With regard to the political system, the Reagan era represents a significant advance in capitalist democracy. For eight years, the U.S. government functioned virtually without a chief executive. That is an important fact. It is quite unfair to assign to Ronald Reagan, the person, much responsibility for the policies enacted in his name. Despite the efforts of the educated classes to invest the proceedings with the required dignity, it was hardly a secret that Reagan had only the vaguest conception of the policies of his administration, and if not properly programmed by his staff, regularly produced statements that would have been an embarrassment, were anyone to have taken them seriously. The question that dominated the Iran-contra hearings — did Reagan know, or remember, what the policy of his administration had been? — was hardly a serious one. The pretense to the contrary was simply part of the cover-up operation; and the lack of public interest over revelations that Reagan was engaged in illegal aid to the contras during a period when, he later informed Congress, he knew nothing about it, betrays a certain realism.

 

O deber de Reagan era sorrir, ler desde o teleprompter cunha voz agradable, contar algúns chistes e manter a audiencia debidamente desconcertada. A súa única cualificación para a presidencia era que sabía ler as liñas escritas para el polos ricos, que pagan ben o servizo. Reagan levaba anos facendo iso.

 

He seemed to perform to the satisfaction of the paymasters, and to enjoy the experience. By all accounts, he spent many pleasant days enjoying the pomp and trappings of power and should have a fine time in the retirement quarters that his grateful benefactors have prepared for him. It is not really his business if the bosses left mounds of mutilated corpses in death squad dumping grounds in El Salvador or hundreds of thousands of homeless in the streets. One does not blame an actor for the content of the words that come from his mouth. When we speak of the policies of the Reagan administration, then, we are not referring to the figure set up to front for them by an administration whose major strength was in public relations. The construction of a symbolic figure by the PR industry is a contribution to solving one of the critical problems that must be faced in any society that combines concentrated power with formal mechanisms that in theory allow the general public to take part in running their own affairs, thus posing a threat to privilege.

 

Not only in the subject domains but at home as well, there are unimportant people who must be taught to submit with due humility, and the crafting of a figure larger than life is a classic device to achieve this end. As far back as Herodotus we can read how people who had struggled to gain their freedom “became once more subject to autocratic government” through the acts of able and ambitious leaders who “introduced for the first time the ceremonial of royalty,” distancing the leader from the public while creating a legend that “he was a being of a different order from mere men” who must be shrouded in mystery, and leaving the secrets of government, which are not the affair of the vulgar, to those entitled to manage them. In the early years of the Republic, an absurd George Washington cult was contrived as part of the effort “to cultivate the ideological loyalties of the citizenry” and thus create a sense of “viable nationhood,” historian Lawrence Friedman comments. Washington was a “perfect man” of “unparalleled perfection,” who was raised “above the level of mankind,” and so on. To this day, the Founding Fathers remain “those pure geniuses of detached contemplation,” far surpassing ordinary mortals (see p. 00). Such reverence persists, notably in elite intellectual circles, the comedy of Camelot being an example. Sometimes a foreign leader ascends to the same semi-divinity among loyal worshippers, and may be described as “a Promethean figure” with “colossal external strength” and “colossal powers,” as in the more ludicrous moments of the Stalin era, or in the accolade to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir by New Republic owner-editor Martin Peretz, from which these quotes are taken.

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt attained similar heights among large sectors of the population, including many of the poor and working class, who placed their trust in him. The aura of sanctity remains among intellectuals who worship at the shrine. Reviewing a laudatory book on FDR by Joseph Alsop in the New York Review of Books, left-liberal social critic Murray Kempton describes the “majesty” of Roosevelt‘s smile as “he beamed from those great heights that lie beyond the taking of offense… Those of us who were born to circumstances less assured tend to think of, indeed revere, this demeanor as the aristocratic style… [We are] as homesick as Alsop for a time when America was ruled by gentlemen and ladies.” Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer “were persons even grander on the domestic stage than they would end up being on the cosmic one,” and met the great crisis in their lives, a secret love affair, “in the grandest style.” “That Roosevelt was the democrat that great gentlemen always are in no way abated his grandeur… [His blend of elegance with compassion] adds up to true majesty.” He left us with “nostalgia” that is “aching.” His “enormous bulk” stands between us “and all prior history…endearingly exalted…splendidly eternal for romance,” etc., etc. Roosevelt took such complete command that he “left social inquiry…a wasteland,” so much so that “ten years went by before a Commerce Department economist grew curious about the distribution of income and was surprised to discover that its inequality had persisted almost unchanged from Hoover, through Roosevelt and Truman…” But that is only the carping of trivial minds. The important fact is that Roosevelt brought us “comfort…owing to his engraving upon the public consciousness the sense that men were indeed equal,” whatever the record of economic reform and civil rights may show. There was one published reaction, by Noel Annan, who praised “the encomium that Murray Kempton justly bestowed on Roosevelt.” Try as they might, the spinners of fantasy could not even approach such heights in the Reagan era.

 

The political and social history of Western democracies records all sorts of efforts to ensure that the formal mechanisms are little more than wheels spinning idly. The goal is to eliminate public meddling in formation of policy. That has been largely achieved in the United States, where there is little in the way of political organizations, functioning unions, media independent of the corporate oligopoly, or other popular structures that might offer people means to gain information, clarify and develop their ideas, put them forth in the political arena, and work to realize them. As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.

 

Un paso importante para impedir ao público molesto asuntos serios é reducir as eleccións á elección de figuras simbólicas, como a bandeira ou a raíña de Inglaterra, quen, despois de todo, abre o Parlamento lendo o programa político do goberno, aínda que ninguén o pregunta. se ela o crea, ou incluso o entende. Se as eleccións se converten nunha cuestión de selección da raíña para os próximos catro anos, entón teremos un longo camiño para resolver a tensión inherente a unha sociedade libre na que o poder sobre o investimento e outras decisións cruciais, de aí tamén os sistemas políticos e ideolóxicos. — está moi concentrado en mans privadas.

 

Para que tales medidas de disuasión democrática teñan éxito, o sistema de adoutrinamento debe realizar correctamente as súas tarefas, investindo ao líder de maxestade e autoridade e fabricando as ilusións necesarias para manter ao público esixido, ou polo menos, ocupado. Na era moderna, unha forma de abordar a tarefa é rapsodar (ou lairse) pola sorprendente popularidade da augusta figura seleccionada para presidir desde lonxe. Desde os primeiros días do período Reagan demostrouse repetidamente que os relatos da popularidade sen precedentes de Reagan, que os medios de comunicación venderon infinitamente, eran fraudulentos. A súa popularidade apenas se desviaba da norma, oscilando entre 1/3 e 2/3 aproximadamente, sen alcanzar nunca os niveis de Kennedy ou Eisenhower e en gran medida previsible, como é estándar, a partir das percepcións da dirección da economía. George Bush foi un dos candidatos máis impopulares que nunca asumiu a presidencia, a xulgar polas enquisas durante a campaña; despois de tres semanas no cargo, o seu índice de aprobación persoal foi do 76 por cento, moi por riba da valoración máis alta que Reagan acadou. Dezaoito meses despois de asumir o cargo, a popularidade persoal de Bush mantívose por riba do punto máis alto que acadou Reagan. A rápida desaparición de Reagan unha vez rematado o seu traballo non debería sorprender a ninguén que atendese ao papel que lle asignaron.

 

Non obstante, é importante ter en conta que, aínda que a substancia da democracia foi reducida con éxito durante a era Reagan, aínda así o público permaneceu substancialmente fóra de control, suscitando serios problemas para o exercicio do poder.

 

 

 

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