Losing that Populist Touch: Ronald Reagan's Crumbling Coalition
Barnes, Fred
bombs, buy a Heineken's, chugalug chugaiom. It should be noted that the rock 'n' roll was ladled out with Machiavellian precision. There was just enough of it to hold the Muppets' attention...
...30-percent cut in personal tax rates from January 1, 1981, to July 1. That was followed by a second compromise, this time with conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives anxious about deficits, which resulted in a 25 percent tax reduction starting October 1. It was too little, too late, Reagan now concedes...
...He might have added that the GOP is poised to harness Social Security even at the party's peril...
...In a clearing a few yards away a couple of sixties freaks bounced like monkeys playing imaginary Stratocasters...
...Both the affluent and the blue-collar were crucial to the Reagan coalition...
...Now in their late 20s, 30s, and even 40s, how will the Kids survive if the "Freeze" gig fizzles...
...It consists of the base Republican vote, concentrated in the Midwest and West and in the suburbs everywhere, combined with white Southerners of traditional conservative bent, working-class Northerners attracted by appeals on social issues and national defense, and Jews who have been meandering toward conservatism for years...
...Abbie of course was pulling the New York Times's leg again...
...If the Administration shot itself in the foot--twice'on Social Security, it merely muffed its chance to attack "corporate welfare," the largely unseen subsidies for big business...
...Nor has the natural downturn in popularity that any President encounters after the first six or eight months in office, when tough decisions begin to pile up and the press turns more aggressive or at least awfully picky...
...Like the china tlap, this served only to remind urban Catholics and union stiffs and working-class S6uthemers why they were Democram in the first place and why they might want to pass up the chance to join a Republican party where business-as-usual seems to prevail...
...Then, too, most of the performers dated from the days when Gloria Steinem was advising George McGovern to pull up his socks on talk shows, and were, by and large, a squeaky clean lot...
...Caught cold by a flat rate question at a press conference last May, Reagan dismissed the idea as unworkable and possibly harmful to organizations that rely on voluntary contributions...
...There was scant mention of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, Soviet foreign policy, Soviet human rights at home, or V.I...
...Given a shot at a free ride and two souvenir citations, most demonstrators I observed rolled belly-up...
...For sure, the recession hasn't helped Reagan accomplish this...
...On the other hand, the crowd felt quite comfortable in hearing the President characterized as a "sick t h u g , " and in hearing Russell Means rant about "multinationals in collusion with the U.S...
...Though Reagan used to speak adoringly of a gold standard, his unswerving policy as President is tight money of the kind that Democrats fin'd an easy political target...
...More recently, the Reagan Administration has turned to raising taxes, not cutting them...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 19...
...In a Montessorian sequel, the June 12th committee spawned a more adventurous band of hobbits, the June 14th committee...
...Predictably, Reagan was singed again...
...Two months later, though, the flat rate movement having made enough noise so that even the White House could hear, Reagan said the idea was "tempting...
...The Administration took the ultimate in elitist positions, choosing to prevent Poland from defaulting on its debt to the West for fear that this might jeopardize German banks...
...In Reagan's, the china plays on the popular idea that he is a rich man's President, a guy who looks out more for his wealthy friends from Beverly Hills than the bindle...
...Perhaps Social Security benefits are too generous, perhaps the cost-of-living increases are too hefty, perhaps the program is on the brink of financial collapse...
...The answer from Smick, who works for Congressman Jack Kemp, came without hesitation...
...The President's shift from supplyside economics toward what Arthur Laffer calls the"root-canal school"-if it doesn't hurt, it's not doing any good--began in the ear!y days of his presidency...
...On Poland, the President has been outflanked on the Right by the AFL-CIO, a sure sign of trouble for him...
...It was not a policy likely to electrify a longshoreman in New Jersey or a farmer in South Carolina...
...It created a flap of several days' duration, reinforcing the notion that the President's wife, Nancy, has rich and snobbish tastes and forcing Reagan to spring to her defense at a nationally televised press conference...
...In the summer, Reagan succumbed when Senator Robert Dole concocted a $100 billion tax hike...
