Salon.com > Ronald Reagan

Akin slams bailout, asks for bailout

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:03:00 +0000

In an email to supporters today, outgoing Rep. Todd "legitimate rape" Akin, R.-Mo., had some unkind words for moochers in Michigan:

The so-called “leadership” of cash-strapped Detroit has a message for President Obama: We voted for you, so bail us out.

It’s sad, but true. In fact, just this past week Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson was quoted as saying: “Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that. Of course, not just that, but why not?"

He then quotes Ronald Reagan on how dependency leads to dictatorship and then monarchy. And if you make it to the end of the email Akin has just one more thing to add:

P.S. – We still have a little ground to make up on our campaign debt retirement. I would be incredibly appreciative if you could click here to donate $5 or more today.

Obama’s community organizing: Occupy the globe

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:53:00 +0000

“Are you monitoring the construction?” asked the middle-aged man on a bike accompanied by his dog.

“Ah, sì,” I replied in my barely passable Italian.

“Bene,” he answered. Good.

In front of us, a backhoe’s guttural engine whined into action and empty dump trucks rattled along a dirt track. The shouts of men vied for attention with the metallic whirring of drills and saws ringing in the distance. Nineteen immense cranes spread across the landscape, with the foothills of Italy’s Southern Alps in the background. More than 100 pieces of earthmoving equipment, 250 workers, and grids of scaffolding wrapped around what soon would be 34 new buildings.

We were standing in front of a massive 145-acre construction site for a “little America” rising in Vicenza, an architecturally renowned Italian city and UNESCO world heritage site near Venice. This was Dal Molin, the new military base the U.S. Army has been readying for the relocation of as many as 2,000 soldiers from Germany in 2013.

Republicans’ tax insanity

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:00:00 +0000

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Claire McCaskill pointed out that she’d met Grover Norquist for the first time backstage, then asked a pretty good question: “Who is he?”

Her point is that Norquist’s visibility and reputation dramatically exceeds his actual political clout. It’s understandable how this has happened. Republicans have evolved over the past three decades into a staunchly anti-tax party, and Norquist is a colorful and endlessly quotable symbol of this absolutism – one who happens to live and work in close proximity to much of the national political press corps. So he gets an awful lot of face time on television and it can sometimes seem as if he and his anti-tax pledge are the reason no Republican member of Congress has voted for a tax hike in over two decades.

But, as Tim Noah wrote last week, Norquist’s actual power in Washington and within the GOP is illusory. In terms of stature and public prominence, he’s been a major beneficiary of the party’s opposition to tax increases – but he hasn’t been the driving force behind it. The real story of the GOP’s modern evolution on taxes played out in several stages, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

James Bond and the killer bag lady

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:00:00 +0000

On the morning of Nov. 19, 1985, a wild-eyed and disheveled homeless woman entered the reception room at the legendary Wall Street firm of Deak-Perera. Carrying a backpack with an aluminum baseball bat sticking out of the top, her face partially hidden by shocks of greasy, gray-streaked hair falling out from under a wool cap, she demanded to speak with the firm’s 80-year-old founder and president, Nicholas Deak.

The 44-year-old drifter’s name was Lois Lang. She had arrived at Port Authority that morning, the final stop on a month-long cross-country Greyhound journey that began in Seattle. Deak-Perera’s receptionist, Frances Lauder, told the woman that Deak was out. Lang became agitated and accused Lauder of lying. Trying to defuse the situation, the receptionist led the unkempt woman down the hallway and showed her Deak’s empty office. “I’ll be in touch,” Lang said, and left for a coffee shop around the corner. From her seat by a window, she kept close watch on 29 Broadway, an art deco skyscraper diagonal from the Bowling Green Bull.

Making progressivism last

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Young voters surprised pundits and Republicans again this year as we turned out in record numbers to vote, joining key constituencies including African Americans, Hispanics, and women to reelect President Obama. Composing 19 percent of the electorate, up from 18 percent in 2008 and 12 percent in 2004, young Americans demonstrated their importance to a growing progressive coalition.

Many question, however, whether our diverse and unprecedented coalition will be able to build on this foundation and sustain the power of our ideas and values throughout our lifetimes. Or, like the Reagan coalition after 1990, are we fated to fracture as a political force by 2016? Some suggest that the strong generational power of today’s 18-30-year-olds will become inconsequential as the hype dies down and we grow up. Our next steps are critical.

