January 25, 2009

Reagan is Dead

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Rush Limbaugh likes to say:

"Roosevelt is dead, his policies may live on, but we're trying to do something about that."

Sorry Rush, the Americans indicated in November they have a different idea - it's the policies of Ronald Reagan that that need to be put in the trash bin of failed policies. As we attempt to clean up the disastrous mess left behind by the George W. Bush administration we must not forget that it was in reality the policies of Ronald Reagan. Will Bunch says that Obama could bury Ronald Reagan by emulating him. Reagan was the great communicator and Obama would seem to have similar skills. As Bunch reminds us the situations that brought them both into power are similar.

And yet, in some ways, today's American political landscape of rising unemployment and peril in the Middle East appears surprisingly similar to the way things must have looked to Reagan as he peered out from the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 20, 1981. Our national psyche fears a greatly diminished standing for the United States in the world -- just as we did after Vietnam and stagflation. The debt-increasing, anti-regulatory actions of the Reagan years may have helped to bring on the current mess, but in the route that the Great Communicator took to sell his ideas, Obama could find a surprising road map to a very different kind of transformative presidency.

The polls indicate that Obama and the Democrats have the political capitol to undo 28 years of Reagan policies. Obama himself has a 68% approval rating. That's 10 points higher than Bush or Clinton. The Democrats have the largest advantage in Party ID since Gallup began asking the question in 1983.

The Obama administration can talk bipartisanship but the Republicans have no ideas. For the last 28 years there answer for everything economic has been tax cuts and deregulation. In light of the current economic melt down they have for the most part dropped the deregulation meme so all they have left is tax cuts and we all know how well that has worked out for 95% of the population. They need to not just end the Bush tax cuts but the Reagan tax cuts as well. End the subsidies, both direct and indirect, for big oil and big coal and redirect that money to alternate energy. Supply side economics was always absurd and is now a proven failure. For this reason tax rates should return to pre-Reagan levels. The manufacturing base of the US must be rebuilt and encouraged. This will require reevaluating "free trade" which is only free for multinational corporations in it's present form. The voters gave Obama and the Democrats a mandate to transform the US. The only way the Democrats can lose is if they fail to carry out that mandate.

Posted at 01:09 PM in Barack Obama, Bi-partisan stupidity, Congress, Econ, Energy, Politics | Permalink