Saturday, July 23, 2011

An Economic History Lesson for the Historically Challenged

link here to article

Conservatives like to portray Obama as a socialist. Liberals think of Nixon as a far right conservative. Bruce Bartlett, formerly of the Reagan administration, shows us that economic history is poorly understood. He provides a history lesson that reveals Obama and Clinton as economic conservatives, and shows that Richard Nixon was more of an economic liberal than either of them. The Democratic Party hasn't had a real liberal president since Lyndon Johnson, who gave us the "Great Society" on top of FDR's New Deal.

Bartlett's analysis is interesting. I think that we sometimes define Democrats as liberal based upon support for social values rather than on their economic values. Richard Nixon certainly ran for office proclaiming support for traditional conservative social values. That is what defined his "southern strategy" and characterized his campaign strategy. On the other hand, Nixon once proclaimed "that we are all Keynesian's now". Lyndon Johnson understood the difference between economic and social values. After passing the civil rights law, he lamented that democrats would never again carry a southern state. He was almost right. The previously "solid south" which voted democratic since the civil war, became the republican solid south. That happened despite the popularity of the Great Society programs in the general population, including the south.

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