Ronald Reagan and the Decline of a Great Nation
In a NYTimes opinion piece, Paul Krugman asserts that Reaganism died in 2020.
My question is how could it have possibly taken forty years?
Rhetoric is a powerful force in politics
In an arm-wrestle between unfettered capitalism and constitutional government, Reagan rolled up his sleeve and declared American government the enemy of the people. “Big government cannot solve our problems,” he famously declared. “Big government is the problem.”
It’s a very interesting feature of presidential rhetoric that a statement devoid of fact takes hold and is very hard to shake. Reagan used it as the very first president to actively come out as anti-government and Trump effectively used fake news to denigrate the American press forty years later.
Each carries its own responsibility for creating a form of class-war between the haves and the have-nots. Reagan began a path toward welfare for the rich (tax cuts) and crippling the middle class (union busting and job loss). Mr. Trump cashed in on Reagan’s for…