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Opinions/Editorials Title: Stay the Course: Reagan's Example for Obama On February 8, 1982, after lunch at the White House with all-star players from the National Hockey League, President Ronald Reagan flew to Minneapolis to give his first political fundraising speech of the year. He was greeted by masses of demonstrators bearing a banner with the words, "Welcome President Hoover." After a lackluster speech about voluntarism, Reagan gave a rambling interview to a local radio station in which he said "1941" when he meant "1981" and referred to the recession of 1970 as a "depression." It was an absent-minded performance, reflective of a presidency that was back on its heels. A year into his presidency, not quite halfway through what would prove a 17-month recession, Reagan was in worse standing with the public than President Barack Obama is today. In the Gallup polling of 1982, his approval rating hovered in the low forties throughout the year, bottoming at the beginning of 1983 at 35 percent. This turned out to be the lowest rating of Reagan's two-term presidency but at the time many who worked in the White House were privately betting that he wouldn't even be a candidate in 1984, let alone have a second term in the White House. His aides' gloominess was reflected in my reporting for The Washington Post, for which I was senior White House correspondent, and also in a book that year in which I predicted that Reagan would not run. As it turned out, the doubters did not include the president. Early in Reagan's political career in California the incomparable William F. Buckley had written me that Reagan possessed "an undoubting perspective." Recovering from his shaky gambit in Minneapolis, Reagan demonstrated this repeatedly in the dark days of 1982. The economic circumstances then, though different in substance, were as grim in many ways as they are now. Reagan, like Obama, had inherited an economic mess, with record peacetime levels of inflation and high interest rates. He had tried to jump start the economy with much-heralded tax reductions and spending cuts that were denounced as heartless by the Democrats but which only tinkered at the margins with the federal budget. In 1981, Reagan and his team had skillfully maneuvered their tax and budget bills through the Democratic-controlled House, although the budget provision became a Christmas tree loaded with pet projects for members of Congress. Neither measure had prevented the economy from sliding into recession. By 1982, the nation was still hamstrung with the inflation and interest rates of the Jimmy Carter years along with the added calamity of high unemployment. By the end of the year 11.5 million Americans were out of work and another three million had given up looking for jobs, a situation that prefigured the Great Recession that began under George W. Bush and continued through most of Obama's first year in office. If Obama and his aides are contemplating a makeover in the wake of sinking polls and the upset Republican victory in the Senate election in Massachusetts (and recent GOP wins in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races), they could do worse than to emulate the Reagan script of 1982. Undeterred by his slide in approval ratings, Reagan took two actions that in retrospect provided a basis for his remarkable political comeback. On one hand, he stood up to members of his own party who wanted Reagan to dump President Carter's chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, a Wall Street banker who believed -- then and now -- in fiscal orthodoxy. Volcker, presently relegated to the backbench of Obama's economic team, was skeptical that the vaunted supply-side tax cuts that Reagan had embraced would accomplish economic miracles. He wanted to crush inflation the old-fashioned way by tightening the money supply and raising interest rates, which he did over the protest of Reagan's secretary of the Treasury, Donald Regan, who complained that Volcker was impeding economic recovery. Reagan hadn't known much about the Fed when he became president -- at his first meeting with Volcker he asked him why the Federal Reserve was needed. Economist Martin Anderson, who was present at the meeting, later said that Volcker almost swallowed his ever-present cigar before launching into a cogent explanation of the role of a central bank. Reagan was often more open to argument than either his boosters or detractors recognized. In this case, he soon became convinced that Volcker was right, and backed his policies. In retrospect, that seems an easy call, but it wasn't. Republicans, anticipating midterm losses in 1982 as Democrats do now in 2010, were calling for Volcker's scalp. Senate leader Howard Baker told a group of congressional Republicans, "Volcker's got his foot on our neck, and we've got to make him take it off." Reagan's other key decision was to get out of the White House and campaign for Volcker's policies, which he had made his own. To this end he involved himself in uphill midterm election campaigns, ignoring the counsel that he would further jeopardize his own tumbling popularity in the process. "Stay the course," Reagan proclaimed in speech after speech. The White House press became so accustomed to the slogan that they occasionally -- a bit derisively -- chanted "stay the course" with him. Reagan took it in good humor. The Democrats, led by House Speaker Tip O'Neill, waged a skillful campaign in 1982 on traditional issues and picked up 26 House seats. But the gains were less than predicted, the Republicans held their seats in the Senate, and Reagan, always willing to see a half-full glass as overflowing, was heartened by the result. By then, Reagan's optimism was beginning to rub off on his aides, who admired his defiance. One of them, speechwriter Bentley Elliott, would later say that Reagan's willingness to stay the course in defiance of the polls was his finest hour as president. In fact, the best of the polls showed even at Reagan's nadir that there was reason for his optimism. A prescient analysis by the Gallup Poll at the time declared: "Throughout the year [1982] a solid majority of Gallup's respondents have taken the position that Reaganomics will worsen, rather than improve their own financial situation. Yet, Gallup consistently has found somewhat more public faith that Reaganomics will help the nation as a whole and even more faith in the president's program when the question is posed with regard to the long run." Gallup then observed that Reagan was more popular than his policies, a point that is true now about Obama. "While only one third approve of the way he is handling the economy, close to half express some degree of confidence that he will do the right thing with regard to the economy," the Gallup analysis concluded. In 1983 the economy came roaring back with a growth rate of 7.6 percent. Mocking his critics, Reagan came up with a new line: "They don't call it Reaganomics any more." In 1984 he was re-elected in a momentous 49-state landslide, carrying nearly 59 percent of the popular vote. This would not have happened without the economic recovery; no president is immune to prolonged economic downturn. But Reagan's performance in 1982 was also crucial. As Gallup divined in the depths of the recession, millions of Americans responded to Reagan's unflinching optimism and believed he would do the right thing. By that measure, if he can once again display the rousing audacity that marked his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama can make a similar comeback. Yes, he could.
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#1. To: go65 (#0)
Exactly how is Reagan's notion of reducing the tax burden and temporarily allowing the economy to stall to to crush inflation supposed to equate to the nigger's intention of allowing the private sector to be taken over by the Federal governement?
ROFLMAO...Reagan SCREAMED like a republican in November of 2008 when Volker ramped up interest rates during the first year of Reagan's term...
#3. To: war (#2)
The biggest problem Reagan had is his own staff trashed him for not doing something to stop Volcker.
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