The Right, Ronald Reagan and the Rest of Us
Cutting a deal with the Evil Empire? Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev from Wikipedia.
Way back in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Moscow still led a vast Evil Empire, a particular and apparently intractable problem began to emerge in international diplomacy.
Reagan, a staunch anti-communist from his early days as an actor and governor of California, began to let on that he thought negotiating with the Russians was more or less a non-starter. He just didn’t trust them.
He started describing the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” and portrayed the Cold War as “the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.” Not a whole lot of room there for middle grounds or deal-making.
He also started cracking jokes like this one, in 1984: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
That’s a tough opening for a dialogue, right?
The dilemma here is that when you reach the point that you no longer trust your opponent — no longer have any respect or sense of comity — it is very difficult indeed to talk, to listen, and to reach some kind of workable accord.
I recount this story because it seems that a very similar problem has emerged with America’s far right, particularly with those on the far right who have real political power in Washington.
It’s not necessarily that their ideas are bad ones. Some of their policies may be exactly what the country needs.
No, the problem is that many on the right have clearly reached the conclusion that the rest of us — moderates, liberals, independent journalists, anyone who isn’t on “their” ideological team — simply can’t be trusted or reasoned with.
The distrust is so high that even ideas that conservatives invented and once embraced — background checks for gun purchasers, cap-and-trade policies to curb pollution, an individual insurance mandate, and so on — are discredited if anyone else endorses them.
I was reminded of this dilemma after the background check bill failed in Congress earlier this month. Local conservative activist Ray Scollin from Saranac Lake wrote a thoughtful op-ed for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.
He acknowledged that 90% of Americans supported the basic idea in the bill, and acknowledged that the bill was co-sponsored by a Republican, and drew support from four out of the 45 GOP Senators.
But then he came to the real issue at hand: lack of trust. “In the end, this bill failed because we lack trust and we are unable to reach meaningful compromise,” Scollin argued.
“There cannot be hidden clauses or a lack of understanding on the subject you are attempting to legislate. In this situation, leadership could not provide the trust or the meaningful compromise.”
I think Scollin has it mostly wrong on the second part of his claim. I think by any reasonable measure the background check bill represented “compromise.”
It certainly didn’t go as far as most gun control advocates would have preferred; nor was it exactly what the pro-gun lobby would have written if they controlled Congress. That’s what middle grounds usually look like.
But Scollin is spot on when he talks about the lack of trust. A similar sentiment was expressed by conservatives posting on this blog, who said they support the idea of background checks but lacked faith in the people pushing the legislation.
“I have no problem with the concept of background checks – it’s already the law in many states,” wrote Original Larry.
“That said, I absolutely do not trust anti-gun activists. Their actions, especially in NY, make me deeply suspicious of their motives. Why would I trust people who do not keep their word and who deliberately spread misinformation in pursuit of their agenda? I’ll continue to oppose additional gun control legislation until I see signs that I can trust those who propose it.”
It’s understandable why conservatives feel that moderates and liberals aren’t credible negotiating partners.
From Alex Jones to Glen Beck to Orson Scott Card to Rush Limbaugh, there is a wide and growing call on the right for a kind of moratorium on any dealings with the “other” or the “false” America.
There is an increasingly “mainstream” argument the US government itself is a rogue entity, preparing to confiscate all guns, and operating “false flag” terrorist actions in order to rationalize gun control.
This isn’t merely the stuff of AM talk radio rants. Republicans recently held a House subcommittee hearing to air worries that the Department of Homeland Security is “hoarding” ammunition.
“What are they doing with it?” asked subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, echoing concerns on the right that our government might be actively preparing for some kind of military confrontation against its own citizens.
The problem posed by these arguments, of course, is pretty simple.
What do you do when a sizable percentage of the population — and the political base of the Republican Party — doesn’t think the rest of the country is trustworthy enough to have a conversation with?
How do you run a democracy when one significant faction won’t even sign off on deals that they agree with because they feel that the “other side” must be doing something nefarious behind the scenes?
What kind of compromise is possible if Republican lawmakers are automatically discredited — Marco Rubio on immigration, John McCain on gun rights, Rob Portman on gay rights — if they express any willingness to compromise or talk?
During the 2012 political campaign, Newt Gingrich was excoriated by conservatives for cutting a PR video with Nancy Pelosi urging the development of cleaner energy.
How do you come back from a political place where expressing any kind of shared interest with the opposition is political suicide — even when you agree with their ideas? I think the answer lies with Ronald Reagan.
After years of militant, aggressive and confrontational rhetoric, Reagan saw an opening with Mikhail Gorbachev and he was nimble enough to change course.
After 1985, Reagan held four summits with the Soviet Union, signing wide-reaching arms agreements, and ushering in the peaceful end of the Cold War. He won big concessions during those talks, but also gave ground and showed flexibility.
