John Stossel, a small “l” libertarian, wrote the following in an article I found recently on the website of Reason magazine:

“I happily suspend disbelief when a magician says he'll saw a woman in half. That's entertainment. But when Harry Reid says he'll give 30 million additional people health coverage while cutting the deficit, improving health care and reducing its cost, it's not entertaining. It's incredible.”

True enough. But suppose we rewrite that last part to describe a different time and a somewhat different promise.

“But when Ronald Reagan said he would dramatically boost defense spending, cut taxes, protect entitlements and reduce the deficit, that wasn’t entertaining. That was incredible.”

Or, as George Herbert Walker Bush said at the time, it’s “voodoo economics.” Deficits triple what they were in Carter’s last budget, $200 billion a year deficits into the out years, “as far as the eye can see” soon proved Bush right. Maybe it was a lucky guess. The even larger deficits under the Bushes suggested neither “Poppy” nor Boy George knew voodoo from doodoo. 

This is an old story. I once asked Pat Buchanan how he could have been such a staunch defender of Richard Millhouse Nixon, when Nixon made Lyndon Johnson’s big government even bigger. “Pitchfork” Pat did not disagree.

“The Great Society laid the foundation,” he said. “And we built the skyscraper.” 

I am not suggesting Buchanan is a closet “progressive” when it comes to big government. He was merely acknowledging what happens when we choose Republican over Democrat, a faux conservative over a confessed liberal in elections offering what former Libertarian Party candidate for President Andre Marrou described as the choice  between “Socialist Party A and Socialist Party B.”

Reagan was supposed to break the mold, giving us what we dreamed of when we envisioned the Goldwater administration. We got tax cuts and more defense spending. Some entitlements were trimmed, but in the end they were protected.  Even Big Bird survived threatened cuts to the Public Broadcasting System. Deficit reduction? That would be like Heaven. It could wait. 

And wait. And wait. We may well wonder how much of the “Reagan Revolution” Reagan even wanted or believed in. In 1985, I cornered Secretary of Education William Bennett after he spoke in Bedford, NH and asked him a pointed question.

“Shouldn’t you be gone by now?”

“Whaddaya mean?” he asked between puffs on a cigarette.

“Well, there was that pledge to do away with the Department of Education,” I reminded him.

“The votes aren’t there,” he shrugged. Well, of course. The Democrats still controlled the House of Representatives and the Department of Education was their baby. But did the Republicans even try, I asked Bennett, who had become something of a conservative hero in a job the conservative president had promised to eliminate. Again he shrugged.

“The votes aren’t there,” he repeated.  

Okay, what about the Department of Energy, which Reagan and the Republicans also promised to eliminate? You might ask David Stockman, the bright young congressman from Michigan who became Reagan’s first director of the Office of Management and Budget. Stockman burned the midnight oil searching for ways to tame the mammoth budget monster. Most of his proposals to reduce or eliminate agencies or programs never had the honor of being defeated by the Democrats in Congress. They were aborted by the Republicans in the White House.

While Reagan was still President-elect and before he picked the head of OMB, he offered Stockman a different job. He asked him if he would like to be Secretary of Energy. Stockman declined. But does it not seem strange that Reagan would want to reward one of the bright young lights of his victorious campaign with a department he had promised to eliminate? How serious was that promise?

The $200 billion a year deficits seemed tolerable while we were challenging and defeating the Soviet Union in the arms race. But the Soviet Union fell and the red ink soared. Deficits of $200 billion a year grew to $300 billion and even $400 billion. Bush the Elder raised taxes as real estate markets collapsed and America slid into a recession. After a sobering eight years under Bill Clinton, with deficits eliminated, enter Boy Bush, stage right. And deficits soared higher than ever. I’ll say it again: Money doesn’t grow on trees in Washington, but deficits sure grow under Bushes.

Critics on the right are quick to call Obama’s presidency a failure, ten months after he came into office as the inheritor of two Middle East wars, unheard of and once unimaginable deficits and a collapsed financial sector. Rather than focusing on those problems, Obama seems determined to create new ones by nationalizing health care, crippling the economy with “cap and trade” to reduce carbon emissions and, with “bipartisan support,” digging us deeper into the graveyard of empires called Afghanistan. Republicans are already comparing his “failed presidency” to those of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

And George W. Bush?  Sad to say, for some Republicans he remains a hero. He expanded and overused the military as they had urged. He cut short countless lives in an unnecessary war in Iraq and shamelessly trimmed the Bill of Rights with unprecedented and unconstitutional claims of executive power. And to the extent that all of that pleases Republicans, it says a lot more about the Gang Of Plunderers than it does about either George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

Jack Kenny is a freelance writer living in New Hampshire. Send him an email at jkenny2@netzero.com.

 

 

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rprew said:

Now hiring: Now looking to hire 435 Congressmen and 36 Senators for positions starting in January 2011. Requirements are to be informed and avid supporters of the United States Constitution, display an aversion to unconstitutional wars, seeking to restore fiscal responsibility and a constitutionally mandated money supply, opposing amnesty for illegal aliens and possessing a sincere desire to secure our borders, and ending all entangling alliances such as (but not limited to) membership in the UN, NAFTA, NATO, SPP, LOST, and climate change treaties. Applicants should be strong supporters of States rights. Final selection of all qualified applicants will occur in November 2010. Socialists, insiders, liberals, criminals, one worlders, warmongers, radical environmentalist, abortionists, gun control zealots, and fiscally irresponsible individuals need not apply.

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November 30, 2009
Votes: +13

DDW said:

As usual, rprew I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, our fedgov is now every bit as filthy, vile and foul as the Augean Stables of Greek mythology and I wonder if it's even possible to clean it out/clean it up short of an angry, perhaps even violent, uprising of the taxpayers. There are now several generations of political hacks and bureaucrats swilling at the taxpayer provided trough who wrongly believe the jobs they hold are a right rather than a privelede and that they have a right to rule. The whole thing stinks to high Heaven.

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November 30, 2009
Votes: +2

Pat Henry said:

De-capitalization by devaluing currency (inflation) Hmmm. I think I see a pattern. Thanks, Jack. I will be voting for Constitution and Libertarian candidates in 2010. And not just for Federal, but especially for STATE and county offices, so they can assert the rights of lesser magistrate against fedguv. They are bankrupt, and can get no taxes to empower themselves if there is no blood in a stone. So my businesses and clients will be building a sustainable base for that assertion of rights by trading in non-fiat medium of exchange.

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November 30, 2009
Votes: +5

DDW said:

	A question please Has there been a Constitutionally oriented president since Thomas Jefferson (who, I believe, was the last of the antifederalists)?
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December 01, 2009
Votes: +0

UP4Liberty said:

	RE: Now Hiring While I wholeheartedly agree - good luck finding anyone who can fulfill the requirements!
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December 05, 2009
Votes: +0