The Real Legacy of Ronald Reagan (White-Wash Removed)

When Ronald Reagan died, the commercial media went along with the Reaganites in image-
building. They claimed that he: 1) restored America to prosperity and self-confidence; 2) cut
taxes and reduced the size of government; and 3) rebuilt America's military strength and won
the Cold War.

It's understandable that most people wanted to honor the man following his death, and it's
understandable that they didn't want to speak ill of the dead. After all, many people esteemed
Ronald Reagan highly and some believed he was a very righteous man who served the
people well. But for the sake of history, we must not allow a false image to stand.

Ronald Reagan was a very charming man, and at times a good actor in the role of president.
But the facts reveal that the image of Reagan being painted by right-wing conservative
Reaganites is mostly a false image, and most of the legacy they are trying to fabricate is
merely a myth.

History will eventually reveal the truth and explain why, as a a governor and a president,
Ronald Reagan did not serve the interests of the majority of the people, and in fact impacted
the country and the world in some very negative and even devastating ways.

As it is written in What IS the World Coming To? (published June 2004): "...a lot of damage
and harm has been done especially in the last twenty-five years because Ronald Reagan, in
effect, threw the doors wide open to the forces of greed, selfishness, inequity and unfairness,
and also to arrogance, intolerance, racism, religious bigotry, hypocrisy, false pride,
nationalism, and militarism. His attitude and policies, many of which are essentially still
copied and in effect today (by George W. Bush), are some of the biggest reasons why we
have such bitter partisan gridlock; corporate corruption; bad relations between labor and
management; huge income disparity; diminishing protection of the environment; growing
poverty, hunger and homelessness; and diminishing financial status for the vast majority
while the rich have been getting a whole lot richer---incredibly richer. And that's just the
domestic problems."

The book continues: "Reagan's real legacy must be exposed, for the sake of truth and justice,
and for the sake of generations to come. It will help us and our children and future
generations to avoid being deceived, divided, and led astray by other bad leaders who may
be just as charming and deceptive. We must see demagogues for what they are, because if
we recognize and realize their impact and their legacy it will help us grow and evolve into a
more civilized, just, and equitable society."

The book exposes a lot of Ronald Reagan's failures, errors and wrongdoings, but this is
posted here because more should be said. Not just for the sake of truth and justice, but also to
counteract proud, right-wing conservative Republican Reaganites who are trying to put
Reagan on a pedestal and white-wash his legacy. Indeed, they want to rewrite history to
make Reagan seem like a great leader.

For example, Reaganites like to claim that Reagan furthered the cause of liberty by reducing
the size and scope of government, and, of course, that's what he claimed. When he left the
White House in January 1989, he said in his farewell address: "There's a clear cause and
effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands,
liberty contracts." He also said: "Through more and more rules and regulations and
confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more of our options, and
more of our freedom."

That was false, misleading rhetoric, and it was designed simply to justify cutting human
services programs and decreasing government investment in the people as a whole. And, of
course, such misleading and disingenuous rhetoric was designed also to justify the
deregulation he pushed for in order to please and enable corporate big business. But, as you
will see, Reagan did not reduce the size of government. In fact, Reagan wanted big
government made it bigger in order to suit the purposes of his constituency -- the
corporations and the wealthiest few. That is the historic fact of the matter.

Reagan also erroneously saw private institutions, like corporations, conservative religious
groups and other private conservative interest groups, as the real providers of our freedom.
Reagan once said: "We must remove government's smothering hand ... to reinvigorate
those social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the
individual and the state."

But whether Reagan was deliberately misleading or simply wrong and mistaken about all of
that, he misled us. As William Saletan wrote shortly after Reagan's death in the online Slate
magazine, "Reagan had a narrow understanding of freedom." "For too many Americans,
captivity is the inability to pay bills, save money, or go to college. For too many, the local
tyrant is a company or religious majority. Government can impose worse captivity or
become a greater tyrant, but not with the predictability of a law of physics. Liberty doesn't
necessarily contract as government expands. Sometimes, you need more government to get
more liberty."

