Ronald Reagan "Real"

The “Real” Reagan

Ask any Republican who was the best President during the 20^th Century and they will likely evoke the name Ronald Reagan, without hesitation. In fact, many will have Reagan listed at the top of their list of the greatest US Presidents in history.

According to conservatives, Reagan created anywhere from sixteen million to twenty-five million jobs while in office. They also credit him with cutting taxes, cutting the budget and the national debt. On foreign affairs Reagan is seen as a hawk’s hawk, a president that didn’t back down from anyone and wasn’t afraid to use our military might to enforce our political views around the world. In fact, many of the current candidates for the Republican nomination cite Reagan as the role model that they aspire to.

The real Reagan is a bit more of a complex contradiction than the Republican’s fantasy version. First of all, it’s important to understand that presidents don’t actually create employment for anyone but themselves and their appointees, many of whom are already employed prior to their promotions. The recession of the late seventies and early eighties saw a lot of layoffs; when those workers were called back to work, they were seen as new jobs added. Contrasting that with today’s economy, rarely do we hear the term “layoff” anymore, today they are simply “cuts” and those employees wishing to return to work must apply as new employees rather than be called back to work. The president states his agenda, but it’s actually the Congress who initiate and pass legislation to help employment, its then up to the President to either sign those initiatives into law or veto them. The head of the Federal Reserve is arguably more instrumental to the success or failure of employment since it’s the Feds control of the money supply that enables business to borrow capital to expand operations and add employees. Reagan inherited one of the best.

Paul Volker was one of Jimmy Carter’s last appointees after he fired nearly his entire cabinet in late 1979. By that time, the country had sunk into “stagflation”, which was a term that was coined to describe an economy that is stagnant while suffering from high inflation at the same time. Interest rates were also rising causing businesses to lay off employees. This phenomenon was originally created by Richard Nixon in 1971 with his failed Wage and Price freeze. Nixon was trying to manipulate the economy to create the image of prosperity in preparation for his 1972 re-election. Volker recognized the problem, and, with Reagan’s blessing, he began raising the discount rate exponentially. Today it’s big news if the Fed raises that discount rate at all, back then Volker was raising it as much as a point a month. Eventually, he raised the discount rate so high that he choked off the money supply and forced massive layoffs as the economy ground to a halt. Eventually, interest rates and inflation began to recede, employers began borrowing money again and calling employees back to work. The Reagan miracle had begun.

On the issue of taxes, Reagan did cut taxes, most notably the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, however he also signed five tax increases into law during his administrations. And the notion that Reagan was a fiscal conservative is totally biased. In fact, Reagan tripled the national debt during his eight years in office and added about 250,000 not military jobs to the federal payroll. Reagan often complained that our government had gotten too big and that the government was the problem, not the answer. In actuality, he grew the government while using it to improve the economy, both actions flew in the face of the vaunted Republican concept known as Supply-side Economics.

Although openly hawkish on foreign affairs, Reagan worked tirelessly to try to limit nuclear weapons proliferation. Near the end of his administration in 1987, he and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treat (INF), which eliminated intermediate-range nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles. Like Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, Reagan seemed to feel the weight of his own authority and the repercussions of his decisions in regards to a potential nuclear conflict. Republicans can learn a lot from the actions of these Presidents on this matter and tone-down their inflammatory statements and comments.

In the end, Reagan was not all that he seemed, sometimes he was more, but more often he was not. He was simply a man for his time who cared about his country and did what he thought was right. It’s a shame that our conservatives today spew such venomous ideals and invoke Reagan’s name while doing so. Reagan and his legacy deserve much better.