The end of the Reagan Revolution?

For the past three election cycles, a lot of people with varying points of view have been talking about the end of the Reagan Revolution. The Gipper cast a 25 year shadow on American politics, and it wasn't until after the 2006 election when Democrats decided it might be safe, finally, to take a left turn.

What Reagan had accomplished through two terms was the equivalent of FDR's New Deal in terms of talismanic longevity. Where FDR had brought about a decades long realignment in favor of the Democratic party and a more expansive view of government, Reagan accomplished the opposite almost entirely, moving the electoral goalposts dramatically to the right of center and contracting the role of government. Post Reagan, Democrats seeking to compete at the national level were forced to move to the political center...in some instances, moving a great deal farther to the right than was entirely comfortable. This is not to say that hard left Democrats suddenly vanished at the national level; not at all. They burrowed into Congress and acquired seniority, accomplishing much in their own way. But in marginal or competitive districts, particularly those with certain amount of turnover, candidates from either party were definitively centrist or somewhat to the right of center. More importantly, the language of government and the perimeters of what it was intended to accomplish were delineated and circumscribed by Reagan and his fellow revolutionaries.

President Clinton, for instance, was elected as a "new" Democrat, i.e., a centrist. That was reinforced for him in 1994, when voters, perceiving that the Democratic party was trying to govern farther to the left than they were comfortable with, readjusted course in mid term, and the Republicans took the Congress. Clinton learned this lesson well, and was careful to appear centrist, triangulating his policies between a Democratic party that wanted, but feared, more liberal policies, an ascendant GOP, a watchful public, and the looming Reagan shadow.

With the election of George W. Bush, a man who explicitly claimed the Reagan mantle, the course was set for continued, uneventful center-right governance...until 9/11; from that point, everything changed.

His prosecution of the Cold War to one side, if one examines the Reagan record, one notes particular care to keep US commitments but not add to them. There were no hot wars; indeed, virtually no military actions at all that extended past 30 days except for exercises. Marine presence in Lebanon was one exception, but when their barracks at the Beirut airport were bombed, Reagan's response was to pull the troops and have the USS New Jersey bang away at Druze and Syrian positions. The Grenada police action in 1983 also qualifies here, and it was carefully planned and lasted just a bit over two months.

In contrast, President Bush almost immediately began planning a military response post 9/11, which, by March of 2003, developed into a two pronged war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The president won re-election specifically on a "stay the course" campaign, but by the 2006 midterms, steady reports of reversals, bad news, poor operational control and worse planning in the war effort, along with GOP overreach and arrogance of power within the administration and Congress, worked to create a toxic combination for Republicans at the polls. Both the House and the Senate turned over. The hard left in the Democratic party, heavy in seniority and sure that the Republican brand was tainted, took control on Capitol Hill. By the time the 2008 elections rolled up and in the midst of an economic blitzkrieg of mammoth proportions, the left was looking at realignment. It had Congress; it had elected the most liberal president in the nation's history; and it had majorities capable of beating back GOP objections to anything.

To a certain extent, everyone missed what had actually happened. President Bush's unpopularity made Republicans unpopular by proxy, but many of the new Democrats gained office as centrist candidates, winning heretofore solid GOP seats. So with a president who was elected in large part because he was not President Bush, a Democratic Congress elected by voters tired of GOP rule because of misadventure, corruption, or arrogance (but still perceiving Democratic replacements as no more liberal than the GOP legislators they defeated), and large majorities, Democrats saw the end of the revolution and a chance to remake the government in a more progressive image.

The Progressive ascendancy lasted eight months, ending with the death of Edward Kennedy. By the end of that first year, Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts to Kennedy's old Senate seat on an explicit promise to stop Democrats from shoving health care "reform" through the Senate. Obamacare limped over the finish line, but was so desperately unpopular that few Democrats dare to run for reelection while openly supporting the bill as it passed.

And a huge course correction, an electoral tsunami, awaits Democrats in this 2010 midterm election. Current estimates reflect Republican turnover of the House, with a chance to retake the Senate. This is an astonishing repudiation taking place within two years, and one caused by a simple misunderstanding: the Reagan Revolution, the realignment he brought to Washington and national politics, remains intact. And both parties missed it.

The US remains a center-right nation, predominantly. This was the meaning of the Tea Parties and is the source of their continuing power. They are a reflection of center-right principles. They have, essentially, reversed the leftward drift of the Republican party; in three weeks, the country itself will resume a more conservative course.

Ronald Reagan is gone, but the changes he wrought in our politics remain. Both parties forget that at their electoral peril.