Abstract

The Gipper's Economy

The article offers a look at former United States President Ronald Reagan, who died in June 2004. Whether you came to canonize the man or ridicule him, he was always great material. The major media, draped in mourning, are solemnly fictionalizing his presidency. What is left out? For one thing, a chilling meanness lurked at the core of Reagan's political agenda (always effectively concealed by the affability), and he used this meanness like a razor blade to advance his main purpose--delegitimizing the federal government. Race was one cutting edge, poverty was another. In case any white guys missed the point, Reagan opened his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered in the 1960s. Reagan was authentic in his convictions--he brought the flint-hearted libertarian doctrines to Washington and put a smiling face on the market orthodoxy of "every man for himself." Wealthy individuals, corporate and financial interests got extraordinary benefits (tax reductions and deregulation) while the bottom half got whacked whenever an opportunity arose. After my notorious account of Reagan's economic failure was published in the December 1981 Atlantic Monthly, Reagan likened me to John Hinckley, the would-be assassin who shot him.