...This was supposed to send the ballyhooed "signal to financial markets" that deficits would fall and thus interest rates shouId drop as well, but the signal was not received...
...Had Andrei Sakharov materialized and advised the crowd to thank God for the American nuclear deterrent (as he had once advised Joan Baez), a majority would have declared him as crazy as Soviet psychiatrists say he is...
...A similar story can be told on social issues, which were staples of the Reagan campaign...
...At one press conference, he awkwardly ducked a question on when he might get around to them, and White House aides advised that these issues were divisive and kooky...
...Or put another way, the china became a metaphor for what has gone wrong with the Reagan Administration, depriving the President of the populist appeal that animated his 1980 campaign and was the foundation of the extraordinary coalition which thrust him into office...
...Lenin's aims for the peace movement ("The ultimate objective of peace is world Communist control...
...But it ddes mean that an opportunity, a pqpulist-opening that may not come again, was missed partly because of insensitivity to the elements of the Reagan coalition which needed the most assiduous massaging...
...OMB seems to be saying the economic problem today is that working men and women have too much money to spend and that the only solution is to raise taxes on the average citizen's consumption of beer, gasoline, and other personal items," Congressmen Kemp and Trent Lott wrote Stockman...
...he asked...
...stiff from Jersey City...
...The White House has sometimes come up short in seeking the appropriate demeanor during a deep recession...
...And it doesn't mean that Republicans are certain to suffer a titanic setback in the election this fall...
...Consequently, the Monday protest fizzled into a mere "textbook" exercise...
...Take all the new china and throw it out a second-story window of the White House," he blurted...
...Watching a jump-suited "affinity" group gather on a hopscotch square near the U.S...
...His quibbling about unemployment statistics, for instance, came offas small-minded and legalistic at a time of nearly 10-percent joblessness...
...The true test of this was Poland, and Reagan's sanctions against the Soviet Union were weaker than Carter's when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan...
...The oratory was what one would expect of a "gentle, angry p e o p l e . . , singing for our lives...
...Not long ago, a young congressional aide named David Smick went to the White House to visit a presidential assistant...
...But now, as surely as the china has stayed, the coalition is dissolvi n g - a n d with it the prospect of a political realignment that would catapult a conservative Republican party into permanent majority status...
...Rumor had it that they intended to chain themselves to the doors of five United Nations Missions...
...Or in listening to the chief of the NYC Human Rights Council speak of celebrating our diversity while becoming sensitized to each other's pain...
...After being burned in 1981 with a bold Social Security reform proposal, the Administration came back again last spring with a rash endorsement of Senator Pete Domenici's plan to achieve $40 billion.in Social Security savings...
...Ah, the old days...
...A case can be made that Reagan's instincts on tax and money issues have turned sour...
...the White House endorsed the scheme, cigarette tax and all...
...It was only during Linda Ronstadt's "Heat Wave" when girls began bumping and grinding atop their boyfriends' shoulders that I remembered what rock 'n' roll was all about...
...Regardless of its worth as economic insight, it is political death...
...Although the nuclear death theme was likely to attract a flock of neurotics, in the forefront of the "Freeze" rally were the same McGovernite children who seized the day at the 1968 Democratic Convention and have been with us ever since, running on empty and riding for free...
...It was unorthodox but sound advice...
...It is a policy that is breathtakingly antipopulist, and, not surprisingly, it has hastened the migration homeward of conservative Democrats...
...But trying to rectify all this in the midst of economic suffering is politically misguided...
...They think it is money they earned...
...Then, having apparently done no more than a modicum of political damage, the china controversy died...
...There was just enough of it to hold the Muppets' attention through the political harangues, and yet not so much as to rev up their engines and destroy the mood of high unction...
...Or as Press Secretary Lafry Speakes did in characterizing recession as "the price that you have to pay for bringing down inflation...
...The most startling aspect of the crumbling of the Reagan coalition is the partisan line along which it has cracked...
...As Daniel Berrigan said, "It was like granola and yogurt--easy...