That is quite true. The fact is that we need and must have a sufficient level of government
capable of protecting and maintaining our liberty. We also need and must have adequate
laws and regulations that are properly enforced to protect the environment and protect us
from the selfish and greedy who would exploit us, take advantage of us, and put profit ahead
of the environment and the public good.

If the truth be told, Reagan's so-called "anti-government" rhetoric was damaging to the
country and the world. And it was extremely hypocritical, because Reagan did not reduce the
size of government. He only reduced the government's ability to help people who truly need
help. He cut taxes for the wealthy, which produced record deficits and set a bad example that
George W. Bush later followed. He also gave corporations greater license and freer rein to
abuse their monetary power, establishing a trend and setting the scene for the corporate
corruption and scandals of the 1990s.

But in doing so, Ronald Reagan did not reduce the size of government. That's a myth.
Actually, the federal government spending was 25 percent higher when Reagan left office
than when he took office. And the federal civilian work force increased from 2.8 million to 3
million, and that's not including the huge increase in Defense Department civilians that
Reagan brought in.

Furthermore, Reagan increased the size of government more than President Bill Clinton.
While Reaganite Republicans falsely claim Clinton was in favor of "Big Government," the
fact is that during eight years of the Clinton presidency the federal civilian work force went
down from 2.9 million to 2.68 million. Federal spending grew by only 11 percent -- less than
half as much as under Reagan. As a share of GDP, federal spending under Clinton
diminished from 21.5 percent to 18.3 percent -- more than double Reagan's reduction.

It's also a myth that Reagan's tax cuts fed the late 1980s and 1990s prosperity. Reagan tripled
the national debt. And the only reasonable and effective tax rate reductions came in the
bipartisan tax reform of 1986, led by Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley and Democratic Rep.
Dick Gephardt. And that was a response to public outrage resulting from the realization that
Reagan's earlier tax cuts had enabled many wealthy individuals and profitable corporations
to pay no taxes at all!

Another myth is that Reagan won the Cold War. Reaganites erroneously claim that Reagan's
Star Wars Initiative, his tough rhetoric in his (Soviet) "Evil Empire" speech, and his costly
defense buildup in particular were all part of a successful strategy to defeat communism and
win the Cold War. Not true. Actually, in Reagan's "Star Wars" address of 1983, in which he
first proposed to build a defense against incoming nuclear missiles, he claimed it would
"introduce greater stability" in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet
Union. And he made a great show of becoming friends with the Soviet leader,
MikhailGorbachev, during his second term.

Of course, it could be said that Ronald Reagan does deserve a small bit of the credit for the
end of the Cold War, but that was only because of his second-term conversion to detente and
disarmament. But Reagan's militarism didn't "bring down the Soviet Union." In the first
place, the military buildup really started under Reagan's predecessor, democratic President
Jimmy Carter. And what brought about the gradual and inevitable decline of the Soviet Union
was actually the result of the failures and consequences of the Soviet political-economic
system, as well as the reforms of MikhailGorbachev. It really wouldn't have mattered what
Reagan did. The Soviet Union still would have fallen. In fact, as early as the mid-1970s, the
Soviet system was already beginning to collapse.

Yet another myth is that Reagan restored traditional family values. According to the Index of
Leading Cultural Indicators, during Reagan's reign in the 1980s there were significant
increases in child poverty, teen-suicide, births to unmarried teen-agers, single-parent
families and illegitimate births, and at the same time there was a decline in marriage rates
and a decline in the percentage of children living with both biological parents.

