On Foreign Policy, Conservatives Should Leave Ronald Reagan Behind
Relying on the policies of a man who was President in a very different time is not a substitute for a rational foreign policy.
Ronald Reagan has been dead for more than ten years now, but the Republican Party continues to bring him back into the public debate on a regular basis. Hardly an election has gone by in the past twenty years in which someone, somewhere has not eventually expressed the idea that what the GOP, and the nation as a whole, needs is another Ronald Reagan. Of course, as we’ve discussed here at OTB many times in the past (see here, here, and here for example), the Ronald Reagan that these conservative Republicans harken back to bears little resemblance to the man who served in the White House from 1981 to 1989 but bears a striking resemblance to whatever particular brand of conservatism the person making the argument happens to come from. For these people, Reagan was a tax-cutting, regulation slashing, low spending, anti-Communist who stood up to the Soviets, the Democrats and the Iranians, never compromised with anyone, and believed more than anything else that a militarily strong America was necessary to bring peace to the world. In reality, of course, President Reagan raised taxes in addition to cutting them, oversaw massive growth in the regulations contained in the Federal Register while he was in office, presided over increases in spending on both the defense and non-defense side, and negotiated and made agreements with Democrats, Soviets, and the Iranian mullahs who also believed the world would be a better place if nuclear weapons were wiped out of existence. It is, however, the mythic Reagan that current Republicans worship to the point of having created something that says more about the modern Republican Party than it does about who Ronald Reagan was or what kind of President he was.
This use of the mythic Reagan is perhaps no more apparent than in the area of foreign policy. Rick Perry brought Reagan’s name up in his Op-Ed criticizing Senator Rand Paul’s supposed “isoloationism,” and Paul brought him up in his response to Perry. Paul had also drawn on the ghost of Reagan in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed in which he urged restraint in American responses to the ongoing conflict in Iraq. The question “What Would Reagan Do?” was also the subject of a piece by Peter Beinart at The Atlantic in which Beinart somewhat oddly tried to harken back to a President who presided over the final years of the Cold War in crafting policy for a 21st Century conflict against an phenomenon that, by and large, did not exist when he was President.
Daniel Drezner, however, argues in The Washington Post that the entire idea of trying to figure what Reagan would do is pointless:
[A]fter a point, this parsing of Reagan’s legacy starts to look like Communists trying to find a Lenin quote that justifies their pre-existing worldview. Or, to put it even more bluntly, who cares what Reagan would think? Ronald Reagan had a decent foreign policy record, but confronted a world radically different from the one we face today. In Reagan’s time, the United States faced a clear, overarching threat that defined the way Americans thought about every part of the globe. In the 21st century, the threats are more variegated and far less potent than the Cold War era Soviet Union. Reagan is a pretty good guide for how to mix soaring neoconservative rhetoric with less-than-soaring realpolitik foreign policy. His administration’s record provides little guidance on what to do, however, in the modern Middle East, unless Republicans are suddenly keen on giving Iran arms again.
Daniel Larison agrees:
[T]he preoccupation with finding appropriate Reagan precedents is itself part of one of the larger problems with Republican foreign policy today. GOP foreign policy on the whole has completely failed to recognize how the world has changed since the end of the Cold War, and so it has failed to adjust accordingly. To the extent that most Republicans have acknowledged any changes, they have sought to turn current threats into a new version of the Cold War, and some have gone so far as to claim that the world is now more dangerous for the U.S. than it was when the USSR still existed. Republican hawks mostly took the end of the Cold War as an invitation for even greater activism abroad rather than seizing on it as the opportunity to reduce U.S. commitments and burdens that it obviously was.
(…)
It shouldn’t make much difference to us today what we think “Reagan would do.” Not only is it speculation to guess at what he would do in most modern crises and conflicts, but it is entirely possible that he would favor doing the wrong things just as he sometimes did when he was president. Instead of climbing over one another to prostrate themselves before Reagan’s image, contemporary Republican politicians should attempt to identify the real threats that the U.S. faces today, devise an appropriate strategy for addressing them, and articulate their own foreign policy vision rather than poring over the actions of a Reagan presidency that ended a generation ago in a world extremely different from our own.