...Here was a classic populist issue, one on which Stockman was well informed...
...He endorsed it, in his campaign, insisted that his aides draft enter18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 prise zone legislation, and traveled to Baltimore in July to plug the bill...
...There is something at the heart of the Republican party which yearns to undo Social Securi t y , " he told the Democratic miniconvention...
...The china points to the dark side of Reaganism in the same way Jimmy Cart e r ' s blue jeans suggested his inadequacies in the White House...
...Ironically, the Administration acted with remarkable restraint in the face of press hysteria when Israel invaded Lebanon--and got little credit for it...
...We're losing it, ".the White House official complained, expressing deep concern over the Administration's economic troubles and President Reagan's sinking popularity...
...By 5:30 my notebook was filled with all the buzzwords and abusive baby talk it could handle...
...On monetary policy, the Administration has aimed occasional shots at Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, but only for failing to reach the money growth targets, never for pursuing a policy since October 1979 that has contributed mightily to a nearly uninterrupted recession...
...He can't, in THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 17 short, keep the china and them, too...
...The recession might have been averted if he'd stuck with his initial tax cut, he has argued...
...In the midst of urban budget cuts and a recession, it was a beacon of light for troubled cities, especially Baltimore, where Democratic Mayor William Donald Schaefer was an enthusiastic supporter...
...In Carter's case, the jeans signaled that he was a rube not quite up to the task of the presidency...
...Kevin Phillips has been writing about it for more than a decade, sometimes with remarkable prescience, sometimes not...
...the NYPD had been briefed and had hustled up the barricades the night before...
...To the extent that his decisions to postpone and shrink the tax cut and endorse the rigid monetarism of the Federal Reserve Board caused, deepened, or prolonged the recession, Reagan is responsible for undermining the coalition...
...On enterprise zones for depressed cities, an issue with populist appeal, Reagan's instincts served him well...
...The best public stance is clearly not to label the recession necessary, as Budget Director David Stockman did last winter in calling it "part of the cure, not the problem...
...Supply-side economics and its deep cuts in individual tax rates were persuasive--and still are...
...The most convincing evidence of its abiding appeal is the burgeoning national enthusiasm for the ultimate supply-side tax system, a flat rate...
...But by the time the President got around to embracing the anti-abortion cause again and the school prayer amendment and tuition tax credits, the congressional election was nearing, and his sudden avidity for social issues was seen as pure politics, defensive, and superficial...
...Bush was said to be miffed at Schaefer's noisy complaint, and the bill hangs there...
...The President has also failed to exploit social issues such as abortion, school prayer, pornography, and crime, despite his unquestionable devotion to them and their palpable appeal to blue-collar Catholics and white Southerners who have yet to be weaned from the Democratic party...
...the recession-swoUen deficits were worse than ever...
...If all else failed--and not a//else did fail--Reagan might have kept his populist coalition together by conducting a consistent, aggressive antiCommunist foreign policy...
...But it left behind an enduring symbol: the china as tangible evidence of elitism, of seeming lack of compassion, of Republican politics-as-usual...
...The AFL-CIO, which opposes the measure, concluded the Administration was not serious about the proposal...
...And the compromise didn't work anyway...
...If that doesn't happen, it will hang there...
...S a d l y , there is more...
...The well-to-do aren't leaving...
...And economics explains much of this, as Reagan has drifted away from the optimism of supplyside economics, with its promise of economic growth, to the old-fashioned Republican obsession with budget deficits and tight m9ney...
...Fear of deficits, that old GOP bugaboo, ted him to delay the...
...Actually it never came to that...
...Throw out every last piece of it and call in the press to watch the whole show...
...in raping Mother Earth...
...Rather than appearing to support Israel eagerly, Reagan looked weak," with the Begin tail wagging the Reagan dog...
...Which was plenty...
...Schaefer got the same impression, and he went to Washington to prod the Administration and Vice President George Bush...
...Regular Republicans have stuck with the President, those who are by habit Democrats--blue-collar types, Southerners, Jews--have departed...
...Momiay, J n e 14th...
