COMMENTS: Four More Years
Clark, Joseph
President Reagan won a smashing victory. Yet despite the magnitude of the Republican triumph the Democratic party was not reduced to smithereens, even though, in some places, only small...
...Mondale, obviously, was not as effective on TV...
...The media battering in this instance left hardly any room or time for coverage of the historic event— nomination of a woman as the candidate—and a dynamic candidate at that...
...Opposition to government spending characterized the comments of many who had weathered previous depressions and recessions with the help of the "safety net" provided by the social legislation of the Roosevelt New Deal and subsequent Democratic administrations...
...The media's amnesia about the 1982-83 recession, deeper than any since the 1930s' Depression, was surely helpful to Reagan, even though it was the recession that he used to bring down inflation...
...Yankelovich also found that the dominant attitude of Americans is not to call for "an antiCommunist crusade," but a "live-and-let-live" pragmatism...
...In my view, however, they are not sufficient to explain it...
...Veterans of Anzio, Omaha Beach, and the Battle of the Bulge, not to speak of Guadalcanal, are supposed to appreciate the new strength of an America that was able to triumph over Grenada...
...9...
...Yet all of these don't add up to a majority...
...Mondale's emphasis on the necessity for more taxes (true enough) became a source of weakness in the campaign...
...7 • The sleaze factor, especially in Reagan's Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Labor, received more tender treatment in the media than vice-presidential candidate Ferraro got in the matter of her husband's real estate business...
...When the Ku Klux Klan, knowing full well what it was doing and why, endorsed Reagan in 1980, he refused to disavow the KKK for two whole weeks...
...In matters of economics, it has been correctly suggested that the successes rather than the failures of the welfare state have been factors in the spread of conservative ideology...
...In 1984, the media let Reagan get away with the claim that he had supported voting-rights legislation...
...These majority views exist alongside a determination that America must remain strong and must not "lose the arms race...
...Mondale's definite victory in the first 8 debate was not matched in the second...
...They didn't opt for the values of the youth of the 1960s, who chose the appearances and images of poverty rather than the organization of movements of labor and minorities dedicated to a war on poverty...
...He could do this because he was not adequately challenged by the Democratic campaign on the issue of the nuclear arms race...
...This has a long history...
...The consummate ability of this veteran of more than a half-century of crooning before microphones surely advanced his expertly stage-managed campaign...
...It may boggle our minds, but Ronald Reagan successfully projected the myth of American strength and power...
...Of historic proportion is the role of blacks on the political electoral scene...
...First and foremost was the economic recovery that commenced without increasing inflation of retail prices...
...The study also found that an overwhelming majority believes no one can win a nuclear arms race...
...This, despite the two years of his acquiescence in the efforts of Senators Helms and Thurmond to block reenactment of the historic legislation won under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson...
...The Reagan Teflon quality enabled the president: to pile up the greatest deficits in the nation's history while demanding a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution...
...But if most of the great mass in the middle—including Yuppies and the middle class—see their, interests as aligned with the others in the coalition, the political wheel can turn around in 1986...
...Even in their opposition to the Vietnam War, many of them (and most of them naively) weakened the fight for peace by association with the Communist side in that most dreadful and unjust war...
...The failure of the media to grapple with or challenge the president's outrageous claims, misdemeanors, and assertions...
...There's considerable feeling that Mondale is very much a "nice guy...
...One of the saddest aspects of the rise and fall of the more extreme youth movements in the second half of the 1960s was their contribution to the decline of radicalism as a factor on the American political scene...
...In the matter of "standing tall," and elevating our country's position in the world, imagine President Carter getting away with what Reagan did when nearly 300 Marines were massacred in Lebanon, and when our troops beat one of the hastiest retreats in American history after Reagan had promised the nation this would not happen...
...On economic issues, the Democrats failed to put forward a strong program and agitation in behalf of jobs, industrial rebirth, and progress...
...this, however, did not stop him from donning a yarmulka and conducting an assault on the Democrats in a synagogue—apparently Jews don't face the same menace Christians do when Reagan visits their house of worship...
...Admittedly, the failures of the welfare policies did have their negative effects, chiefly the inflationary impact of government programs...