When he made his final trip to Moscow as president, Reagan was asked if he still viewed the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire. “No,” he replied. “I was talking about another time, another era.”
It’s time for the right to make a similar pivot in their thinking about the rest of us. Time for conservative leaders to demand that their community — often described as the “real” America — accept some kind of detente with everybody else.
Let me be clear about one thing. I think the idea that moderates or the left in America ever warranted the level of distrust and hostility felt by many on the right is ludicrous.
There is no credible evidence that Barack Obama or the Democrats ever indulged in secret agendas of the kind that now enjoy widespread play from talk radio to Fox News.
Which should make it even easier for Republican leaders to talk to their membership, their base, about the need to rebuild some level of trust and dialogue and, yes, even deal-making.
Clearly, the left and the right in America disagree profoundly and deeply on important issues — that’s healthy and normal. But the idea that one side in this debate is made up of evil, conspiratorial black-hat villains has to stop.
If Reagan could talk to the Russians about nuclear bombs and the Berlin wall, surely the modern conservative movement can find a way to talk to Democrats about background checks and immigration.
KHL, you crack me up! You just can’t give Reagan credit for anything, can you? Instead, you would have us believe that Gorbachev engineered the demise of the very country he led. No way you can give Carter or Clinton credit for the fall of the Soviet Union? Come on, you’ll come up with something.
I think Reagan and Gorbachev both deserve some credit for the fall of communism. Gorbachev hoped to save the system by liberalizing it, but you can’t give people a little taste of freedom and expect them not to demand the whole thing. The real cause, though, was their inefficient economy that couldn’t support them being a superpower forever, and the changing world where western ideas and fashions and music and news couldn’t be kept out anymore. Where Gorbachev really deserves credit, i think, is for his liberalization policies that led to a more natural demise of communism. It could’ve easily gotten a lot uglier than it did.
hermit thrush: “From Alex Jones to Glen Beck to Orson Scott Card to Rush Limbaugh, there is a wide and growing call on the right for a kind of moratorium on any dealings with the “other” or the “false” America.”
This is a call for a moratorium. Not a dis-trust.
Perhaps you can site an example where the left has offered to work with a position on the right.
Here are some right-sided ideas:
-Ban on abortions after conception
-Ban on abortions after 1st trimester
-Health savings accounts
-Ownership of semi-automatic weapons, period. Any sized clip.
-Secure the borders
-Cut government spending
Maybe you can show by example how the left has not declared a moratorium on any of these issues.
Perhaps you can show by example how the left does not distrust the right.
My point about Gorbachev and Reagan, if I HAVE to spoon feed it to you, is that Gorbachev was already working towards compromise and engagement with the other side and that Reagan eventually saw the opportunity and moved forward with his “enemy” in a form of constructive engagement in which almost everyone benefitted.
Since Brian used the Reagan/USSR issue as a starting point for a discussion on engagement between the Right and the rest of us I thought I would point out that we could refine the metaphor a bit using Gorbachev as a stand in for the Left in this country and Reagan for the Right. Perhaps I am suggesting that the Left has tried to leave openings for discussion and agreement with the Right that the Right is unwilling to engage in and that perhaps there needs to be some other actor (no pun intended) with influence on the Right who will break the entrenched ideas of their side.
My point wasn’t to denigrate Reagan but to point out that Gorbachev was an important figure who’s contribution to the end of the Cold War gets short shrift. Perhaps there are current political figures in this country on the Left who don’t get the credit they deserve for going beyond what is palatable for their base in reaching out to the other side only to be spurned as objects of ridicule.
But you picked up on all that, right?
Oh, and I fully expected that the 3 sentences I wrote about Reagan and Gorbachev would be the definitive description of the fall of the Soviet Union and the relative merits of Reagan vs Gorbachev.
jdm, how do you do it? how do you pack so much cracked out stuff into a single little comment?
first, in a post which is all about the right’s distrust of the left, i think it goes without saying that in the example of alex jones et. al., the point is that they’re calling for a moratorium because of their distrust of the left. brian makes this completely explicitly a few sentences later, when after going through a couple other examples, he sums up with:
if want to come up with some crackadoo interpretation where he’s not talking about right-wing distrust of the left, then good luck with that!
second, your challenge to cite an example where the left has offered to work with the right — is this a joke?
maybe you’ve heard of, i don’t know, obamacare? that started out as a republican idea. you know your republican nominee for president just last year? his primary accomplishment as governor was to pass the same thing. this is a textbook example of democrats reaching out to “work with a position on the right.” and the result was that once democrats were on board, republicans bailed. in fact it’s an excellent demonstration of what brian was talking about in his post.
as for securing the border, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle under obama, and deportations are way up.
as for cutting government spending, i guess it’s the usual question for you: what planet are you on? obama has put all kinds of cuts on the table. it seems like it was just yesterday that the right was furiously spinning sequestration as the white house’s idea. just off the top of my head, there’s all kinds of support on the left for cuts to ag subsidies, corporate welfare, and defense. i personally can’t stand that public money is used to support sending human beings into space.
hermit thrush: “maybe you’ve heard of, i don’t know, obamacare? that started out as a republican idea”
Ok. I got it.
