Learning From Ronald Reagan March 3, 2016March 2, 2016 However fractured they are otherwise, the Republicans are united on this much: a Democrat must not be allowed to win in November. We could have 8 more years like Clinton! (What a disaster! Barely 19 million new jobs, not a single real war, the deficit turned into a surplus — peace and prosperity run rampant.) We could have 8 more years like Obama! (What a disaster! Depression averted, two wars ended, deficit slashed, ten times the new jobs created under Bush — just look at the record.) And they are united on something else, too: worship of Ronald Reagan. But as the bold-faced bits below suggest, they may be slightly misremembering his presidency. Today’s Delanceyplace selection [thanks, Glenn] is from These United States: A Nation in the Making 1890 to Present by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Thomas J. Sugrue. Though he famously stated the “government is the problem” in his first inaugural speech, President Ronald Reagan presided over one of the largest escalations of government spending in U.S. history and gave an enormous boost to technology research in the process. Government spending under Reagan gave an indispensable boost to the rise of high tech centers such as Route 128 corridor outside Boston, the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and the semiconductor center of Austin, Texas. In fact, by the end of the 1980s, 40 percent of all research and development in the computing industry was federally funded and university computer science programs received 83 percent of their funding from the U.S. government: “. . . Suburban Boston, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles were flush with federal dollars, pulling them out of the economic slump sooner than most of the rest of the country. Federal spending also launched a high-tech economy. Universities introduced student-accessible computer centers in the early 1980s, the personal computer went from a novelty item to a mass-produced necessity in less than ten years, and microchips transformed everyday electronics. The number of jobs for electrical engineers and computer scientists skyrocketed. By the early 1990s, local area networks and the Internet began connecting computers into what would be later named the World Wide Web. “The rise and success of American high-tech industries did not result from tax cuts and deregulation. In fact, no American industries relied more on government spending than did computing, electrical engineering, and communications equipment. . . . Between 1982 and 1988, federal research and development spending nearly doubled. By the decade’s end, 40 percent of all research and development in the computing industry was federally funded; nearly half of communications technology research — including the systems that were the basis of the Internet — came from the federal government. Government programs also bankrolled university laboratories, computer science, and electrical engineering. In 1985 alone, computer science programs received 83 percent of their funds from the federal government.” Three economy-boosting things the Republicans have for seven years steadfastly blocked: (1) Put people to work revitalizing our crumbling infrastructure. They refused to pass the American Jobs Act. (2) Hike the minimum wage. They cut it each year by not allowing it to rise with inflation. (3) Enact comprehensive immigration reform. Passed 68-32 in the Senate, they refused to bring it up for a vote in the House. All three will strengthen our economy and our society. All three have broad popular support. All three will get done if enough people vote “Democrat” this November.
Trump’s Night / Europe’s Nightmare March 2, 2016March 1, 2016 Roger Cohen, in the pages of the indispensable New York Times (subscribe!): Trump’s Il Duce Routine Roger Cohen February 29 LONDON — Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. Europe knows that democracies can collapse. It’s not just that Trump retweets to his six million followers a quote attributed to Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” It’s not just that Trump refuses to condemn David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has expressed support for him. It’s not just that violence is woven into Trump’s language as indelibly as the snarl woven into his features — the talk of shooting somebody or punching a protester in the face, the insulting of the disabled, the macho mockery of women, the anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican tirades. It’s not just that he could become Silvio Berlusconi with nukes. It’s the echoes, now unmistakable, of times when the skies darkened. Europe knows how democracies collapse, after lost wars, in times of fear and anger and economic hardship, when the pouting demagogue appears with his pageantry and promises. America’s Weimar-lite democratic dysfunction is plain to see. A corrupted polity tends toward collapse. Trump is telling people something is rotten in the state of America. The message resonates because the rot is there. He has emerged from a political system corrupted by money, locked in an echo chamber of insults, reduced to the show business of an endless campaign, blocked by a kind of partisanship run amok that leads Republican members of Congress to declare they will not meet with President Obama’s eventual nominee for the Supreme Court, let alone listen to him or her. This is an outrage! The public interest has become less than an afterthought. Enter the smart, savvy, scowling showman. He is self-financed and promises restored greatness. He has a bully’s instinct for the jugular and a sense of how sick an angry America is of politics as usual and political correctness. He hijacks a Republican Party that has paved the way for him with years of ranting, bigotry, bellicosity and what Robert Kagan,in The Washington Post, has rightly called “racially tinged derangement syndrome” with respect to President Obama. Trump is a man repeatedly underestimated by the very elites who made Trumpism possible. He’s smarter than most of his belittlers, and quicker on his feet, which makes him only more dangerous. He’s the anti-Obama, all theater where the president is all prudence, the mouth-that-spews to the presidential teleprompter, rage against reason, the backslapper against the maestro of aloofness, the rabble-rouser to the cerebral law professor, the deal maker to the diligent observer. If Obama in another life could have been a successful European social democrat, Trump is only and absolutely of America. Part of the Trump danger is that he’s captured an American irredentism, a desire to reclaim something — power, confidence, rising incomes — that many people feel is lost. Trump is a late harvest of 9/11 and the fears that took hold that day. He’s the focus of vague hopes and dim resentments that have turned him into a savior in waiting. As with Ronald Reagan, it’s not the specifics with Trump, it’s a feeling, a vibration — and no matter how much he dissembles, reveals himself as a thug, traffics in contradictions, the raptness persists. Europe is transfixed. The German newsweekly “Der Spiegel” has called Trump “the world’s most dangerous man” and even waxed nostalgic for President George W. Bush, which for a European publication is like suddenly discovering a soft spot for Dracula. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, has tweeted that Trump “fuels hatred.” In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has attacked Trump’s proposed ban on non-American Muslims entering the United States, and more than half a million people have signed a petition urging that he be kept out of Britain. This weekend Britain’s Sunday Times ran a page-size photo of Trump in Lord Kitchener pose with a blaring headline: “America Wants Me.” So do a few Europeans, among them the French rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is a fan, as are some Russian oligarchs. Judge a man by the company he keeps. This disoriented America just might want Trump — and that possibility should be taken very seriously, before it is too late, by every believer in American government of the people, by the people, for the people. The power of the Oval Office and the temperament of a bully make for an explosive combination, especially when he has shown contempt for the press, a taste for violence, a consistent inhumanity, a devouring ego and an above-the-law swagger. As Europe knows, democracies do die. Often, they are the midwives of their own demise. Once lost, the cost of recovery is high. You can follow me on Twitter or join me on Facebook. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. He may or may not get the Republican nomination, but he won’t be President. At the end of the day, America is better than that. 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It Won’t Be Trump — Not After This* March 1, 2016February 29, 2016 I assume you’ve seen the John Oliver by now? It’s only the greatest 21 minutes in the history of television or American politics. What an appropriate way to celebrate Super Tuesday. Enjoy. *He’ll still win today. These things take time to sink in. But the Presidency? Not gonna happen. Which means Democrats have to redouble their efforts, as Cruz or Rubio would be even worse.