...Another important test was Israel, with which Reagan got off to a bad start by selling AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia for questionable reasons...
...If deficits are such a problem, "why should we ignore the vast amount of corporate welfare, the big business subsidies you (Stockman) fought against for years in Cong r e s s ? " Stockman's answer was stony silence...
...Only by an act of lonely defiance was the President able to withstand the pressure of his staff last winter and deflect the bid for a boost in cigarette, beer, and gasoline taxes, precisely the taxes that strike at the folks Reagan was seeking to keep in the Republican fold...
...They were dropped once Reagan became President...
...As President, he has flinched...
...Over the weekend Abbie Hoffman remarked that it was hard to figure the "Freeze" crowd...
...One source of Reagan's appeal to Jews in 1980 was his unflinching support for Israel...
...The renegade Democrats who joined the Reagan coalition in 1980 avidly support cuts in welfare, but neither the Administration nor Senate Republicans appear to recognize that these folks don't regard Social Security as welfare...
...Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter forthe Baltimore Sun...
...Besides, it is doomed to failure...
...F r e d Barnes LOSING THAT POPULIST TOUCH: RONALD REAGAN'S CRUMBLING COALITION The GOP resumes Republican politics-as-usual...
...The thing is, it's not as simple as it sounds...
...But working stiffs, many of them union members and Catholics, and middle- and low-income whites from the South, and Jews, are deserting Reagan...
...Or in listening to Charlotte Brunch, representing the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, call for a reversal of priorities in which medals of honor ~,ould be awarded for man loving man...
...The politics of austerity may be popular with Republicans, but it isn't what Reagan practiced in his presidential campaign and it isn't what persuaded millions of Democrats to vote for him...
...And given the recession, Reagan has often acted in ways that buttress the image of a rich man's President, uncaring, aloof, and coiled to strike at Social Security...
...The precise effect these decisions have had on the recession is debatable, but they have had at least some impact, none of it favorable...
...These folks hung out all Sunday, breathing deeply and forming themselves into nonviolent " a f f i n i t y " groups...
...Even Democrats like Senator Bill Bradley have joined the flat tax movement, but Reagan has been a belated follower...
...plainly, it wasn't...
...Moreover, his foreign policy has frequently been an elitist effort indistinguishable from the approach of Carter, with the striped-pants set in control and Reagan's fervent anti-Communism normally downplayed...
...For Reagan in 1980, this natural majority emerged as a fragile coalition...
...The demonstrators would crawl politely through the barricades and wait for the police to ask them just as politely whether they preferred to walk to the bus or perhaps be carried on a stretcher...
...None of this means Reagan cannot be reelected, possibly with ease...
...I haven't taken a position," he said...
...These elements were not appeased at the trough of the reces, sion when CBS News was able to follow an emotional spot on a woman who had lost her food stamps and Medicare benefits with news on Nancy Reagan's hideously expensive dresses...
...they've always been Republicans...
...I f this really is a top administration priority, if it really is, then the vice president ought to be given the task of pushing it through," Schaefer said...
...That is " r o o t canal" wisdom, the pain-is-good-for-you school...
...What can we do...
...So is being on the wrong side of the Social Security and "corporate welfare" issues...
...But he opted to raise taxes, not trim corporate benefits...
...Not that the purchase of the expensive china was an event of intrinsic significance...
...Mission, I almost felt sorry for them...
...But Reagan and his policies haven't always helped, either...
...The trick as President was to hold it together...
...There is a natural conservative majority in the country...
...Too late, the Administration realized it needed them desperately to shore up Reagan's support among singleissue zealots, New Rightists, Catholics, and Southerners...
...Finally, there is Israel...
...On this matter, Senator Teddy Kennedy may be correct...
...It did not help him recover his lost ground among Jews...
...A minority would have cheered wildly for three seconds, then dropped it, such being the attention span of the nursery school Left...
...T h i s breakup didn't have to happen...
...His ardor and Reagan's notwithstanding, the Administration allowed the legislation to languish...
Vol. 15 • September 1982 • No. 9
