Except for Barack Obama, and Joe Biden of course, I never voted more enthusiastically for a Presidential candidate than for Walter Mondale in 1984. Aside from the contrast his relative youth and mental adroitness provided to the increasingly addled incumbent, “Fritz” Mondale was to my eyes a decent and honorable man. Anybody who paid attention could see Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, what happened when one half of “supply-side” economics is employed while the other is completely abandoned, pleasure without any pain.
One didn’t have to be an economist to understand revenues needed to keep up with spending or the equation would tilt. Reagan decided to simply start swiping the credit card for no better reason than to provide immediate economic gratification and reap the political goodies that went with it, a previously taboo practice subject to bipartisan scorn. Balancing the books unless faced with war or calamity was a guiding tenet of responsible Presidencies until the Gipper’s team decided messaging could rebrand fiscal recklessness as prosperity. Today’s catastrophic balance sheet is the result of that disastrous precedent.
Near 40 years and many trillions in red ink later, Mondale’s candor that tax hikes would be necessary to offset Reagan’s first-term spending binge seems pathetically naive, almost politically irresponsible given the historic electoral rout it helped facilitate. Yet and still, given the depths we have descended to since his exercise in honorable futility, only the shameless and moronic – read today’s GOP – wouldn’t welcome a return to such guiless decency in our national conversation.
It’s now clear the principle lesson Republicans took to heart from Reagan‘s landslide in ‘84 was that pandering pays, there is no dignity in losing the right way that outweighs winning the wrong way. Mondale could congratulate himself for sticking to his principles and being honest with American voters, more power to him. Oh, and he did win Minnesota and DC, after all! Truth is for suckers. Tell the people what they want to hear and deal with squaring the inconsistencies later while in office; that’s what the bully pulpit is for. It’s a good problem to have because not having it means you lost.
In fact, while Reagan didn’t have the stomach to go to the mat for spending cuts true believers of supply-side like his OMB Director David Stockman insisted were necessary for the theory to work, he still felt guilt pangs about ballooning the deficit. When all was said and done he did increase taxes and impose a number of measures to enhance revenues just like Mondale said he would. But as Reagan’s chaotic second term wound down, the GOP united behind one myth after another that, not only revised history to canonize the man, but also created litmus tests for party membership based on such lore.
George HW Bush would pay a tremendous price for failing to obey the dogma Reagan himself flouted – “Read my lips, no new taxes!” Bush saw a 90 percent approval rating accrued for spanking Saddam dwindle as the economy suffered through a post-binge hangover. Senior was willing to run up debt, but wasn’t reckless enough to completely refuse to pay for it, even if it meant breaking bold campaign assurances. He found himself sorely lacking in the Teflon department, particularly when it came to a Republican base that doubted his conservative credentials from the outset. If Reagan thrived from humoring the faithful, Bush crashed and burned from failing to deliver what he never wanted to pledge, becoming the first official RINO.
The Republican purity tests that began with Grover Norquist have ended up at Mar-A-Lago. Instead of pledging to ruin the economy with mindless fidelity to Arthur Laffer and an economic theory that isn’t worth the napkin he wrote it on, the bar can now be set no lower. Forget merely imperiling America’s economic future to provide upper bracket tax relief, now it’s the big kahuna… destroying democracy in support of a lying megalomaniac in order to further some delusion of restoring Mayberry. Reagan worship sprung from a big lie about the wonders of supply-side economics. Trump adoration is simply what nihilist white grievance becomes after four years of a Fox/AM presidency and the electoral reckoning it deserved.
More than 60 years ago JFK called on Americans to both serve their fellow citizens and to strengthen the core idea that our government reflects the effort we all put into it. Twenty years later Reagan pronounced that notion bankrupt and claimed all government can do is fail… and cost money. Instead of calling for our best, Reagan sparked a GOP sensibility that “if you want it done right, do it yourself,” which left open the definition of exactly who “yourself” was. Fox/AM was from the start determined to render that essence ever more exclusive, fully in line with its customer base. By the time its first POTUS hissed his inaugural dystopian hallucinations in 2017, “doing it yourself” meant simply blame everyone but you and refuse to cooperate with anyone who doesn’t start each sentence validating your obsessive resentment about who is getting what they don’t deserve.
Walter Mondale’s death last month provided an opportunity to consider what decency looked like in a national candidate. It also allowed for consideration of the costs that come due when one of our major parties deems such nobleness little more than a liability, slavishly customizing its membership requirements accordingly. The Reagan Revolution has become the Gingrich Insurgency has become the Tea Party has become MAGA. Reagan to Gingrich to Cruz to Trump to Taylor-Greene, the slippery slope to ruin. Ask not what you can do for your country, but demand it get rid of your enemies and let you pack heat without a permit so you feel safe while burning your mask. A very long way to fall…and longer still to climb back from. BC