...Nevertheless, as we all have observed, the Democrats increased their Senate seats by two...
...Even the coarse insults by Vice-President Bush brought little response, let alone indignation in the media...
...In this one, organized labor did win a great part of its membership for the Mondale-Ferraro ticket...
...After all this is said, it's hard to see another Democrat who might have done better against Reagan...
...This brings us to a series of reasons, cited by many, that did play an important part in the Reagan sweep...
...THESE AND SIMILAR REASONS have been offered for the Reagan victory...
...And after the conspicuous silence of the press was broken just a bit, Reagan rejected the KKK when confronted by a reporter...
...Race was a dirty little secret that surely played a role in Reagan's success...
...Anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism marked their history, but their part in the fight against abortion rights and for ending the separation of church and state were welcomed at the Dallas GOP convention...
...There were developments that can only serve a better future in the political battles that lie ahead...
...In Congress, they kept the GOP from regaining about half of the 26 seats the Democrats had taken in 1982, thus retaining a majority that should be able to frustrate the further advance of Social Darwinism...
...A third and vital reason for Reagan's victory is that the young generation of the 1980s has taken cruel revenge on the youth of the 1960s...
...The San Francisco convention was a positive and successful beginning...
...Without for a moment underrating these factors, it seems to me that none of them, or all in combination, could have played a decisive part but for four other causes...
...The dreadful polarization reflected in the massive white Southern vote for Republicans while more than 90 percent of blacks voted for equal rights is something that will have to be "overcome" in the years ahead...
...The fundamentalist right wing's leading role in the Republican campaign received little coverage in media reports...
...Whatever the backlash against the labor movement, it is still a force that must be reckoned with in political action at all stages of a campaign...
...the failure to follow it up with a campaign imbued with its spirit and momentum was puzzling...
...As a matter of fact, the traditional Roosevelt coalition did reappear: Mondale won the black vote 90 percent to 9, the unemployed 68-31, Jews 66-32, Hispanics 65-33, big-city voters 62-36, union members, 57-41...
...The press then called President Carter "mean" for raising the matter...
...Second, one factor has been underestimated by progressive parties and movements—at least since 1848, when a rousing and influential manifesto informed the workers of all lands that they had no country of their own...
...the Republicans could paint the Democrats as the party of high taxes for the ordinary citizen...
...Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of Reagan's success in creating a myth of himself as a strong leader of a successful nation is his victory over Grenada—a "nation" of 90,000 without an army or navy...
...Among the staunchest supporters of Reagan at the polls in November were the young people between 18 and 30...
...He allowed Reagan's misstatements and prevarications to go by without challenge and, above all, he did not challenge Reagan's nuclear policies effectively...
...to champion children's government-sponsored prayers in the schools, while he himself does not attend church, explaining this omission by citing the dangers that would threaten churchgoers if he joined them...
...Most Americans seem to feel that they are better off now than they were four years ago...
...Finally, a fourth reason is the weakness and failures of the Democratic campaign...
...In the second debate, Mondale did not go for a decisive attack, and one was called for...
...He consulted them about Armageddon, when all who are good and pure ascend to the bosom of Jesus Christ, and Which, Reagan tells us, can happen the day after tomorrow or in a thousand years...
...Here Reagan's "success" is fraught with dangers for the future—such as continued mass unemployment, the huge trade deficit, and the astronomical budget deficits...
...But one is reminded of Leo Durocher's comments about what happens to nice guys...
...But like it or not, unless liberals associate the social struggle with national interest, with patriotism and pride in our country, it will be hard to prevail against mythmakers like Reagan...
...In this regard a recent Yankelovich study reveals that, by 96 percent to 3 percent, Americans assert that "picking a fight with the Soviet Union is too dangerous in a nuclear world...
...These modern Elmer Gantrys formed the pool to which Reagan gave the honored title of "Ecclesiastical Advisers...
...And thanks to Mondale's initiative, women can no longer be excluded from presidential politics...
...Yet despite the magnitude of the Republican triumph the Democratic party was not reduced to smithereens, even though, in some places, only small pieces of it remain, especially in the South and the West...
Vol. 32 • January 1985 • No. 1
