Today marks the centenary of the birth of Ronald Reagan. This is my tribute to the site with The Right Nation , which celebrates the day with a beautiful theme:
"I Have Spent Most Of My Life as a Democrat -" for most of my life I was a Democrat ". Thus begins the speech "A time for choosing" that Ronald Reagan gave in 1964 (and, for the first time in the history of presidential elections, was broadcast on NBC a few days before the vote) to support the candidacy of Barry Goldwater to White House. He was a brilliant starting point: to convince those who think like him (what is more important to win an election) Reagan was first this was not "born" Republican - and indeed in the forties was a Roosevelt Democrat, and had long been the leader of the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood. In that speech, taking the former actor who inaugurated the 53 year old made his true political orientation, was already the essence of Reagan: the overflowing charisma, the boldness deliberately a bit 'cowboy, the abandonment of any residual isolationism because those "who propose to us to trade our freedom with the pot of broth of the" welfare state "are the same ones who" told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory ", but above all the extraordinary ability to displayed next to the common people, crossing themselves easily ideological barriers that while the radical message helped to strengthen. Reagan wrote in his face "is one of you", not only in the eyes of the Republican base but also in front of independent voters and even a slice of those Democrats.
That year, Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater leaving just six states out of fifty - the worst result ever in the history of presidential elections. But the campaign laid the foundations of the alliance between the anti-right "religious" and the libertarian anti-statism that actually formed the premise of the recovery of which would become the protagonist, a generation later, the same Reagan. The commentator of the Washington Post George Will has summed up the concept better than anyone else, "Goldwater won the elections of 1964. Only that it took sixteen years to count the votes. "
Reagan's victory over Carter in 1980 was triumphant because it transcended the largely Republican area: three in a competition (it was in the running include former Republican Anderson, an independent candidate for), won the presidency by making also vote 26% of Democratic voters and 30% of those "independents". Lou Cannon, the most renowned among his biographers, recalls that on the eve of his election as a radio journalist asked him what America saw in him, and he, after a moment's hesitation, replied, "laughs when I say that perhaps they see themselves, they see that I am one of them? ". His inaugural speech for the 1981 inauguration ( one that contains the famous phrase" in the current crisis the government is not the solution to our problem: the government is the problem "), confirmed this idea is rightly remembered as a paean against oppressive taxation and the intrusiveness of the state, but it was also an ode to the normality of ordinary people, to " everyday heroes who enter and leave factories .. heroes behind the counters of the shops ... entrepreneurs who believe in themselves and in their ideas, able to produce jobs, new wealth and opportunity. "
His popularity fell quickly, thanks to the economic downturn, and the first mid-term parliamentary elections in 1982, the president's party was beaten: the newly elected Democrats were well fifty-seven, while Republicans were only twenty-four . Then, the recession in the second quarter gave way to a robust and sustained economic recovery, and when they played in the 1984 Reagan re-election triumph in 49 of 50 states (the Democratic challenger, Mondale, he won only in Minnesota, its status of origin) regained 26% of democratic vote, exactly the same as four years before, and as much as 63% - more than double - than the independents. His second administration skirted in the polls 60% of the vote in its worst moment, after the Iran-Contra. Since then, it has become customary to speak of Reagan Democrats (Reagan Democrats) to indicate those voters on the left (mainly white workers in the South and North) often come from voting for a Republican candidate.
In January 2008, the aspiring candidate Obama confessed to journalists to admire Reagan because he "had changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon had not done it, and even Bill Clinton." Apart from the evil subliminal message of the series "I'm a Clinton as Reagan was in Nixon (the primaries had just begun and the antagonist was half of Bill), the spot was intended to throw the hook of the campaign "yes we can" democratic electorate over the fence. The media Statter the game and immediately began to hear about Obamacons . After the election, however, the bubble has burst quickly, and once a year the 44th president was already struggling for survival. After beating of mid-term elections last November, the parallel with Reagan has resurfaced, but this time it refers to the sequence 1980-1984, striking resemblance to the parable sharply downward in the polls the first two years and the challenge of go back the slope in the second. On Christmas Eve, the White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told the world via twitter that reading the book in which the president would have the water while he licked his wounds in Hawaii was, incidentally, a biography of Reagan. Once again the media took the bait: speculation on a work for Barack tread the footsteps of Ronnie, not to mention the inevitable handbooks on how to achieve it, bouncing from one head to another week - and have intensified after the recent State of the Union speech, in which many were quick to read a Reaganesque tone because of the mantra "win the future".