The left wants to work the right.
Your example is Obamacare.
Ok. I got it.
Wow.
In order to make an example, you had to change the premise.
I don’t think anyone confuses Mitt Romney with being a conservative.
I don’t think anyone confuses “republican” idea equals a “conservative” idea.
Got any “conservative” examples?
” I don’t think anyone confuses Mitt Romney with being a conservative.”
I think that defines “out of touch with reality.” And it is people with that sort of ideology who are driving the Republican bus to nowhere. It is no wonder that so many of the lifelong Republicans I know are choosing to vote for Democrats.
Or as ht says, crackadoo.
This entire discussion is about a bad metaphor based on a shaky understanding of the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the respective roles of Reagan and Gorbachev.
When Gorbachev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union it was exhausted, bankrupt and teetering on the brink of inevitable collapse. He was astute enough to forsee the cataclysmic violence that often follows such monumental change. Consequently, he embarked on a program of reform in hopes of guiding the country through a peaceful transition and salvaging socialism from the wreckage of Communism.
Reagan, after years of adversarial relations with the Soviet Union, sensed victory in the Cold War and changed his tactics to those of the victor who recognizes the difference between war and peace and adjusts accordingly.
So we had two statesmen, one brilliantly managing a hopeless position and the other wisely resisting the temptation to annihilate a weakened foe, combining to position their nations for a “peace” potentially more deadly than the war that preceded it.
The cooperation and “trust” that enabled this, however, was born of the certain knowledge of who the winners and losers were. Gorbachev was allowed to proceed with his dignity and national integrity intact. Ronald Reagan (and his immediate succesor) obviously respected the power of the Soviet Union but he never trusted them until he was sure they would do us no harm.
Consequently, Reagan – Gorbachev is not a good metaphor for the current liberal – conservative divide. There’s little statesmanship being practised now and neither side seems to understand that in internal politics we are all on the same side.
jdm, you do know that individual mandate came from the heritage foundation, right? if the heritage foundation isn’t conservative, then that that word has lost all meaning.
khl: I take it from your odd remark that you consider Mitt a conservative.
Wow on that one, too.
hermit: Keep trying. I don’t think anyone (except you, apparently) thinks Obamacare is a conservative concoction. It is certainly not what the heritage foundation considered in 1989.
How many republicans from either side of that spectrum voted for Obamacare? Zero.
jdm-
You can say that Mitt isn’t a Conservative. That’s your opinion. It doesn’t hold up to demonstrable evidence, though, and that makes it an excellent example of the lunacy that’s infected the Right — the same lunacy that Brian wrote about in this post.
Since winning the White House in 2008, Democrats have offered — or agreed to — cuts:
On Social Security
On Medicare
On Medicaid
On the size of government
On government spending
On the role of government itself
But you won’t acknowledge these things. I can’t fathom why, just like I can’t figure out why homeless people scream about not finding their invisible flying horses.
I feel bad for all of you, but there are limits. And here they are:
We are facing real problems. “Real” as in we can prove they exist, so we have to talk about them in order to find a solution. Whether it’s assault-rifle magazines that hold 30 or more rounds, man-made climate change, a political and economic system that is increasingly rigged in favor of an ever-shrinking elite, or any other injustice with blood on its hands.
To Brian’s point, you and your fellow ideologues keep saying you won’t talk about these things. You won’t engage with the Left. I don’t know how the Right got to make this rule, but time is running out.
Soon, the Right will lose even its power of obstruction. I don’t think this is a good thing, but it’s coming.
And just to be crystal clear: it’s coming because the Right is dominated by lunatic fantasies. People are suffering because of guns, ecological degradation and the obstinance of Republicans/Conservatives who do anything to protect the unearned privilege of the obscenely wealthy.
More voters see this every day.
Go ahead, though, deny it. But you will lose your seat at the table, yes, the one for grown ups.
One thing you can’t deny, though, is that Obamacare is a Conservative idea.
Here is an excerpt from a piece at Fox News’ website (go ahead, Google it):
“The mandate, requiring every American to purchase health insurance, appeared in a 1989 published proposal by Stuart M. Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation called “Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans,” which included a provision to “mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance.”
