The new Republican revolution-- what could be worse...
Taking Credit
This week the MAGA movement officially became a revolt. The unsubtle moves made by the Trump II Administration reminded me of the Ray Bradbury short story “All Summer in a Day.” It is a story about bullies who lock a student named Margot in a closet for the Venusian summer— one day of sunshine that recurs only for a day every seven years. The cruelty of the moment lasts far beyond their ability to regret the heartless disregard for Margot’s opportunity to enjoy the brief summer she so misses from her time on earth. Instead, they get to enjoy a season of cruelty— all in a day.
Forget the vengeful despot leading the revolt and let’s focus on his followers who have waited for his return for four years. They could hardly wait for his enemies to get their comeuppance, and like Margot’s classmates, they will live to regret their complicity in an evil deed. The rest of us, like Margot, have lost something we will never regain. Democracy is as fragile and rare as a Venusian summer.
The Reagan Revolution
Perhaps, Trump is trying to rebrand the party that has lived off the embers of their last revolution for the past forty years— the one they claim was their most recent shining moment. It was a moment mostly created by speechwriters who were the “lipstick” smeared on the conservative icon who was heralded for his union-busting, economic trickling, and illegal trading of arms by diverting funds from an illegal sale of arms to Iran our sworn enemy. The scandal sent proceeds to the rebel Contras in defiance of the Congress and the Boland Amendment. An Independent Counsel later indicted 14 administration officials for the crime, but Reagan was gifted a “get out of jail card” based on his failing health:
Despite the fact that Reagan had promised voters he would never negotiate with terrorists—which he or his underlings did while brokering the weapons sales with Iran—the two-term occupant of the White House left office as a popular president.
In interviews years later, Walsh, the special counsel tasked with investigating the Iran-Contra scandal, said that Reagan’s “instincts for the country’s good were right,” and implied that the president may have had difficulty remembering specifics of the scandal, due to failing health.
In truth, revolutionaries grow old and sometimes the public tends to share their dementia.
Part of the most enduring legend of the “Reagan Revolution” was the belief that his use of the epithet “evil empire” was the grenade that blew up the totalitarian grip hold the communist Soviets had on Mother Russia. The fall of the Soviet regime was, of course, an inside job that was helped along by the aggressive pushback by every U.S. administration following World War II. Reagan didn’t invent the Cold War and the great Republican illusion that their guy finally turned up the freeze is an example of taking advantage of a fortuitous circumstance. Gorbachev was not infatuated with the Gipper, he was smitten by the advantages of democratization of his country’s stagnant economy and the stranglehold a half-century of militarization had on individual freedoms.
Taking credit for the fall was a way for Republicans to create a political legend to compete with their Democratic nemesis FDR whose successes in helping defeat a depression and Hitler’s Germany have been seared in the American psyche as the epitome of 20th-century political art. Much to the chagrin of Republicans they have had to swallow their lackluster post-Roosevelt administrations. Reagan, who bragged he was a “C” student before becoming a B-list actor, was the beneficiary of Soviet self-destruction. In 1987 Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate demanding “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall” cemented his reputation as the destroyer of the “evil empire” when 2 years later Gorbachev began the process of democratization and the wall fell. Reagan could take credit for his steadfast focus on the dangers of the totalitarian regimes that enslaved much of Eastern Europe. The comparisons to the expansions of American democracy mostly accomplished by FDR and subsequent Democratic administrations only exemplify the GOP’s years of chasing FDR’s political ghosts:
The 1930s New Deal realignment reshaped the party system. The Great Depression acted as the catalyst for a transformation of the party system that moved the Democrats from minority to majority status at the national level. The New Deal Democratic coalition that put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and the Democratic Party in control of Congress combined support from the working class and various ethnic and minority groups with already existing strength in the South. The basis of Democratic appeal to blue-collar workers, low-income individuals, and recent immigrant groups (largely Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe) was the party's liberalism in economic matters. Roosevelt and the Democrats favored federal government activity to combat the Depression and proposed programs to benefit disadvantaged groups. The Republicans, who appealed more to the middle-class, business groups, and northern white Protestants, were critical of this expansion of government interference in the economy and creation of a variety of social welfare programs. By the late 1930s, the lines between the two parties were clearly drawn, both in ideological and socioeconomic terms (Ladd and Hadley 1978, 31-87).
— Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, “The New Deal Realignment.”
From 1933 to 1947 and from 1955 through 1981, Democrats held both houses of Congress despite presidential victories by Ike, Nixon, and Ford. They retained control of the House through 1995.
The indifference and ineptitude of the Nixon-Ford years and Ike’s indifference to Joe McCarthy’s red scare tactics, which consumed most of his administration, did not escape “the Great Communicator’s” tenure. Papered over by some and glorified by others, Reagan waged war on the core of the FDR-Democratic coalition.
Revolution or Revulsion
The Trump revolution will leave behind a generation of bullies and fellow travelers who may live to regret their part in attacking the institutions that protected their freedom to act out. Their revolution was waged for a man, not a cause. They, like the bullies who locked young Margot in her classroom closet, may or may not choose to regret their part in threatening our freedoms. Making America “great” was just a contrivance of convenience, something short and catchy that could fit on a bumper sticker.
This rebel lacks the affability and quick wit of Reagan in his prime. They are unlike in so many ways but one— they both serve best those who need government least. Trump has turned the city on a hill into one of his father’s New York tenements—and for all of us, the rent is coming due. While we watch and try to get our bearings, Trump fumbles and fumes.
Planes fall from the skies and he doesn’t care. Nominees for positions in his new government are tainted. They face brutal public hearings that expose their unfitness— yet, he doesn’t care. His life to date has been guided by a con man’s rule of the road— heads he wins, tails we lose. Democratic leadership and the media on the left act as if the up and down votes this week and next matter to him— he couldn’t care less. The next man up will be worse or the same and the length of his list of deplorable appointees is engineered to instill weariness and despair. The result will be a government made up of the best or worst of the worst. It won’t matter, they all serve him.
Those who chose their Faustian bargain hoping for a windfall in return for their loyalty will be reminded that loyalty is a street that only runs one way. He is buying their fealty in return for his indifference. It is the best he has to offer. Ask his former VP, Chief of Staff, or allies in Congress if their loyalty was enough. It never is.
Those closest to him will long be remembered for serving a president known from hereon as the worst of the worst. In the end, he has led a movement that, far from being revolutionary, is simply revolting.