Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Reagan 1, Wieseltier 0   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

In a recent column, Leon Wieseltier urged Obama to say, among other things, "that Ronald Reagan, when he proclaimed categorically, without exception or complication, that 'government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem,' was a fool." (I wrote two posts about the column.) Wieseltier now concedes that in truth, what Reagan said was that government was the problem, not the solution, "in this present crisis." Wieseltier goes on to argue, naturally, that his basic point is still right:

In circumstances other than "this present crisis," did Reagan believe that government was not the problem but the solution? Of course not. It is ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Reagan's career was riddled, from beginning to end, with principled expressions of hostility to the federal government and to big government. "Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." Government is "the chief source of despotism." "The ten most dangerous words in the English language are, 'Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help." And so on. Just a few months ago there appeared a posthumous memoir of Reagan by Bill Buckley, in which he begins a chapter on this subject with the question, "Is it anywhere plausibly denied that Ronald Reagan ran for political office pleading excessive government?" Buckley attempts to explain how it was that the size of the federal government and its deficit grew during Reagan's presidency in gross defiance of Reagan's philosophy; but about the content of the philosophy Buckley, like Reagan himself, leaves no doubt.

But one can believe that government is too big, consider it "the chief source of despotism" (which is practically true by definition), even joke about it, without believing that it can never solve anything and must always be a problem. Reagan's governance demonstrated as much. Wieseltier's initial statement was substantively, and not merely technically, incorrect; his self-defense does nothing to alter that judgment; and if he cannot see these things clearly perhaps he should not be quite so quick to dismiss other people's political philosophies as the thinking of fools.

02/24 04:17 PMShare