Jan 25 2008
Krugman On the Presence of the Past
The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had other points to make in a recent piece, but I wanted to use his first, preliminary idea here because it’s about the presence in the present of our past. He puts it well:
Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, ever as from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.
And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.
Along with Neville Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement of 1938 or the homecoming reception of veterans during the Vietnam era, Ronald Reagan’s presidency is about the most used and abused piece of our past that you see in action these days.
Republican promoters have intensified the use of the Reagan strategy during this campaign season because Republicans calculate that evoking thought of more recent Republicans such as George W. Bush would not help matters, at all.