The Next Ronald Reagan? We're not ready yet.

On August 13, 1981, at his beloved ranch home outside of Santa Barbara, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the largest tax cut in American history. The Washington Post, hardly a mouthpiece of the Conservative Movement, called this event, “the greatest demonstration of presidential leadership in modern history.”

Twenty years later, the American taxpayer would get another tax cut, this time signed into law by President George W. Bush. But there was a world of difference between these two pieces of legislation. What was it?
What people often forget is that the Reagan tax cuts were passed through an overwhelming Democratic congress. Tip O'Neil, a throwback politician and then Speaker of the House, resided over a Congress that was controlled by Democrats nearly 2 to 1.

In contrast, the Bush tax cuts were passed with political muscle. The Republicans had the votes and got the legislation through. The problem with this approach, however, is that when you lose the muscle, which you inevitably will in the ebb and flow of American politics, you lose the result that muscle produced.
The Reagan tax cuts were not produced with political muscle, but rather, with a real change in the way the average American thought and felt about economic policy.

And, the Reagan tax cuts were possible because, in a sense, Reaganism preceded Reagan.

Is it even possible to imagine the Reagan tax cuts without Milton Friedman, Robert Bartley, and Art Laffer? Is it possible to imagine Reagan’s posture toward the Soviet Union without the work of Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham. Is it possible to imagine a conservative like Ronald Reagan even rising to the presidency without the reshaping of the American mind by the likes of Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, and William F. Buckley?

It is time to rebuild the dike. It is time to once again grow the bank of conservative thought and to focus less on the outcome of the coming election and more on the way people think and feel about issues of utmost importance--the underlying values that determine the long-term fate of our country and world.

WIth mere political muscle, we may get lucky now and then. We may elect good candidates and pass good legislation, but this strategy can only yield short term results followed by long-term losses. We need to go about making the country more conservative again.

Before we can even think about who the next Ronald Reagan will be, we need to identify, support, and aid the advancement of the next Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and William F. Buckley. This is the only strategy that can yield the long-term results we desire.

Comments

[Don Sherfick]

Clark, although we are likely ideologically and politically apart on most issues, I at least commend your up-front identifying yourself as being someone in the Veritas Rex universe who has no qualms about having a political agenda. (And I don't use "agenda" pejoratively as some of your colleagues do when they put the word "gay" in front of it.) That sort of goes back to another current VR thread ("The Myth of Evangelical Political Engagement") where the wisdom of such engagement and the extent to which it occurs has been discussed. Clearly, the number of folks in both liberal, conservative, black, white, gay, straight, however you want to slice it, communities who choose to be vocal in matters political (or anything else except the high price of gas these days) is pretty small in proportion to their numbers. My quibble has been with the fact that, thought apparently legal, the use of 501(c)(3) taxpayer dollars to help get out that political message doesn't seem quite right, whether from the right, left, or center of the political spectrum.

Christ had his precursors such as St. John the Baptist.......likely the Antichrist has his. The next Ronald Reagan deserves no less, I suppose.

[Kenn Gividen]

Don,

Exactly what is it that gays are trying to accomplish, in your opinion?

[Don Sherfick]

Kenn asks:

"Exactly what is it that gays are trying to accomplish, in your opinion?"

I first scrached my head trying to figure out what prompted that seemingly "out of the blue" question, but I suppose it resulted from my parenthetical reference to putting the word "gay" in front of "agenda" as being perjorative.

Frankly I have no idea where to start concerning where this particular gay wants to accomplish, but as an immediate goal on this cooler May morning as the sun comes up in a somewhat cloudy sky, I need to get to the mailbox and put in a late graduation card for my grandson. Then weed a bit and plant the rest of the surplus amount of petunias that my partner bought a week ago. Then I need to make some sense out of all the piles of paper I've let accumulate on the pool table in the basement. Hopefully I can get in a little news without getting to re-engrossed in what's going on between/among Hillary, Barak, and John. Tommmorrow? I have to think about that.