Trapped in a car with Fox News

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:45:00 +0000

In the last leg of my five-day journey back to New York after Hurricane Sandy, I found myself in a car with my cousins to the Poughkeepsie train station counting my blessings. Although I was stranded and couldn’t get home, I rode out the storm with people I love in Milwaukee and Albany, with plenty of food, my own bedroom, cable TV, Wi-Fi and lots of fun. In light of real storm-related suffering, I had a great adventure. So for my last hour, I chose real suffering: listening to Fox News on Sirius XM in the car on the way to the train.

On Fox News the election is shaping up to be a Mitt Romney squeaker. He's scaring them, OK, but he's going to pull it out. We tuned in to hear Romneybot Steve Doocy grappling with a little bit of reality, grilling Dick Morris about whether it isn't a tiny bit worrisome that Romney had to visit Virginia and Florida when he's supposed to have those states sewn up; in fact, he can't win without them.

Not a problem, Dick Morris says – Romney will win both states, and he'll carry George Allen and Connie Mack to the Senate on his coattails, too. Congratulations to Virginia's Tim Kaine and Florida's Bill Nelson, who can probably quit campaigning now.

Sandy: Proof positive government aid matters

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:03:00 +0000

The chorus is now loud in defense of government. The New York Times even used that forbidden phrase "big government" in its editorial earlier this week. Eduardo Porter, the economics writer for the Times, wrote a column about how the election is a choice between a limited-government candidate and a president who would use government to provide a safety net for the less advantaged. He seemed to side with pro-government philosophy. “Government matters,” wrote the New Republic this week.

The Rediscovering Government Initiative has been dedicated to restoring faith in government through publicizing the best scholarship, clarifying the nation’s true history and countering the prevailing and widely prevalent myths about government. So it is encouraging to see the growing chorus, even if there is a Johnny-come-lately feel to some of it.

Why President Romney would let down the right

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000

If Mitt Romney wins election, what will he actually do? The right hopes -- and the left fears -- that he'll join with congressional Republicans to roll back the federal government, undo the social contract, and unshackle the "genius" of the American free-enterprise system, launching nothing less than a Romney Revolution.

It's not going to happen.

Victory will bring Romney no end of troubles. The expectations of his fired-up supporters will be sky-high, and Republicans in Washington will be even less willing to compromise on their "bold" (i.e., radical) ideas. But President Romney would face real obstacles from Day One -- just like every Republican president since Ronald Reagan. The sizable budget deficit will compel action even as it limits the president's running room. The same congressional gridlock that has bogged down President Obama will confront Romney, only this time with the Democrats as the obstructionists.

Those are structural and political barriers. Romney will face a fundamental policy challenge, too: The government programs that he and running mate Paul Ryan most want to overhaul, Medicare and Social Security, are immensely popular with the American people.

The Washington Post’s embarrassing Ryan defense

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:32:00 +0000

In the Washington Post “Reliable Source” blog yesterday morning, the authors make the point (Political photo ops: From Reagan to Paul Ryan, the game every candidate plays) that Paul Ryan’s photo op at a soup kitchen last weekend was nothing more then par for the course. In their minds, the Ryan campaign manipulating its way into a charity’s kitchen after the meal was over and washing already clean dishes was hardly different from images of Clinton jogging, or Bush clearing brush on his Texas ranch, or Obama shooting hoops, or Reagan sitting on a horse.

Whittaker Chambers relative: Farm need not be open to public

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Dr. Jon Wiener needs to set some facts straight, at least in the excerpt from his new book, just published by Salon ("A visit to the right’s least popular museum").

First, the Whittaker Chambers Farm is no museum. In fact is neither a requirement nor even an implication that a property designated as a National Historic Landmark need open to the public at all. In "Protecting America: Cold War Defensive Sites (A National Historical Landmark Theme Study)," dated October 2011, the NPS clearly holds the Whittaker Chambers Farm "private property, not open to the public." Further, Whittaker Chambers (my grandfather) never claimed his farm meant much to the outside world. He described it as "a few hundred acres of dirt, some clusters of old barns and outbuildings… a few beeves and hogs or a flock of sheep." ("Witness," p. 517). It hasn't changed much over the years.

Second, Dr. Wiener either visited under cover, through a third person — or not at all. He claims that he saw only horses "where the landmark was supposed to be." He must have come to the wrong place: we have never owned or housed horses. According to John Chambers (my father), who lives and works on the Farm, Dr. Wiener never called on him.

