Editorials
commonweal LIFE AFTER REAGAN A CLEVER DEBATER COULD argue that the 1980 presidential election was a stunning defeat for conservatism. It was, after all, the loser who had defended conventional...
...on the other hand, the neoconservatives have persuaded politicians like Reagan to assimilate, rather than affront, the symbolic and rhetorical heritage of the New Deal...
...It was, after all, the loser who had defended conventional economics and stressed fiscal responsibility...
...Reagan's promised tax cuts as reaching $275 billion by 1985—more than one-fourth of what would otherwise be the government's revenues...
...There is a way out for Mr...
...Liberalism, it should be admitted, has not much to show in the way of ideas either...
...But the election, certainly not at the national level and probably not at the state level either, was not a referendum on conservatism and liberalism...
...By comparison, only eleven percent checked the explanation "He's a real conservative...
...No one's interpretation is entirely disinterested...
...In 1980 conservatives won and liberals lost...
...19 percent did not know how to describe Carter's politics...
...Insofar as the fortunes of those political outlooks rose and fell on election day, it was because of events that had transpired earlier...
...That alone may stimulate some badly needed investment and reduce the inflationary behavior that springs from distrust about the economy's longterm prospects...
...But the condemnation of big government as the source of all our woes...
...If this is so, we haven't noticed...
...it was conservative rascals— rather than, say, moderates—who were conveniently ready in the wings to serve as replacements...
...By implication, and sometimes explicitly, the loser had allowed that many problems were outside of government's control, neither of its making nor within its power to resolve satisfactorily...
...More military hardware and strong support for friendly dictators...
...If these qualify as "ideas," they are neither new nor good ones...
...Thirty-eight percent of the voters leaving polling booths gave this as their main reason or as one of their two main reasons for a Reagan vote...
...If right-wing PACs and right-to-lifers and Moral Majoriteers can convince the political world that they hold the key to electoral success, then their power is in fact increased by that much, whether or not their claims are truly well founded...
...Nonetheless we think there is plenty of evidence cutting against the view that 1980 was a "conservative tide...
...Poor people, that is, as well as the middle-class...
...Cut arms spending...
...24 percent consider him a liberal, 37 percent a moderate, and 22 percent a conservative...
...In other words, the man that voters rejected was not clearly perceived as belonging to any ideological category, was not perceived as a liberal, indeed was increasingly perceived as a moderate or conservative...
...Once the Democrats fell victim to the periodic cry, "Throw the rascals out...
...Tired of taking the blame for not solving the nearly insoluble, some liberals are now sitting back with satisfaction to await the failures of the Reagan administration: "All right, so you try it...
...Unfortunately, the nation and the world cannot afford four more years of either failure or stasis...
...Not much more wrong, however, than the argument that the Reagan victory was a sweeping affirmation of conservatism...
...That is the choice West Germany has made in its recent reversal on increased arms spending...
...Conservatism has been boosted far less by ideas than by new strategies that effectively channel emotions...
...Jimmy Carter patched over that fragmentation momentarily in 1976, but once in office he moved decisively to the right in economics and treated liberal forces as a threat to be neutralized rather than a constituency to be mobilized...
...It would be nice if, in 1984, when Ronald Reagan's opponent asks,' 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?'' people could honestly answer yes...
...He had articulated a clear and certain theory of the source of our national ills and proposed an equally clear and certain remedy...
...On the one hand, the New Right has worked tirelessly to forge an organizational base out of the frustrations arising from cultural change...
...21 November 1980: 643 • Four years ago, 38 percent of the voters identified Jimmy Carter as a liberal, 25 percent as a moderate, and 18 percent as a conservative...
...Reagan...
...their own proposals are largely acts of faith in the recuperative powers of unrestrained corporate energies and in the viability of traditional mores...
...Likewise it is all to the advantage of liberals to portray the election as largely a personal defeat for Jimmy Carter...
...The winner had argued for a sharp change of direction and for a reexamination of long-held assumptions in voting...