Drezner and Larison are, of course, entirely correct. On some fundamental level, there is something rather bizarre about making policy arguments of any kind by referring to someone who isn’t even alive anymore. Of course, this is something that’s been a common part of American politics for a long time. Republicans campaigned on the legacy of Lincoln long after the Civil War was over. Democrats have done the same with Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. And politicians of all stripes harken back to the Founding Fathers on a regular basis whenever it might be convenient for them, even when they are doing so for purposes totally unrelated to anything those Founding Fathers ever said, wrote, or did. It’s understandable that political parties would want to harken back to the successful Presidents of their past, and patriotic paen’s to the Founders are basically de rigeur for American politicians.
Notwithstanding those facts, though, there comes a time when a political party that continually finds itself harkening back to the past needs to ask itself whether that’s a good idea. I went from Middle School through the early years of college during the time that Ronald Reagan was President. During that time, the world changed significantly. When it started, we were in a a world where the Soviet Union was still in the grips of a post-Stalinist regime led by men who were constantly on the edge of death that seemed intent on doing mischief around the world and the United States found itself mired in economic and international malaise. By the time it ended, the Soviet Union was ruled by someone clearly, albeit obviously reluctantly, committed to the kinds of reform that would set in motion forces that would lead to the exceedingly peaceful end of a seventy year old tyrannical regime and a United States that had experienced some of its best years of economic growth since the end of World War II.
Ronald Reagan presided over all of this and, to a significant degree, his policies were responsible for much of the good that happened. Reagan wasn’t perfect, though, and even would have acknowledged that. When his 1981 tax cuts, combined with the recession that was induced largely by the tight monetary policies that Paul Volcker was instituting at the Fed to finally kill off the inflation monster of the 1970s, proved to have far bigger impact on Federal revenues than anticipated, he signed into law a tax package that was, at the time, the largest tax increase in American history. He sent American troops into Beirut on a dubious mission, without prior approval from Congress, and then withdrew them when they became the target for a horrible terrorist attack on their base at Beirut’s airport. And, of course, his Administration engaged in a secret program that was designed to circumvent laws regarding arming Nicaraguan rebels by selling arms to a regime that had been designated as a supporter of terrorist, whom they also negotiated with to obtain the release of Westerners being held in Lebanon. He was, in other words, an imperfect President, which is something that has been true of every single man to occupy the office and will be true of everyone who occupies the office in the future. The manner in which Republicans have effectively defied him is both a perversion of history and unfair to his actual legacy.
All of this is even more true when it comes to foreign policy. Even if the distorted version of Reagan that conservatives worship were in the least way accurate, we live today in a world that is fundamentally different from the one that Reagan grew up in and which shaped both his opinions and his actions once he took office. In reality, we have no idea what he would think about the issues that we face, or how he would deal with them, and there’s no rational reason why we should even spend any time trying to figure any of those things out. There’s much to admire about Reagan’s life and his Presidency, and on balance I would argue that we should be glad that he was President when he was when it comes to foreign policy issues. However, there is no reason to spend our time wondering how someone who was President when there was still a Soviet Union would do about the world today any more than there is a reason to wonder what a man who was President when Europe was still ruled by Kings and Emperors would do. We need to figure these things out on our own rather than basing them on myths and ghosts.
Of course it’s ridiculous to base policies on myths and ghosts…but that’s all Republicans have.
Fact and evidence are anathema to their world view. All that is left for them to anchor themselves to are their fictions.
The meme that Reagan ended the cold war is utter BS – he was simply in the right place at the right time. When I worked for the DIA in the early 70s we knew the old Soviet Union was collapsing.
His “supply side economies” has proved to be a disaster for the middle class – instead of trickle it has been shown to be trickle up.
Telling irrelevant Republicans to leave Reagan behind is the same as telling Libertarians to leave Milton Friedman behind. It may be a good idea but it is irrelevant to politics, policy, or governance.