Only time will tell if Obama will enjoy the favorable circumstances that allowed Reagan to rise after the collapse of popularity in 1982, which is a substantial economic recovery. Already, however, we can exclude that the current president has of the other ingredient of the magic formula that allowed his predecessor to "let the symbol": that is, knowing how to put aside not only the language, but more generally the conventions , the mentality and the "tick" of politics politician. Having successfully closed the Cold War, for example, is a landmark result that would not have been achieved or not perceived the same way if the 40th president had talked and acted like a politician "conventional". At the time Reagan went to the government, everything revolved around or the dogma of "containment": the Cold War was a conflict in which we do not fight for victory, but for survival. Thinking to get out of winners was a blasphemy, heresy and an expression of rudeness and ignorance, because it meant compromising the security of mutual non-aggression based on deterrence of nuclear holocaust. The 'everyman "Ronald Reagan was this view abhorrent: the scene described it as two gunmen' facing each other in a saloon, which will link each gun to your head ... forever. " The people were tired of living in that situation and crippled Jimmy Carter, right after being elected, understood in this exasperation had a plane of abandonment in his famous speech which he had held in 1977 at the University of Notre Dame had proclaimed the liberation "from the inordinate fear of communism", and ruled that the arms race until then held with the USSR was "morally reprehensible" and was abandoned as soon as possible to switch to a new phase of "detente." Reagan proposed an alternative way out: in preparing its candidacy in the 1979 Republican primary, his advisers said that his vision for managing the relationship with the Soviets was rather "simple, some would say simplistic: we win and they lose" . His doctrine was summed up The term "roll back", literally "rewind": not simply to contain but to drive back - play to win, not to survive. Ordinary people are waiting and voted en masse. The experts did shrug dismissed as a parvenu who had overestimated the Soviet threat. Instead, he was so polished that must not be mesmerized by the guidelines of the mainstream realpolitikante of the time, and guess, first and better than many "experts" that the USSR was close to collapse and for this had to be taken to chest. Even against the advice of many in his party, he did it: with the words (just think of the his famous speech to the British Parliament in June 1982 , One of the 'evil empire', ruled that communism would be "consigned to history as a pile of ashes" or the even more famous pronounced in 1987 in Berlin, with whom, contravention of the obstinate opposition of the vertices of U.S. diplomacy, he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Wall) and with the facts (before the deployment of Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Europe to cope with the SS20 that Moscow had installed since 1977, and then "Star Wars" and then the anti-missile system that broke the balance of terror foreshadowing a capacity to hit without being hit, and forcing the opponent to a surge in the arms race that Moscow could not afford).
The current president, certainly driven by the need to distance himself from George W Bush but also by their character and academic training as a jurist, he has become accustomed, in the words and actions, something antithetical: a continuous search for ostentatious balanced compromise, which should reassure both parties that voters because of its conventionality, for the cautious and measured attitude. Obama never takes place "hot" about anything, and when he finally takes a stand stubbornly avoids unbalanced his style and his methods are always of a very anxious not to pull the rope too, did not want to drag the country into companies can not afford. To realize how little there is Reaganesque in his style, just listen to any of his State of the Union speeches, and then go and listen to what Reagan gave in 1986 in which, with typical American taste for culture " pop, even quoted the movie "Back to the Future" (which was also made fun of, but he was a man of great humor and very much appreciated), and gave the world the following dispatch: "to those who are in captivity to the will of a dictatorial regime, those who are beaten because they persist in fighting for freedom and democracy - the right to profess their faith, to speak, to live and prosper the family of free nations - we say to you tonight you are not alone, freedom fighters. America will support with moral and material assistance your right not only to fight and die for freedom, but also winning the fight and win freedom - in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua. This is a great moral challenge to the entire free world. " hard not to feel a deep, intense nostalgia.
That year, Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater leaving just six states out of fifty - the worst result ever in the history of presidential elections. But the campaign laid the foundations of the alliance between the anti-right "religious" and the libertarian anti-statism that actually formed the premise of the recovery of which would become the protagonist, a generation later, the same Reagan. The commentator of the Washington Post George Will has summed up the concept better than anyone else, "Goldwater won the elections of 1964. Only that it took sixteen years to count the votes. "
Reagan's victory over Carter in 1980 was triumphant because it transcended the largely Republican area: three in a competition (it was in the running include former Republican Anderson, an independent candidate for), won the presidency by making also vote 26% of Democratic voters and 30% of those "independents". Lou Cannon, the most renowned among his biographers, recalls that on the eve of his election as a radio journalist asked him what America saw in him, and he, after a moment's hesitation, replied, "laughs when I say that perhaps they see themselves, they see that I am one of them? ". His inaugural speech for the 1981 inauguration ( one that contains the famous phrase" in the current crisis the government is not the solution to our problem: the government is the problem "), confirmed this idea is rightly remembered as a paean against oppressive taxation and the intrusiveness of the state, but it was also an ode to the normality of ordinary people, to " everyday heroes who enter and leave factories .. heroes behind the counters of the shops ... entrepreneurs who believe in themselves and in their ideas, able to produce jobs, new wealth and opportunity. "
His popularity fell quickly, thanks to the economic downturn, and the first mid-term parliamentary elections in 1982, the president's party was beaten: the newly elected Democrats were well fifty-seven, while Republicans were only twenty-four . Then, the recession in the second quarter gave way to a robust and sustained economic recovery, and when they played in the 1984 Reagan re-election triumph in 49 of 50 states (the Democratic challenger, Mondale, he won only in Minnesota, its status of origin) regained 26% of democratic vote, exactly the same as four years before, and as much as 63% - more than double - than the independents. His second administration skirted in the polls 60% of the vote in its worst moment, after the Iran-Contra. Since then, it has become customary to speak of Reagan Democrats (Reagan Democrats) to indicate those voters on the left (mainly white workers in the South and North) often come from voting for a Republican candidate.
