reagan and Gorbachev were toasting each other as "Ronnie and Mikhail" as they signed a series of treaties destroying a whole category of nuclear weapons. Opinion polls reported Americans feeling friendlier toward the Soviet Union than any time since the end of World War II. The public that elected Reagan as a Cold Warrior applauded him as a Peacemaker. When Reagan retired, 72 percent of Americans voiced strong approval for his handling of foreign policy.

As Reagan retired to California, his poll ratings were the highest of any president since World War II. However, Reaganomics was built on deficit spending and as a consequence, pushed the national debt over $2 trillion. But Reagan's popularity survived concern over economic and other policy matters as he possessed a leadership style that stressed inspiration over management.

The government was no smaller at the end of Reagan's tenure than at the start, although its priorities had shifted somewhat. Social services and environmental protection had yielded priority to the arms build-up. Child and health care, higher education and narcotics issues had been unattended to. Against these neglected issues would be Reagan's claim to have pursued policies that made Gorbachev's transformation of Soviet society and foreign policy possible. Though Reagan can claim credit in forcing the Soviets to the negotiating table and ultimately winning the Cold War, perhaps his greatest achievement was restoring a sense of national pride and optimism among his countrymen.

posted by Teutoburg @ 5:37 PM