Since the Republicans have zero influence on foreign policy, what POV they take is irrelevant. Instead of wasting one minute thinking about the irrelevant Republicans, why not think about Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren think about foreign policy. Senator Warren is more relevant to policy and governance than all of the Republicans in Congress. Yet, wonks and pundits never seem to want to think about what Democrats, outside of the current administration, think about foreign policy.
Politics will get much more practical when everyone realizes that the Republicans are irrelevant and can be safely ignored. Perry and Paul can have all the disagreements on foreign policy they want but neither man will ever have any influence on foreign policy.
@superdestroyer:
Thanks for proving my point.
@C. Clavin: Reagan ? My mind is with the policies of Nixon. And I am not a Republican.
For a good perpective of pragmatic, common sense leadership during a time of being at the precipice of total destruction, read “Ike’s Bluff”.
@C. Clavin:
Elizabeth Warren is an influential Senator and a member of the party that holds power in the U.S. She is spoken of as a presidential candidate when everyone knows that the Democratic nominee will be the next president. Of course, what Senator Warren believes is more important than the outgoing governor of Texas or a bank bencher Senator from Kentucky who will go through his entire time in the Senate without a legislative victory.
However, I guess the endless writing about irrelevant Republicans is meant to keep the Democrats from thinking about actual policy or governance or to keep Democrats from getting out of line when it comes to acceptable beliefs.
It’s noteworthy that in describing the Repub’s Gipper fixation, Our Gracious Host reaches so often for religious words. “Republicans have effectively defied (sic) him…” he says, which we all know is his quaint way of spelling “deified”.
Conservatives use the same hushed, reverent tones in claiming special reverence for the founding documents. They relate to their Holy Scriptures and their Constitution as if they were companion documents. The fundamentalist mind-set operates that way. All the answers to every question are contained in these foundational documents and if one fails to perceive the Truth in them it is proof that he is blind or corrupt. And to the religious mind, error has no rights.
I remember my 8th grade history teacher explaining that for many people it is very difficult to separate religious authority from political authority. He was talking about Roger Williams and the founding of Rhode Island Plantation. At the time, I was one of those fundamentalists (a good southern boy) and I couldn’t make out the sense of that lesson; probably I remember the remark because it troubled me.
Sadly, Mr Flanagan thought that America had discovered a wonderful formula called “separation of church and state”. I hope he does not know today what has happened to the country he loved.
FTFY
You left out the Savings & Loan crisis, which was a result of his attempt to simplify the tax code and deregulate loan institutions. Also partially a Federal Reserve fiasco.
Frankly, I can’t have a good opinion of anyone who wishes botulism on people at a soup kitchen, but I imagine most presidents are sociopaths/jackasses of one stripe or another. You have to be crazy to want the job after all.
@JohnMcC: Yes. Whether religious or not, conservatives tend to be religious personalities. Everything is based on faith. And faith is based, as you note, on the holy scriptures: the Declaration, Constitution, etc. (Or at least the versions in their heads.) They have a priesthood to interpret scripture: Limbaugh, Beck, etc. They have canonized St. Ronald. If we are virtuous by cutting taxes, we will be rewarded with low deficits. If we throw enough poor people in the volcano, the Invisible Hand will give us jobs. We must smite the heathen, be they commies or Muslim. We know true morality and we must make everyone follow it.
Don’t believe I’ve had opportunity to trot this old chestnut out in this forum but it’s only a little bit off-topic: Given what we know now and, I think George H W Bush would have been a far better President. Unfortunately, heaven’s blessing to us include Mr Reagan’s two terms.
@Tyrell:
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…it’s probably a duck.
@superdestroyer:
Seriously….you think one first term Senator is more relevant than all the Republicans in Congress?
If only that were the case we could actually do something about some of our problems instead of denying they exist.
As it is…your statement only proves your ignorance.
@superdestroyer:
Elizabeth Warren, hero to the Far Left. Except on Israel of course..
“endless writing about irrelevant Republicans”
Yep, thats what the site is now, throwing red meat to liberals on here. Making fun of Perry and Santorium. Todd Akin? Who cares about Todd Akin! Let’s kick down Reagan too. Yeah!!! The only Republican who may be safe on here is Abe Lincoln.