In January 2008, the aspiring candidate Obama confessed to journalists to admire Reagan because he "had changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon had not done it, and even Bill Clinton." Apart from the evil subliminal message of the series "I'm a Clinton as Reagan was in Nixon (the primaries had just begun and the antagonist was half of Bill), the spot was intended to throw the hook of the campaign "yes we can" democratic electorate over the fence. The media Statter the game and immediately began to hear about Obamacons . After the election, however, the bubble has burst quickly, and once a year the 44th president was already struggling for survival. After beating of mid-term elections last November, the parallel with Reagan has resurfaced, but this time it refers to the sequence 1980-1984, striking resemblance to the parable sharply downward in the polls the first two years and the challenge of go back the slope in the second. On Christmas Eve, the White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told the world via twitter that reading the book in which the president would have the water while he licked his wounds in Hawaii was, incidentally, a biography of Reagan. Once again the media took the bait: speculation on a work for Barack tread the footsteps of Ronnie, not to mention the inevitable handbooks on how to achieve it, bouncing from one head to another week - and have intensified after the recent State of the Union speech, in which many were quick to read a Reaganesque tone because of the mantra "win the future".
Only time will tell if Obama will enjoy the favorable circumstances that allowed Reagan to rise after the collapse of popularity in 1982, which is a substantial economic recovery. Already, however, we can exclude that the current president has of the other ingredient of the magic formula that allowed his predecessor to "let the symbol": that is, knowing how to put aside not only the language, but more generally the conventions , the mentality and the "tick" of politics politician. Having successfully closed the Cold War, for example, is a landmark result that would not have been achieved or not perceived the same way if the 40th president had talked and acted like a politician "conventional". At the time Reagan went to the government, everything revolved around or the dogma of "containment": the Cold War was a conflict in which we do not fight for victory, but for survival. Thinking to get out of winners was a blasphemy, heresy and an expression of rudeness and ignorance, because it meant compromising the security of mutual non-aggression based on deterrence of nuclear holocaust. The 'everyman "Ronald Reagan was this view abhorrent: the scene described it as two gunmen' facing each other in a saloon, which will link each gun to your head ... forever. " The people were tired of living in that situation and crippled Jimmy Carter, right after being elected, understood in this exasperation had a plane of abandonment in his famous speech which he had held in 1977 at the University of Notre Dame had proclaimed the liberation "from the inordinate fear of communism", and ruled that the arms race until then held with the USSR was "morally reprehensible" and was abandoned as soon as possible to switch to a new phase of "detente." Reagan proposed an alternative way out: in preparing its candidacy in the 1979 Republican primary, his advisers said that his vision for managing the relationship with the Soviets was rather "simple, some would say simplistic: we win and they lose" . His doctrine was summed up The term "roll back", literally "rewind": not simply to contain but to drive back - play to win, not to survive. Ordinary people are waiting and voted en masse. The experts did shrug dismissed as a parvenu who had overestimated the Soviet threat. Instead, he was so polished that must not be mesmerized by the guidelines of the mainstream realpolitikante of the time, and guess, first and better than many "experts" that the USSR was close to collapse and for this had to be taken to chest. Even against the advice of many in his party, he did it: with the words (just think of the his famous speech to the British Parliament in June 1982 , One of the 'evil empire', ruled that communism would be "consigned to history as a pile of ashes" or the even more famous pronounced in 1987 in Berlin, with whom, contravention of the obstinate opposition of the vertices of U.S. diplomacy, he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Wall) and with the facts (before the deployment of Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Europe to cope with the SS20 that Moscow had installed since 1977, and then "Star Wars" and then the anti-missile system that broke the balance of terror foreshadowing a capacity to hit without being hit, and forcing the opponent to a surge in the arms race that Moscow could not afford).
The current president, certainly driven by the need to distance himself from George W Bush but also by their character and academic training as a jurist, he has become accustomed, in the words and actions, something antithetical: a continuous search for ostentatious balanced compromise, which should reassure both parties that voters because of its conventionality, for the cautious and measured attitude. Obama never takes place "hot" about anything, and when he finally takes a stand stubbornly avoids unbalanced his style and his methods are always of a very anxious not to pull the rope too, did not want to drag the country into companies can not afford. To realize how little there is Reaganesque in his style, just listen to any of his State of the Union speeches, and then go and listen to what Reagan gave in 1986 in which, with typical American taste for culture " pop, even quoted the movie "Back to the Future" (which was also made fun of, but he was a man of great humor and very much appreciated), and gave the world the following dispatch: "to those who are in captivity to the will of a dictatorial regime, those who are beaten because they persist in fighting for freedom and democracy - the right to profess their faith, to speak, to live and prosper the family of free nations - we say to you tonight you are not alone, freedom fighters. America will support with moral and material assistance your right not only to fight and die for freedom, but also winning the fight and win freedom - in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua. This is a great moral challenge to the entire free world. " hard not to feel a deep, intense nostalgia.
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