Читать книгу The Choice: Ronald Reagan Versus Barack Obama and the Campaign of 2012 - Matthew Ph.D Lysiak - Страница 3

What would Reagan do?

That is the question found plastered on car bumpers across the country, from cars parked outside Tea Party meetings to those in supermarket parking lots in the country’s heartland. In sizing up the current crop of GOP Presidential hopefuls, many Republicans and conservatives have been lamenting that this year’s field lacks a strong and authentic conservative voice. As is often said of this year‘s race, there simply is no Ronald Reagan.

And of course, this is true. Ronald Reagan passed away on June 5, 2004. There was and will be only one Ronald Reagan. Looking at the current crop of contenders, this fact only becomes that much more obvious (and painful for conservatives).

Given Reagan’s enduring popularity, it’s not surprising that GOP candidates have been falling all over themselves to be positioned as modern-day Reagans. Listening to the candidates recite the rules of Reaganomics at each debate, one could be forgiven for believing that the battle for the Republican Nomination was decided long ago—with Reagan the clear victor. And in a way, he is. The timelessness and enduring appeal of Ronald Reagan’s message still resonates, especially today, with the Keynesian model having replaced that of the free market as our country’s driving economic force.

But let’s take it one step further. What if Ronald Reagan had been born on February 6, 1944, instead of February 6, 1911? Would he have had a chance in the 2012 Republican primaries against the likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul? How would he have fared in the general election against President Barack Obama? This book is the answer to that question. To create this answer, I have taken Reagan’s actual words and policy platforms, as well as those of the other candidates (including President Obama’s), and incorporated them into this futuristic narrative, which takes us through the primary season and general election campaign of 2012. In writing this book, I was amazed at how easily Reagan’s words from decades ago could be applied to today’s political challenges.

If it is true that history repeats itself, the similarities between the challenges facing the country in late 2011 and in 1980 may be an indicator that our country is ripe for a new, albeit old, direction. No people realize this more clearly than those who lived through Jimmy Carter’s presidency. In 1979, when Reagan jumped into the race, then-President Carter presided over runaway inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment, and he caused long-term economic damage with the formation of the Department of Energy and—with what turned out to be the cause of the recent housing crisis—the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act.

Sound familiar?

Today we have President Obama, who inherited an economy on the brink of collapse and whose “spread around the wealth” economic policies have exacerbated unemployment and raised our national debt to $15 trillion. His presidency will leave a legacy of problems, such as the Dodd-Frank legislation and ObamaCare.

As is well known, Reagan took a very different approach when facing a similar situation.

In 1980, Reagan campaigned on a platform that promised to reverse the collapse of the American economy by cutting tax rates, spending reductions, anti-inflationary monetary policy, and deregulation. When Reagan entered office in 1981, he faced substantially worse economic problems than Obama faced in 2009. In 1981-1982, unemployment soared into double digits, peaking at 10.8%. At nearly the same time, America suffered roaring double-digit inflation, with the CPI registering at 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980. The poverty rate started increasing in 1978, climbing from 11.4% to 15.2%. What followed was the most successful economic experiment in world history. The Reagan recovery officially began in November 1982 and lasted ninety-two months, until the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it in July 1990. The ninety-two straight months of economic growth nearly doubled the previous high of fifty-eight.

Instead of reducing tax rates, President Obama has been committed to raising the top tax rates. After his time in office, the capital gains tax rate will soar by nearly 60%, counting the new ObamaCare taxes going into effect that year. The Medicare payroll tax will increase by 62% for the nation’s job creators and investors. The death tax rate will go back up to 55%. The President’s administration has also written hundreds of new regulations, many of which hinder small businesses, into law. President Obama’s administration has presided over historic inflation, thanks in large part to QE1, QE2, and a steadily collapsing dollar.

Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the Reagan recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989. Reagan’s monetary policies reversed the rise in inflation during the Carter years by more than one-half—from 13.3% to 6.2%. Reagan cut inflation in half again by 1983, to 3.2%, and the topic was never to be heard from again… until President Obama came into office. The American standard of living increased by almost 20% in just seven years. The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989, dropping by one-sixth from its peak. By 1990, the stock market more than tripled in value from its position in 1980, a larger increase than in any previous decade.

While the Reagan recovery averaged 7.1% economic growth over the first seven quarters of Reagan’s presidency, the Obama recovery has produced less than half that growth at 2.8%, with the last quarter at a dismal 1.8%. After seven quarters of the Reagan recovery, unemployment had fallen 3.3 percentage points from its peak to 7.5%, with only 18% long-term unemployment (for twenty-seven weeks or more). After seven quarters of the Obama recovery, unemployment has fallen only 1.3 percentage points from its peak, with a postwar record of 45% long-term unemployment. Previously, the average recession since World War II lasted ten months, with the longest at sixteen months. Yet today, forty months after the last recession started, unemployment is still at 8.8%, with America suffering the longest period of unemployment since the Great Depression.

As for the question of whether Reagan would have even decided to jump into politics had he been alive today, I believe he would do so without hesitation. Several times in conversations with friends Reagan confessed one of his motives for entering the political arena was that he just couldn’t allow himself to stand on the sidelines as the people entrusted with leading the country failed us. “I just can’t allow these kinds of people to gain control,” he would remark. Who were and who are “these kinds of people?” Today, they are the modern-day liberals, the planners of men’s lives. If Reagan couldn’t stand by in 1976 or 1980, I certainly don’t believe he could stand on the sidelines in 2012.

Whether it was the leftist thugs who were trying to take over Hollywood (during Reagan’s time as President of the Screen Actors Guild), Rockefeller Republicans attempting to remake the GOP into a Democrat Party-lite, or Jimmy Carter and his boys from Georgia, Reagan just could not stand by and allow any of these kinds of people to run the country into the ground.

I imagine that somewhere, someplace, Ronald Reagan is thinking about it again—and I hope this book can breathe some new life into an ageless debate.

What would Reagan do? Let the campaign begin…