Ex-GOP Sen. Larry Pressler on supporting Obama: “Veterans were very offended” by Romney

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Larry Pressler served as Republican senator from South Dakota for 18 years, and another four in the House, but today endorsed President Obama’s reelection. Pressler, who was the first Vietnam vet elected to the Senate, has dedicated much of his time since leaving Congress in 1997 to helping disabled and homeless veterans, and says he thinks they would be worse off under a Romney administration. A moderate, Pressler voted for Obama in 2008 -- the first time he voted Democratic -- saying he was deeply concerned with the rightward shift of the Republican Party. He wrote an Op-Ed in the Huffington Post today explaining why he thinks Romney, who gave a major foreign policy speech today, would be an unfit commander-in-chief.

Conservatives’ “Obama phone” flip-out

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 13:02:00 +0000

Romney’s dwindling army of right-wingers have their hunting vests in a bunch over a new viral video posted on the Drudge Report Thursday afternoon. The minute-long video, which has already gotten more than one million views since it was posted yesterday on YouTube, shows an African American woman in Cleveland voicing her support for President Obama because he gave her a “free phone.” As for her appearance, suffice it to say that she comes across as the living incarnation of the right wing’s stereotypical welfare citizen--which, according to Romney, is now a full 47 percent of the population.

Naturally, the right went rabid.

The Steve Malzberg show, hosted by the notoriously right-wing radio personality, quickly tweeted the video with the comment, “Obama voter. G-d help us.”

Rush Limbaugh’s comments were even more scathing--sprinkled with accusations that the woman lacked basic education except for one topic: how to game the system.

Why Mitt Romney is the perfect GOP candidate

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:45:00 +0000

Ever since Mitt Romney began running for president pundits have marveled and conservatives have moaned at the contradiction embodied by the former governor of Massachusetts. A moderate Republican who passed universal healthcare and tried to run to the left of Ted Kennedy on abortion sought -- and won! -- the nomination of a party that had been moving hard right for decades. The result of the primary campaign of 2012 posed a marvelous mystery. How could such a bad mismatch for the Republican base successfully become their standard bearer?

Romney's competition -- a cavalcade of loons and crazies the likes of which hadn't been gathered together since the movie "Freaks" -- offers a partial explanation. Romney got lucky.

1980-watch: It’s “Obama is Carter” day for right-wing press

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:16:00 +0000

The Paul Ryan selection and the Republican National Convention failed to lift Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in the national polls (or the swing state polls, for the most part), but conservatives aren't panicking: They're just retreating deep into fantasy. The dream, this time, is 1980, when their favorite American Folk Hero, Ronald Reagan, defeated a terrible troll named Jimmy Carter.

They are aided, in this new round of fantasizing, by two depressing developments: a crappy economy with few signs of short-term improvement, and violence at American embassies and consulates in Arab nations. Unfortunately for Republicans, Mitt Romney, for all his wonderful qualities, is not Ronald Reagan, or even remotely Reaganesque. So the best they can do is to make Obama appear Carter-esque and hope that's sufficient. To that end, here is A Children's Treasury of Conservative Commentators Pretending It's 1980:

The Obama exception

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Martin O’Malley, Maryland’s very ambitious Democratic governor, stepped in it a bit on Sunday when he said that Americans aren’t better off today than they were four years ago.

It was a dream sound bite for Republicans, who seem convinced that swing voters will ultimately turn on President Obama if they feel the same way. Not surprisingly, Obama’s team moved quickly to provide a different answer, and O’Malley has since said that he thinks Americans are “clearly better off” now.

This illustrates the tricky spot Obama is in. He obviously can’t run the kind of feel good reelection campaign that every incumbent president dreams of, and he risks seeming like he’s trying to spin away the very real anxiety millions of Americans still feel whenever he claims his policies are working or highlights an encouraging economic statistic. But staying mute is hardly an option; doing so would concede the point and make it that much easier for Romney’s team to argue that Obama is a failed president.

Reagan’s radical rhetoric

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:15:00 +0000

Is the Republican party really the party of Ronald Reagan? Today’s radical right claims the two-term president as their inspiration. In response, a cottage industry has arisen among pundits who point out that Reagan was far more moderate than his contemporary disciples.