Reagan budget cuts certainly contributed to some of that, especially to child poverty.
Moreover, under Reagan the programs that got hit the hardest were those for the poor, and
especially for the working poor. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported in
1984, "Low-income programs were reduced more than twice as deeply (in proportionate
terms) as social programs not concentrated on the poor. Overall, the low-income programs
bore nearly one-third of all cuts made anywhere in the federal government even though they
constitute less than one-tenth of the budget. No other part of the federal budget was cut so
deeply."

The Urban Institute also noted: "Because of the president's emphasis on self-sufficiency and
productivity, the administration might have been expected to give some emphasis to human
resource programs (education and training, public service employment, nutrition programs,
Medicaid and social services) as a means of addressing poverty and welfare dependency.
Instead, these were the very programs in which the administration generally proposed the
deepest cuts."

Reagan's policies and views were particularly unpopular with African Americans, who
severely criticized Reagan for opposing racial quotas and for seeking to obtain a tax credit
for Bob Jones University, a segregated white southern school.

"For many Americans, this was a time best forgotten," said Julian Bond, a longtime civil
rights activist. "He was a polarizing figure in black America. He was hostile to the
generally accepted remedies for discrimination. His appointments were of people as
equally hostile. I can't think of any Reagan policy that African Americans would
embrace."

Besides that, Reagan began his 1980 general election campaign by promoting "states rights"
in Mississippi at the scene of the murder of three civil rights workers 16 years before, using
a term that was really a code word referring to racial segregation.

Additionally, early in his first term, Reagan ordered some of his toughest budget cuts in
Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, and other programs that
were badly needed by large numbers of low-income families, Black and White. After all, of
the 20 percent of American children who live in poverty, 62 percent are White; 32 percent
are Black; and 29 percent are Hispanic. What's more, nearly 90 percent of all children in
poverty now live in mixed income cities and suburbs, not in urban ghettos.

But Reagan's policies revealed that he was either ignorant of the facts, or didn't care. Indeed,
until a public protest forced Reagan to slack off a bit from his drastic cuts in human services,
his Agriculture Department sought to cut the school lunch program and, to suit their purposes,
even redefined ketchup and relish as vegetables to try to claim that kids were getting proper
nutrition in school lunches.

To make matters worse for workers and families, Reagan also put an end to the
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, which threw 400,000 people into
unemployment lines. He cut Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), putting
another 500,000 people out looking for jobs. He reduced spending for Housing and Urban
Development, which drastically reduced affordable housing and triggered the increases in
homelessness that have continued to the present day.

Certainly Reagan caused and/or ignored a lot of human suffering. But one of the worst things
he did was wage war on the labor force, and particularly on labor unions. This began when
Reagan fired and replaced 13,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 after they staged a work
stoppage to bring attention to their plight. He abused his power to break their union. As the
book points out: "Reagan simply avoided bargaining or negotiations, and paid no mind to fair
play. He then demonized all other labor unions and labeled strikers as 'greedy, lazy, uncaring
and unpatriotic.' This sent a clear signal to the business world and the labor force. In fact, it
was more than a signal. It was an opening salvo that started an open war on labor unions. It
opened the floodgates to negative attitudes and unfair treatment of employees and workers
everywhere, and it started a trend that has continued to this day."

The book states: "By 1982, just one year into Reagan's recession, 44 percent of all union
contracts included either wage freezes or wage give-backs (favoring employers), while in
the prior years between 1964 and 1980 before Reagan came to power there had been no
wage freezes or give-backs. Even worse, the Reagan strategy was just the beginning of an
anti-worker, anti-labor trend that has continued to this day, and it has had an extremely
devastating effect on the middle class and the working poor throughout the eighties, nineties
and beyond to the present (2004)."

Continuing: "Reagan also manipulated the membership of the National Labor Relations
Board, the organization that mediates labor disputes. He made sure it was dominated by
conservatives who consistently ruled in favor of business and against workers and union
organizers. He did the same thing wherever possible on the courts by appointing
extremely conservative right-wing judges."

