Word: reaganism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Nonetheless, in the Clinton years, both the major political and policy legacies of Reagan have been discredited. "Reaganomics," as his economic policy came to be called, of lower taxes, higher defense spending and a devil-may-care attitude toward the bottom line, has been blamed for the huge deficits of the '80s while Clinton's "anti-Reaganomics" has actually worked. It has contributed to both a growing economy and the elimination of the deficit...
...that while his mind and body succumb to old age, Reagan's legendary teflon continues to keep the bad news just sliding right...
Partly, it's Clinton's fault. With the elimination of the deficit (although not the huge debt), it seems pointless to continue to whine about Reagan's irresponsibility. In fact, as Jonathan Chait points out in the New Republic (Feb. 2), many conservative revisionists are now so emboldened by this fortuitous occurrence that they've taken to arguing the absurd. Ignoring the immediate, post-Reagan recession in the early '90s and the effectiveness of Clinton's policies since then, they claim that it is the healthy economy borne by Reagan that has restored our fiscal health and allowed the budget...
...Reagan is also currently getting overdue credit for his part in winning the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union was such a surprise and our attention was diverted so quickly to new worries like the Gulf War and economic recession that Americans never really had a chance to crown the victors. Now they do. Reagan may finally be receiving the applause he deserves for his greatest offscreen victory--sending Marxism-Leninism, in his words, to "the ash-heap of history...
Politically, Republicans still need to use Reagan as a unifying force for their fractious, headless party. By providing fresh principles for governing combined with a charismatic magnetism, Reagan has become the FDR and the JFK of the Republican Party...