I don’t even know what this blog is about anymore. How hard is it cut and paste relevant articles? Maybe I’ll see you all tomorrow when I can find out how people really think about Sarah Palin and a new poll on whether people who eat at Chipolte are more likely to vote for incumbents.
@Tillman: The Federal Reserve is a fiasco in itself. Bills to bring about transparency and pull back the veil never get anywhere. It now admits it lost over a trillion dollars!! (secretsofthefed.com)
See also”Secrets of the Federal Reserve ” (Mullins). It wii stand your hair on end.
@Tyrell:
Seriously…secretsofthefed.com?
Breaking News: Economic Adviser to Putin Declares WWIII Has Begun and U.S. Nazi’s Must Be Stopped
Un-friggin’-believable…….
@C. Clavin:
Considering that any major legislative bill that is sponsored by Republican will never be passed by Congress again, then it should be easy to assume conservatives are irrelevant. No legislation in the U.S. will be passed unless it benfits Democrats That is the future. That makes conservatives and Republicans irrelevant but makes the current and future leaders of the Democratic Party controlled Congress very important. It also makes the people who could be cabinet members in the future very important. However, the current voting and demographic trends of the U.S. make every Republican, every conservatives, and everyone outside of the Democratic Party irrelevant.
On all policies Reagan should be left behind. Looking at his term 30 yrs hence I am hard pressed to think of a single thing he did that worked out.**
**Hindsight is always 20-20, but why are Republicans not inflicted with that particular malady?
Actually, it looks like Paul brought him up in the WSJ, then Perry responded in the Post. Paul’s original piece is behind a paywall.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Reagan wasn’t the left-wing or right-wing caricature he’s become. I think the most telling incident about him concerned a NATO exercise named Able Archer 83.( The wiki page is pretty good.) Able Archer 83 was a NATO exercise that sought to simulate NATO’s participation in a nuclear war. The thing of it was, in short, the Soviets thought it was the real thing…the Soviets came right up to launching their weapons in response to what they believed was a NATO launch against them. What stopped them was the ending of the exercise and the just-in-time realization that Able Archer 83 had only been an exercise.
The important thing about Reagan and Abel Archer 83 is that when he was informed of the Russian response to the exercise, he was shocked. He had not understood, nor had most in the West, that the Russians were really, truly, deathly afraid of a western first strike on them. The wiki page has this from his memoirs:
That realization led to the beginnings of the talks with Mikhail Gorbachev and the nuclear arms reduction treaties. That was not an inconsiderable achievement.
How about Harry Truman? Where would he stack up today?
well, he was the last republican “orator” and he could rally the troops on either side of the aisle. i love reading the hate you tossers have for Reagan, maybe someday you’ll have one emerge from your party……. not likely though. seems the age of spineless apologists is upon us, maybe the voters will see that next time.
another push to leave conservatives out of the loop?
Gee, how original, Doug.i
Reagan promptly backed down every time the United States was challenged:
September 1, 1983: 269 people, including 62 Americans, abroad Korean Air Lines Flight 007 are murdered by the Soviets.
Reagan’s response? Nothing.
October 23, 1983: 307 people, including 241 American servicemen, are murdered by the Iranians when their barracks is bombed in Beirut.
Reagan’s response? To sell the Iranians weapons, while they were fighting against our valiant ally, Iraq, less than two years later.
March 24, 1985: Major Arthur D. Nicholson, United States Army, is murdered by Soviet sentries while on an official military liaison mission. The Soviets let Major Nicholson bleed to death without rendering any attempt at medical assistance.
Reagan’s response? Nothing.
September 5, 1986: Pan Am Flight 73, while on the tarmac in Karachi, Pakistan, is attacked by the Libyan-backed Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) in an attempted hijacking. 20 passengers and crew are killed, including 3 Americans. (More Americans would have died if not for the heroic attacks of Neerja Bhanot, whose prompt warning to the cockpit crew allowed them to escape, preventing the plane from taking off. In addition, Bhanot hid and destroyed the passports of Americans, knowing they would be targets of ANO. She would be killed while shielding children as they evacuated the plane after she had hit the release for the emergency ramp, after the hijackers opened fire on the hostages.)
