Reaganite ideological war

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is an interesting exchange to me in that I am glad to have some reconfirmation from pros on the depth of the '82 recession.

I would comment on Reagan's communication skills that at that time there was also a policy, I think , by the monopoly media bosses to give Reagan that teflon. It was not only that nothing bad stuck to Reagan because the public on its own didn't blame him. There was an organized method by the media to spin stories to not have anything make Reagan look bad, and the public fell for it.  I don't think Reagan's communication skills were just his but rather he had the whole of the communication system shaping his communication positively.

I am very much against the trend around these lists to disdain any conspiracy theories on today's politics. The ruling class had a conscious policy to make Reagan look good. No more Watergates ! was the discipline of the ruling class at the time.

On the monopoly media methods, see Michael Parenti's _Inventing Reality_


Charles Brown

>>> michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 03/26/01 04:48PM >>>
A point of clarification, please:  I did not say that the recession
would save the Democrats.  What I did say was that I feared that an
incompetent Gore administration would have trouble recovery from its
association with the recession.

What happened in 1982 was different.  The dominant impression was a
long trend of deindustrialization and economic setbacks that had hit
the economy since the late 1960s or certainly since the early 1970s.
This recession comes on the heels of the giddy prosperity -- at least
among the NASDAQ crowd -- that made Clinton so popular.

In addition, Gore lacked the communication skills that Reagan had.
Clinton might have been able to weather a recession and still not look
bad, but not Gore.

"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:

> For those like michael perelman who are betting that
> a recession will turn this around, let me remind that the
> recession of 1982 was the worst since the Great Depression.
> It did slow Reagan down by sharply increasing Dem strength
> in the Congress.  But in 1984 he won reelection with 49 states....

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx