Right Turn
Ferguson, Thomas & Rogers, Joel
Anybody who has worked for a newspaper knows the type. He (sometimes she) marches into the newsroom and asks to speak to a reporter. Got a great story for you, he says. Indeed the story sounds...
...Yes, Democrats would rather remain out of power under current circumstances...
...Of course, there is a lot more that Ferguson and Rogers either don't mention or don't explain...
...While they would Uke to defeat the Republicans, they are not about to subsidize a broad popular coalition inimical to their own economic interests...
...I recalled this familiar newsroom experience when I got to the part of Right Tlim that said the formula for catapulting the Democratic party back to full majority status is at hand...
...Think of it...
...Well, this explanation won't fly...
...And it's true that the swing to the right in public opinion isn't quite what it has been cracked up to be...
...It couldn't, and they aren't...
...The mass media could with equal justification have hyped either McGovern or [Gary] Hart for their 'astonishing' showing in Iowa," they contend...
...Indeed the story sounds like a blockbuster— some tale of wrongdoing by the high-and-mighty, all done at the personal expense of the fellow who is teUing about it...
...What America has undergone is a shift in elite opinion (to the right), but not a shift in mass opinion...
...Not quite...
...One is the military buildup, the other the cut in tax rates...
...President Reagan, after all, is more conservative than the country, which explains why some of his policies (military aid to the Nicaraguan contras, cuts in education spending, a ban on abortions) don't muster majority support...
...How in the world could it get the President's full-throated approval and pass Congress, transferring more than $100 billion in taxes from individuals to business, if the investors are in charge...
...The authors are silent...
...Their theory is that "investors" in political parties and candidates—mainly businessmen who contribute money—run politics in this country...
...Hart finished well ahead of McGovern in the Iowa caucuses...
...I covered that campaign and I scarcely recall a hostile word being written or uttered about McGovern...
...Power is within their grasp, only they choose not to grasp it...
...The backlog of contested cases awaiting a decision by the board soared from 400 to 1,700 in Reagan's first term...
...Still another strange idea is that the Christian fundamentalist revival in this country was created by money donated by "growers and independent oilmen in Texas, Oklahoma and California...
...On the strength of these turns in opinion, Reagan has pulled off the two overarching achievements of his presidency...
...Senator John Glenn of Ohio got away with posing as someone not beholden to "special interests" during the 1984 presidential race, they write...
...On the other hand, the press was "openly hostile" in 1984 to the candidacy of George McGovern for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to Ferguson and Rogers...
...They need something to explain away McGovern's early departure from the campaign, despite his having offered up the left-wing agenda that the authors say is certain to inflame Democratic voters...
...But if this is such a sure-fire ticket to success, why don't Democrats try it...
...The reason they do not do this is not because they do not know how, but because they do not want to," insist Ferguson and Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...It's another to declare the foreign role "suicidal" for the labor movement...
...I muddled through the AFI^CIO stuff, however...
...Rather than pursue a left-wing strategy that promises election victory, they have tugged their party to the right, and to welcome defeat...
...He came in second and thus emerged as the obvious alternative to Walter Mondale...
...But it could have been a lot worse...
...And they do not want to because such a mobiUzation would require that the people mobilized actually be offered something, and elite Democrats have very little that they want to give...
...This must be a first in American politics, a party that won't take power...
...The nation's business elite wasn't backing him...
...It's one thing to disagree with the foreign policy activity of the AFL-CIO, a peripheral function of the labor organization...
...The elite corps of business leaders who Ferguson and Rogers insist run the party have done this...
...Ferguson and Rogers cite any politician's membership in the organization as telling evidence...
...In a flash, the reporter sees his Pulitzer Prize vanish, his chance to jump from general assignment drudgery to a major beat slip away...
...Democratic leaders, to be precise, have led their party astray not by being too liberal, but by being too conservative...
...Finally, the authors note correctly that popular backing for the military buildup was short-lived...