...Finally, it was the loser who had stressed the dangers associated with political power, the tight restraint within which the successful statesman had to maneuver cautiously...
...and therefore it was the loser who had associated himself with modest, if not even pessimistic, expectations for the future...
...Liberalism was defeated in 1980—with Senator Kennedy...
...Reagan...
...Doing away with the fifty-five mile-per-hour speed limit, instituting prayer in public schools, discriminating against homosexuals...
...He could play it straight Republican, i.e., pretty much the way Jimmy Carter has been playing it, with a greater degree of probusiness spin...
...Or he could follow the Laffer strategy, cutting taxes sharply, postponing a balanced budget, leaving the antiinflation struggle to the Federal Reserve until the predicted sunrise of productivity simply melts away the inflationary mists...
...It is said that today conservatives have all the "ideas...
...What conservatives have mainly produced are effective critiques of programs established under liberal auspices...
...Organizationally it has become more dependent on "big money'' than much of the New Right...
...And its own symbolic attachment to cultural experiment and the rights of dissenters has often left it identified with expressions of moral insensitivity (at the very least) in an era when taboo-breaking is as likely to be welcomed and commercially exploited as to invite persecution...
...Reagan's economics are, of course, still up for grabs, a surprising fact in view of the importance of the economic issue in the campaign...
...That is also a factor in the hawkish Economist's recommendation to Reagan that even effective rearmament demands some arms limitation...
...His solutions for the former all run up hard against his solutions for the latter...
...The pleasure of being ideologically vindicated is not really worth it...
...And maybe even citizens of El Salvador and Poland, as well as of the U.S...
...Conservatives, at least some of them, do have "supply-side economics," an optimistic but untested theory that would have been pilloried as totally irresponsible had it emerged under Democratic sponsorship...
...Business Week adds up the annual total of Mr...
...Now this scenario is far-fetched in any case...
...That would be a clever case, but it would be wrong...
...In short, the candidate whose politics were defensive and cautious was crushed by the candidate whose vision was confident and almost Utopian...
...The odds are against it...
...In brief: pass the SALT...
...Seven states had ' 'tax revolt'' initiatives on the ballot this November...
...The loser had appealed for trust in the established patterns of government and for traditional party and group loyalities...
...It has its work cut out...
...In the end, it was the winner who represented the most optimistic view of the human—and the American—condition...
...To be sure, a President Reagan will have an advantage in economic matters that Jimmy Carter spent three years trying to gain—the confidence of the business community...
...It is impossible to combine with a burst in military spending that should reach $300 billion in the same year...
...In the case of liberalism, it has been fragmented since 1968...
...In the conservative case, their current advantage is owed to their persistent effort to capture the Republican party, and thus control one of the two alternatives the people have...
...The winner had championed economic departures that worried the graybeards everywhere, in the economics profession and on Wall Street...
...It probably would not have won in November, but it couldn't have done much worse...
...Seventeen percent still say they don't know where to place Carter...
...He had rejected the notion that society suffered from any malaise deeper man that which institutional change could swiftly repair...
...After a term in office, what has happened...
...Ronald Reagan comes into office facing an enduring economic problem and a deteriorating international scene...
...Commonweal: 644...
...The loser had emphasized tax cuts for business, the winner had tilted toward consumers...
...But a glance at the financial pages suggests that business's confidence in any president, Reagan included, is a limited asset...
...In sharp contrast, the winner had exuded confidence about the management and reform of government...
...Make a choice between the theoretical scenarios of the West defenseless before Soviet nuclear weaponry in the mideighties—scenarios that are not very persuasive in any case— and the far greater likelihood of Western weakness, demoralization, and internal strife due to prolonged economic crisis...
...Everyone realizes, of course, that elections, as the Caterpillar in Alice's Wonderland would declare, mean what we say they mean...
...Three examples: • The New York Times /CBS poll of voters found "It's time for a change" listed as the chief reason for voting for Mr...
...Despite the Reagan margin and Republican rhetoric about getting government off our backs, six of these initiatives were rejected by the voters...
Vol. 107 • November 1980 • No. 21