After all, Reagan refused to try to privatize Social Security and Medicare, and proposed that Medicaid be completely federalized. He negotiated the end of the Cold War with Mikhail Gorbachev, withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon in 1983 after terrorists killed 241 U.S. Marines and preferred low-cost victories like the invasion of Grenada the same year. And he used the power of the federal government to protect American companies such as the Harley-Davidson motorcycle company against unfair Japanese industrial practices.

But this picture of the reasonable Reagan is overdrawn. What inspires today’s Tea Party conservatives is not Reagan’s moderate actions but his incendiary words. The radicalization of American conservatism has many causes, the most important of which is the replacement of the Hamiltonian North by the Jeffersonian South as the heartland of the Republican Party, which, ironically, originated as the anti-Southern party in the 1850s. At the same time, as the conservative philosopher Richard Weaver wrote, “ideas have consequences.” And so do words.

Ronald Reagan: Informant

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Ronald Reagan would quip that [as an actor] he became the Errol Flynn of the Bs, the low-budget second features on double bills. Through 1943 [when he was in his mid-30s] he would appear in thirty-one films, mostly light romantic or action movies in which he played his preferred role of a traditional hero—cavalryman, football star, government agent. While filming “Brother Rat,” a 1938 comedy set at a military academy, Reagan met the actress Jane Wyman. They were married in 1940, the same year he played his signature role of George Gipp in “Knute Rockne, All American.” Their daughter, Maureen Elizabeth, would be born in 1941, and they would adopt a son, Michael, who was born in 1945. Featured together in several films, Reagan and Wyman became an item in the Hollywood press; one newspaper dubbed them “top candidates for the title of happiest young Hollywood marrieds.”

Forget Rand and Reagan

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:37:00 +0000

I am more than a little disturbed by all these pieces coming out about why the left has no Ayn Rand as a guide or how Ronald Reagan was a “socialist” compared to Paul Ryan. One has to be more than a little careful not to elevate these two icons to acceptable status. Let’s keep Ayn Rand in perspective. She was a talented mass market novelist who wrote David and Goliath myths about a super individualist versus the behemoth society. Her philosophy was not even second rate. Ronald Reagan did not save the economy; his legacy was a crumbling foundation for growth and a rising tide of injustice. It could be seen as a positive to fail to measure up to either of them.

Getting the Carter treatment

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 16:33:00 +0000

It was announced this morning that Jimmy Carter will address next month’s Democratic convention in a videotaped message that will be featured in prime time.

For the former president, this represents a step up from last time around, when he was pointedly denied a spot at the podium and allowed only a brief, non-prime-time video message. This led to one of the more awkward scenes from the Denver convention; while Carter and his wife walked onstage to wave to the crowd after the video, the podium was lowered into the floor – almost as if convention organizers were making sure he didn’t get any ideas.

That treatment speaks to the very up-and-down relationship Carter has had with his party since leaving the White House in 1981.

For the first national convention of his post-presidency, San Francisco ’84, he was offered prominent seating, but not much else (you can watch him at the 2:20 mark here enjoying Mario Cuomo’s keynote address). Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign was asking Americans “why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?” and Democrats weren’t eager to showcase the man voters had rejected in the last election. "In 1984, I was very unpopular with the Democratic Party," Carter said years later. “I had committed the unforgivable sin of losing.”

Gore Vidal’s reading list for America

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:25:00 +0000

I briefly interviewed Gore Vidal once. It was a little more than thirty years ago, at the end of a long day of filming in Los Angeles. I was working as writer and segment producer on an arts magazine pilot for public television.

Vidal was staying at a friend’s house near the Hollywood Bowl. At 5 pm, the prearranged time, I knocked on the door and after a minute or so heard footsteps coming down stairs. The door opened and there he was, swathed in a long, elegant, silk paisley robe (of course!) and still half-asleep.

I told him who I was and reminded him why I was there. Ronald Reagan had been in the White House for less than a year and already was threatening major cuts to funding for the arts, so as part of the pilot, I was interviewing authors about books they thought might help the rest of us through his presidency. The answers would be spotted throughout the show, like currants in a bun. Vidal nodded and returned upstairs to change while the crew set up in the living room.

A few minutes later, now in jacket and tie, he joined us and sat down as lights, camera and sound were adjusted. I told him again what I wanted but now he stared at me blankly. Books for the Reagan years? He sighed, “I haven’t a clue.”