...To make their case of poUcy outstripping opinion, the authors show that popular support for cuts in federal programs is lacking, then claim that Reagan has "dramatically slashed social-welfare programs...
...Ferguson and Rogers undermine their own case for the contrary by citing the two most significant ©camples of the shift, the rise in support for increased military spending and the surge in opposition to tax hikes...
...It was when I got to the outrage (this was page 135) over the growing backlog of cases at the Nationd Labor Relations Board that I began to nod off...
...Admittedly the press is fickle, but it couldn't have gotten away with touting McGovern over Hart...
...I had always thought the Trilateral business was solely a right-wing nut issue, but I guess I'm wrong...
...At some point in a book like this, you get tired of the relentless recitation of weird opinions and irrelevant facts...
...Not only did he lack elite support in his campaign, but he was unable to garner much of it during his presidency...
...Worse, they have managed this feat of political re-positioning in defiance of public sentiment, which really hasn't shifted to the right at all in recent years...
...They never say...
...By 1985, defense spending had stopped growing, public opinion once more carrying the day...
...If there was a plan, what happened to it...
...Nor have there been "major cuts" in Social Security, as Ferguson and Rogers assert...
...Come on, this is preposterous...
...For sure, David Stockman, the budget director at the time, wanted to raise taxes...
...But there has been a conservative swing in national opinion...
...What they don't mention, though they are surely aware of it, is that the buildup itself was also short-lived...
...Now, I grant that there is often a gap between elite and mass opinion...
...Nope, his problem was that his candidacy didn't appeal to anyone except blacks, though he took the same Ferguson-Rogers line as McGovern...
...Not that the party rank-and-file are responsible...
...And still another is that there really was a secret Reagan plan in 1984 to raise taxes...
...The authors say Carter had "vast elite support," which would be news to Carter...
...But of what...
...Can't get an honest lawyer, he snaps...
...The assumption that it could have is one of many pecuUarities of Right TUrn...
...This is the matter of the 1Hlateral Commission...
...In other words, tilt left...
...Imagine what the backlog might be if there were enough honest lawyers to go around...
...Lot of good it did Glenn...
...And because he was a member of the Trilateral Commission— whose members received the most favorable press coverage of all candidates in 1976 and 1980—it was probably fated that much of the press would credit this claim during the vast buildup of his candidacy...
...That's the argument...
...Another is the notion that Jesse Jackson's problem in the 1984 race was lack of money...
...Rogers...
...Or how did Jimmy Carter get the Democratic nomination in 1976...
...The can't-get-an-honest-lawyer answer is a signal that the entire story, plausible as it soimded, is a paranoid fantasy...
...I also didn't see Ferguson, a professor of government at the University of Texas, or Rogers, a professor of law at the University of Miami, on the campaign trail...
...Even the press is part of what appears to be a Trilateral conspiracy...
...The only benefit that recipients lost was a single cost-of-living increase...
...I 'll have to admit that one thing about Right TUm left me completely puzzled...
...The formula consists of mobilizing the poor, women, minorities, etc., by dangling a program of full employment, enhanced power for labor unions, more unemployment compensation coverage, and "economic reform" in front of them...
...For all his trying, the best Reagan has been able to do is eliminate the scandal-ridden CETA jobs program and revenue sharing, and trim at the margins of a few other programs such as food stamps and Aid to Families with Dependent Children...
...McGovern may have suffered from benign neglect, but not hostility...
...The Democratic lament is: Stop me before I govern again...
...The trouble is, there are so many exceptions to this rule that it crumbles altogether, lb start with, how did Reagan get nominated by the Republican party in the first place...
...He was, remember, the biggest flop of 1984...
...Hardly...
...At some point, the reporter, shocked at his good fortune in having a big story fall in his lap, asks why the wronged person hasn't gone to court or to the authorities with his evidence...
...But Reagan wouldn't go along, and still won't...
...Where Reagan's policies have gone beyond what the shift in opinion warranted, he's gotten into trouble...
...Then there is tax reform, which flies in the face of the investors theory...
Vol. 19 • November 1986 • No. 11
