From the ArcaMax Publishing, Richard Cohen Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/richardcohen/s-374782-264732
Perusing the Sunday newspapers with plagiaristic intent, I come across
an article about who's responsible for the current energy debacle.
Politicians are mentioned along with the amazingly shortsighted auto
executives and the oil industry itself. Names -- lots of names -- are
dropped, everyone from the current Bush to the previous Bush to
Clinton, but not a mention of the culprit-in-chief, Ronald Wilson
Reagan -- still, after all these years, the Teflon president.
Those of you with keen memories may recall that the energy crisis is
not new. In 1977, Jimmy Carter called it the "moral equivalent of
war." In the sort of speech a politician rarely delivers, he told a
not particularly grateful nation that his energy program was going to
hurt, but "a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would
not be an effective policy." The core of his initiative was
conservation. Carter had earlier asked us to lower the thermostat and
wear a sweater. He wore one himself.
Reagan, who followed Carter to the White House, wore only a smile. For
him, there was no energy crisis. Whereas Carter had insisted only the
government could manage the energy crisis, Reagan in his first
inaugural demanded that government get out of the way. Speaking of
general economic conditions at the time, he said, "government is not
the solution to our problem." He went on to call for America to return
to greatness, to "reawaken this industrial giant," and all sorts of
swell things would happen. It was wonderful stuff.
To contrast the two speeches is like comparing the screeching of a cat
to the miracles of Mozart. Yet today, Carter's speech reads as
prescient. Most of his dire predictions -- "It is a problem we will
not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively
worse through the rest of this century" -- have generally come true,
although not quite as soon or calamitously as he warned. The pity of
it all is that in American politics, being right is beside the point.
It is not my intention to pummel the late Mr. Reagan for what he did
or did not do back in the 1980s. It is my intention, though, to
suggest that Reaganism -- to which all Republicans now swear
allegiance -- has outlived its very short usefulness and ought to be
junked. This is not to say that government is the answer to all our
ills. It is only to note that if you think the answer is private
enterprise, then push your car to the nearest gas station and see what
happens.
The worst part of Reaganism was its political success. It left behind
a coterie of panting acolytes who learned from Reagan himself that
optimism, cheerfulness, an embrace of magical thinking and the
avoidance of the painful truth was the formula for victory at the
polls. For a time, it worked -- the cost of gas went down --and
Carter, that scold in the silly sweater, was banished. As they say in
New Orleans, Laissez les bons temps rouler! (Let the good times
roll!) Upbeat? You bet. But not a business plan.
In "The Age of Reagan," Princeton historian Sean Wilentz posits that
Reagan was the transformative president of our times. I don't know
about that. But I do know that in the recent primary debates,
Republican after Republican invoked Reagan the way Democrats once did
Roosevelt and they vowed, knock on wood, to be a similar kind of
president. If they meant what they said, that would mean no energy
plan worth its name and, worse, chirpy assurances to the American
people that all would be well.
This is the doleful legacy of Reaganism. We have become a nation that
believes that you can get something for nothing. We thought that the
energy crisis would be solved ... somehow -- and no one would have to
suffer. We still believe in the magical qualities of America, that
something about us makes us better. Yet we have a chaotic and mediocre
education system that desperately needs more money and higher
standards, but we think -- don't we? -- that somehow we will maintain
our lifestyle anyway. Hey, is this America or what?
Somewhere in his peripatetic travels, the much-maligned Jimmy Carter
-- an artless politician, to be sure -- must scratch his head at the
reverence still accorded Ronald Reagan. The way things are going, the
Gipper's visage will be added to Mount Rushmore. Not that anyone will
notice. It'll be too expensive to drive there.
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Richard Cohen's e-mail address is cohenr@washpost.com