"The consequences of Reagan's war on workers have been devastating. Twenty years
later, the percentage of union members working in private sector businesses dropped
below ten percent. That was the lowest percentage in sixty years and the lowest in the
western world. That's an indicator of how successful Reagan's war on labor unions has
been, and it is why so many formerly middle class workers now do not earn enough to
support their families and have fallen into the working poor population. It is why they
have to pay more in health insurance premiums and more in payroll deductions. It's why
they have to either endure shrinking health and retirement benefits or go entirely
without. And it's why workers have to do more work with less resources."

This has only gotten worse under George W. Bush. During the first four years of the Bush
Administration, American companies clearly ensured that profits did not benefit workers.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported that between the first quarter of 2001
and the third quarter of 2004, the portion of GDP funneled into wages and salaries dropped
from 49.5 percent to 45.4 percent. Meanwhile, between the first quarter of 2001 and the
second quarter of 2004, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP rose sharply from 7.8
percent to 10.1 percent. The shows how American companies care NOT about workers, but
about profits that benefit executives. And Reaganite Republicans continue to enable
corporations to exploit and take advantage of workers.

Unfortunately, there are many reasons why Reagan damaged this country and caused
suffering and hardship. But ironically, many people still regard the infamous "Iran-contra"
scandal as Reagan's most serious offense. (Briefly, that was about the Reagan
administration's secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran in 1984 to raise money for Nicaraguan
contra rebels. That was despite a congressional ban on support for the contra's insurgency,
and despite the fact that the United States officially considered Iran as a supporter of
terrorism.)

But while the Iran-contra affair was blatantly illegal and should have gotten Reagan
impeached, to me it is not as bad as most of the other things he did. In my view, his actions
against the workers of this country and against the poor and the working poor were the worst.
And his negative and destructive impact on environmental protections, worker protections,
and consumer protections were almost as bad. But all these things have been ignored by the
commercial media in the effort to paint Reagan as a great leader.

Indeed, in the commercial television media's treatment of Reagan's legacy they ignored all
the bad things, even the most obvious bad things. For example, his inability or failure to be
informed and engaged in the affairs of state was ignored except by a few brave newspaper
reporters. As journalist Timothy Noah pointed out, even a Reagan insider, speechwriter
Peggy Noonan, in describing her first encounter with President Reagan in the White House in
What I Saw at the Revolution, revealed the reality: "I was surprised how big his hearing
aid is, or rather how aware of it you are when you're with him. There was a quizzical look
on his face as he listened to what was going on around him, and I thought, He doesn't
really hear very much, and his appearance of constant good humor is connected to his
deafness. He misses much of what is not said directly to him, but he assumes it is good."

Reagan's communications director David Gergen, in Eyewitness to Power, wrote: "Reagan
could be remarkably unaware of (and indifferent to) developments around him. If I were still
working for him, I would probably pass it off as being 'intellectually selective.' But it's hard
for anyone to argue that he knew as much as a president should about the state of the world.
…" "His inattention to details and hands-off stance could be dangerous for his leadership.
His Republican allies in the Senate believed that because he did not pay close enough heed,
he turned down a budget deal in 1985 that they had carefully crafted to cut the deficits. By
their account, he didn't seem to understand the terms of the deal... (Republican) Majority
Leader Bob Dole was furious at the time."

Yet another myth about Reagan is that he was always amiable and liked everyone. In fact,
Reagan possessed an ugly mean streak. To quote the book: "... his political career really
fits the definition of a demagogue who stirs up the emotions and appeals to the pride,
prejudice and hate of a lot of people to serve his own partisan political interests. He
appealed to the worst in certain people who cheered for him not only when he beat his
chest and waved the flag, but also when he acted like an intolerant and violent despot.
After all, that is exactly the way he acted in the early 1960s as a newly elected governor
of California in his intolerant and brutally violent reaction to the student Free Speech
Movement in Berkeley at the University of California." He even warned student protesters
thusly: "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." And sure enough, Reagan
created a bloodbath.