Reagan’s response? Nothing.
April 28, 1987: Ben Linder, an American engineer working on a hydroelectric plant in Nicaragua, is specifically targeted for assassination by the Contras.
Reagan’s response: For him and his congressional allies to wage a smear campaign against Linder and his family.
December 21, 1988: Pan Am Flight 103 is destroyed by a bomb placed by Libyan intelligence officers. 270 are killed, including 189 Americans.
Reagan’s response? Nothing.
@Timothy Watson:
Hey, you forgot he invaded Grenada. Reagan pioneered the strategy of , when being struck by A, invade B. GWB merely perfected that tactic in Iraq
Reagan also fomented and supported several horrific civil wars in Central America, sparking the first major surge of Central American refugees into the US . On top of all that, he granted “amnesty” to the then illegal immigrants as part of his 1986 immigration law reforms, thus paving the way for current immigration “crisis”. Thanks, Ron!
@sam: You actually consider nearly ending the world as we know it thru blind and willful ignorance being saved only by pure luck an accomplishment? Really? No wonder the GOP consider him one to emulate.
@OzarkHillbilly: Reagan did at least realize what was going on. He did admit reality. The present clown car can’t even admit that President Obama is a natural born American.
@bill:
Funny that you see rational analysis of actual events, as opposed to mythology and false legends, as hate. In other words not idolizing your idols is tantamount to hatred.
Try growing up.
@superdestroyer:
That’s just total BS. If Republicans could approach anything resonably…instead of this my-way-or-the-highway crap…then of course they could pass things.
They could have had a Grand Bargain if they’d been willing to accept revenue increases in exchange for entitlement cuts.
Hell…Obamacare is Republican legislation.
And everyone says Republicans are going to take the Senate.
Put your money where your mouth is…whenever Republicans pass legislation thru Congress you send me $1000.
@C. Clavin:
“Hell…Obamacare is Republican legislation.”
And in all likelihood, Olympia Snowe could have demanded and received major changes to it in exchange for actually voting on the floor as she did in Committee (and bringing no other Republicans with her).
@C. Clavin: No, that’s wrong. I have been a loyal member of the southern wing of the Democratic party since the ’60’s. I voted Republican once, in 1972. Senator McGovern was an honorable statesman, but his campaign and the national Democratic party was taken over by radical elements and insurrectionists. They also tried to take over the universities, media, and inner cities. (“This country was under siege.” Joseph Califano, Johnson cabinet member.)
The notion that southern Democrats were a bunch of racists was a load of propaganda being put out by certain news media and politicians to ruin the Democrat party in the south.
@Tyrell:It should be illegal to bitch about the radicalization of the 60s and 70s without mentioning Vietnam.
Last I knew, Dems don’t go around saying “What would JFK do?” or quoting FDR’s Eleventh Commandment or calling for either men to be added to Mt. Rushmore.
There’s nothing unusual about ascribing mythical qualities to US presidents, but Reagan worship is really in its own category. There’s a good book about the phenomenon, Will Bunch’s Tear Down This Myth. It actually discusses the comparison with JFK worship among Democrats and concludes it’s simply not anywhere in the same ballpark as Reagan worship among Republicans.
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@Kylopod: Considering the kind of worship (and I’m using the word literally) Washington got after his death, complete with murals placing him in the heavens, Reagan worship isn’t so bad.
@Kylopod: Scarcely a week goes by without something reminding me of President Kennedy. A photo of the White House, tv program (“The Sixties” CNN), some statement, or a random thought. Then I always think “if JFK was the leader, things would be a lot different. Kennedy had one of the best cabinets in history, second only to Lincoln’s, and maybe Franklin Roosevelt’s. After Kennedy was killed, this country went downhill.
“The best and brightest” : the Kennedy cabinet.
@Tyrell: Lmao, Kennedy’s cabinet were LBJ’s cabinet and were largely responsible for Vietnam. JFK was an above-average president, but people need to stop withe revisionist history, there were plenty of mistakes made during “Camelot”.
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