2009-07-06

Facing Reagan's Legacy Head On

We all know to conservatives, of all philosophical stripes, revere Ronald Reagan. Like with any President, there's an amalgamation of pluses and minuses, pros and cons to tabulate. Assessing credit or blame and determining a legacy is not clear cut since history, politics and life as a whole is highly fluid. I like to use the analogy of a spinning ball rotating on a stand. In order to get some sense of both the past and present, historians essentially have to stop it with both hands bringing it to a grinding halt.

Has there been an honest discussion reflecting on Ronald Reagan's Presidency? Not as thorough as it should according to Matthew Dallek in an essay published in The American Scholar titled, "Not Ready for Mt. Rushmore."

To most who follow political history closely, the article is standard stuff and it does make an overall important point. The anger and love on both sides of the Reagan story should be somewhat calmed so as to allow a sober assessment of Ronald Reagan.

I will only add that much is made of "deregulation" destroying our economy. In fact, the real culprit is over-regulation. The problem with Reaganomics and the offshoots that may have followed was it never truly was "free-enterprise." As far as I can tell, it was deregulating a small portion of an entire governmental apparatus. Look at it this way, it's not deregulation if other parts of the economy are tightly regulated and burdened with bureaucratic red tape. It's not surprising trying to deregulate was doomed to fail if it was operating in a sea of red tape. All we had was a system by which renegade capitalist were in cahoots with government officials. The criss-crossing of the worst of both worlds.

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