Exactly what is it that the Gividens are trying to accomplish (today will suffice), in your opinion?

[Kenn Gividen]

Nice evasion :-)

[Don Sherfick]

"Nice evasion :-)"

Me no dummie.....sometimes emulating what you see coming from the other side is the best response.

But.......since I don't have all my yard work done I'll wait until Monday or so to respond to what I presume is a question about what that monolithic block of what Ryan has called "goofy gay activists" are really up to.

It won't quite measure up to what's happening currently on "Lost", but maybe a close second.

[Kenn Gividen]

Well, it least you have a sense of humor.

[Don Sherfick]

Kenn: Since the rain keeps me away from that yard work I'll answer your question on a dark cloudy Sunday morning. You ask: "Exactly what is it that gays are trying to accomplish, in your opinion?"

They seek equality under the law. Their orientation toward their own gender should place them in no different position before the law that the orientation of heterosexuals for the opposite sex places them.

Given that I can be wordy on this site at times, I know I could expand a lot, but I'm content to let Chris Douglas and you engage in that on such a broad issue.

May the ducks be with you.

[Tom Doty]

Clark,
I agree that it’s time to rebuild the dike, and the bank of conservative thought and to focus less on the outcome of the coming election and more on the way people think and feel about issues of utmost importance--the underlying values that determine the long-term fate of our country and world.

I believe your right when you say that with mere political muscle, we may get lucky now and then. That we may elect good candidates and pass good legislation, but you are so right that this strategy can only yield short term results followed by long-term losses. So we must… go about making the country more conservative again. I’m with you!

Thank you Clark

[eric schansberg]

What (else) is different about the Reagan and Bush II tax cuts?

Reagan dropped the top marginal tax rate (MTR) from 70% to 28%-- a massive "supply-side" tax cut. Bush did a host of things in his tax cut-- from a very modest supply-side cut on MTR's to tax credits for families to a highly unfortunate Keynesian income redistribution between generations (cutting people checks and financing it with debt). The recent "macro stimulus package" is more of the same Keynesian &^#%.

It also follows, to cut Bush some slack, that it was much easier to cut MTR's when the top rate was 70%; we had something like 15 tax brackets; and we had just suffered through the 1970s high inflation and "bracket creep" (people were being pushed into higher tax brackets by inflation-- before the income tax code was "indexed" for the effects of inflation by Reagan and the Congress in 1985.)

To cut taxes a la Reagan, you need a dynamic leader in a rough context (both unlikely). Or you need a lot more fiscal conservatives in Congress-- people who will reduce spending (or at least, not increase it so much). When most Republican voters are (quite) content to elect/embrace fiscal moderates and fiscal liberals, those days are a long way off.

Go Mike Pence!

[Chris Douglas]

Another interesting question: Is it possible to imagine Milton Friedman without there having been an Ayn Rand?

[Kenn Gividen]

"There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people." — Alan Greenspan

I suspect Rand had no more influence on Friedman than an "Amen Deacon" has on a fiery preacher.

[Clark]

My post listed just a few of the writers that helped form conservative thought. In fact, there are too many to name. In reality, Friedman, Rand, and the others would have individually had minimal impact. Collectively, their impact was huge. Buckley was perhaps the most important, but only because he brought all the factions of what came to be known as the conservative movement together. And what Hayek did with the formation of Mont Pelerin was tremendous. He began the transformation from mere intellectual inquiry to activism. The point is, we cannot accomplish what we want to accomplish with any one individual, whether that person is the next Ronald Reagan or the next Milton Friedman. We need a movement, and the movement needs to be focused on ideas and values.

[Chris Douglas]

1. I agree with you about the need, Clark. I wonder whether we could agree on the ideas and values or whether we would be in disagreement.
2. Kenn, perhaps you are right... though I don't think either was a deacon for the other. Perhaps they were singing different parts, occasionally off key, in the same choir.