“The Heritage Foundation “substantially revised” its proposal four years later, according to a 1994 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. But the idea of an individual health insurance mandate later appeared in two bills introduced by Republican lawmakers in 1993, according to the non-partisan research group ProCon.org. Among the supporters of the bills were senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who today oppose the mandate under current law.”
*
If truth has a liberal bias (as Stephen Colbert says), it’s only because so many Conservatives have run away from it.
“…the Right is dominated by lunatic fantasies”
And that is supposed to make me feel like what, working with the Left? If you all knew how to do something constructive instead of name-calling you might have accomplished something since you won the White House in 2008. Quit crying and get busy.
Constructive!!?? What has the Right done that’s constructive lately? Obstructive, more like.
From some on the Right they were sent to be obstructive, they are doing exactly what they were elected to do.
However, I think instead of the Reagan-Gorbachev negotiations a more reliastic basis is the Clinton-Gingrich years.
So here we had an even stronger Republican hold, they had both Houses and yet Clinton was able to move forward major legislation. So the question would be why can’t we do that today? In particular what has changed since the 90’s that we seem farther politically apart on gun control today than 15 years ago?
Larry-
You might have a point. “Lunatic fantasies” may be unnecessarily harsh. The problem, as I see it, is that the phrase is accurate.
What else can you call the behavior of Conservatives since 2008? Making stuff up out of whole cloth — from death panels to false flags — to denying the proposals or actual votes of Democrats?
It certainly appears that a toxic lunacy has infected the Right.
Oh, and BTW, you wrote:
“If you all knew how to do something constructive instead of name-calling you might have accomplished something since you won the White House in 2008.”
Here’s a list of 50 constructive accomplishments by the Obama Administration:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php
Your turn. Find even half the constructive accomplishments during the Dubya debacle… I mean Presidency.
Oh, I love lists! Let me start wj.
Bush created our biggest marine sanctuary. Props to W!
He had some good health initiatives in Africa – some bad ones too, but Im staying positive here.
He overthrew the Taliban, which I have some misgivings about in terms of how it was accomplished and then what was done afterwards, but getting rid of the Taliban was good!
Okay, that’s all I’ve got off the top of my head and without being snide. That leaves 47 for Larry. Unless some of the rest of you want to help out…
Wait, “find even half”… Sorry, only 22 to go. Easy, right?
Seems like a lot of people jumping on the Republican/Conservative bandwagon lately. Not bad for a party identified so closely with “toxic lunacy”.
i’m not sure that i’m going to add anything to what wj said. but here are some quotes from jdm.
last thing first: well… duh. of course obamacare isn’t a whole-cloth creation of the right. but that’s not what you asked for. you’re the one who’s “changing the premise.” for someone who was so carefully (if baselessly) parsing this “moratorium” vs. “dis-trust [sic]” stuff above, it comes off as a little inconsistent. what you asked for was “an example where the left has offered to work with a position on the right.” and the affordable care act remains a textbook example. the individual mandate, which is a cornerstone of the aca’s insurance framework, is a conservative idea. it’s an idea that democrats decided to work with — and not as some kind of fig leaf, but in a really essential way. sorry if that makes your head explode, but it’s just… true.
Wait we have had the most unemployment and slowest growth in the past 50 years under this guy in addition to the biggest increase in poverty and you have some list of “accomplishments”? Were they foisted upon him? Was it all his fault? No it was not all his fault, but he could never be considered successful given those numbers, it makes no sense, almost boggles the mind. To me is shows that the Left is just as big of a bunch of ditto heads as the right, reality makes no difference you just keep on talking.
The one thing this President has done that actually IS very important and a major accomplishment is leaving Iraq, pulling 100% out and NOT getting into another war in that rotten corner of the earth, at least not yet. I really admire him for not jumping into Syria, even now when the war people are salivating over the chemical weapons, he is holding out. For that reason alone I would probably vote for him. But a success? No.
i don’t really think it’s that complicated, mervel.
first, when the assault weapons ban passed, 1) democrats controlled both houses of congress, 2) the parties were less polarized, and 3) supermajority requirements in the senate were far less (if really at all) normalized. it just wasn’t as heavy a lift for clinton.
second, in the 94 midterms democrats got obliterated. for right or for wrong, the consensus became that guns had a huge part to do with that. politicians learned to fear the nra.
third, well, just listen to what pennsylvania gop senator pat toomey had to say about the bill that failed in the senate:
i bet you’re going to hear toomey try to somehow spin that away now, but it’s about as classic a kinsley gaffe as you could hope to see. (and before the jdm’s out there get a chance, this is the former president of the club for growth we’re talking about, not some squishy moderate.)
the truth that toomey has told explains a lot more than the failure of the background checks bill. our political system, at least at the federal level, requires a lot of consensus to get things done. but it’s in the minority party’s political interest to withhold consensus, because getting things done makes the party in power look good. it’s a major structural problem.