As the book states: "That is very significant, because in doing that, Ronald Reagan helped
set the tone for the violent right-wing reactionary confrontations that swept across
America in the 1960s - first in reaction to the Free Speech Movement, and then in
reaction to the civil rights and anti-war demonstrations and marches all across the
country. All that conflict and violence caused a tremendous amount of grief, despair and
suffering, and when it peaked during the brutal police riots against anti-war
demonstrators in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, it left the
country deeply divided and terribly polarized."

The book also states: "(As governor) Reagan also started the trend of turning mental
patients in state institutions out on the street. Consequently, in most states government
policy now dictates that no matter how mentally ill patients are, as long as they can
somehow be deemed 'no harm to themselves or to society' they can no longer be cared for
in a public hospital or state institution. That's because Reaganite Republicans have
claimed we can't afford to care for them. That's why we see so many mentally ill people
on the street, homeless. That's also why we have seen the increasing criminalization of
the mentally ill, because many communities find that throwing them in jail is the easiest
way to get them off the street."

Reagan's mean streak is also evident in the "anti-crime" initiatives he pushed as president.
As attorney Gerald Shargel, who teaches at Brooklyn Law School, has pointed out,
"Reagan's ideological worldview that the 'war on crime is a struggle between good and evil'
raised the stakes in a culture, peculiarly American, of politicizing criminal law issues. The
result was unforgiving legislation known as the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which
ushered in both procedural and substantive laws that continue to haunt the administration of
federal criminal justice."

Shargel cites, for example, the Bail Reform Act of 1984. While paying lip service to the
presumption of innocence, it allows incarceration on a judicial finding that the defendant is
dangerous. Today, because of this Reagan initiative, federal prisons are filled with pretrial
detainees deemed "dangerous," most of whom are low-level drug dealers, and lengthy
pretrial detentions of a year or more are not uncommon. Also, 23 other "anti-crime"
measures were passed, including oppressive and unfair forfeiture laws, abolishment of
parole, and mandatory minimum sentences for offenses involving weapons and/or drugs. And
these measures have produced a lot of unjust, unfair decisions because the mandatory
minimums take discretion away from judges. Common sense is thrown out.

But perhaps the most damaging things Reagan did, at least in terms of how it impacted the
whole county economically, are the initiatives that favored big business and corporations at
our expense. As the book states:

"As a champion of 'deregulation' and business-friendly policy and legislation, Reagan
started a trend that has had a devastating effect over the years because it increasingly
granted wider corporate license and unleashed corporate greed. This trend has enabled
corporations and thereby resulted in huge abuses of corporate power and terrible
shirking of corporate responsibility, and this has consequently affected our lives in
innumerable negative ways because of the resulting corporate corruption. The corporate
scandals of the 1990s (like Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Adelphia, etc.) were the
direct result and consequence of Reaganism. But its full effect was far more wide-
reaching and insidious."

"Reagan also fueled the 'corporate welfare gravy train' to go along with the business friendly
laws and policies to ensure maximum corporate profits, which has also been disastrous. It
led to the incomes of corporate executives and chief executive officers (CEOs) skyrocketing
to incredible heights during the last twenty years. In fact, just in the decade of the 1990s,
CEO income rose 481 percent! The combined pay of America's five highest paid CEOs in
1999 was a staggering $1.2 billion. The average CEO in America is now paid about five
hundred times the average employee's wages. To show you the rate of increase, back in 1980
the average CEO of a major corporation was paid 42 times more than an average American
worker. By 1990, CEOs were paid 85 times more than workers. By 1999 (after Congress
was controlled by Republicans for just five years), CEOs were paid 476 times more than the
average worker. And that trend has continued with Republicans in power."

All this speaks to Reagan's real legacy, and history, I believe, will reveal that.

© 2002 2003 2004 Joseph J. Adamson