Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy (review)

In an extensive polemic, Walter Williams seeks to condemn Ronald Reagan and the anti-statist philosophy of domestic government known as "Reaganism." The "bill of indictment" (15) is succinct. Reagan, "the truest of the true believers in Reaganism" (79), dozed through eight years at the helm of American government. The result has been a drastic decline in the competence of government, a crisis in American democracy, and the onset of early-stage plutocracy (1). After setting forth his indictment, Williams proceeds, at first cautiously, to the prosecution.

Good government, Williams contends, relies upon effective institutions. In the Madisonian model of representative democracy, effective institutions rely upon informed citizens selecting public-spirited officials open to deliberation. All the institutions of the national government worked together in this system "for roughly seventeen decades," Williams writes (101). During this time, "the branches of government generally did not unduly usurp each other's prerogatives" (101). Modifications were made in the institutions of governance, to be certain, but until the presidency of the defendant, these adjustments were constructive adaptations of means so as better to pursue ends that Williams posits as either unwavering or unquestionable. In fact, Williams argues, the United States enjoyed a truthful, compromising, competent government from the founding through the "golden years" after World War II (45).

From 1981 to today, by contrast, the United States has suffered from polarized, deceitful, and incompetent government. Readers reluctant to follow Williams in identifying such a clean break in the United States' complex political history will find the next step in Williams's train of logic even less compelling: It is all Ronald Reagan's fault.

Reagan came to the presidency primed to deliver a message calculated to harm the government, to handicap it in the never-ending struggle against a monied elite and a complacent mainstream public attuned to just the sort of antigovernment rhetoric that Reagan excelled at delivering. The government, Reagan famously (or infamously) intoned, is the problem, not the solution. This message became the guiding spirit of politics in Washington, D.C. Even once a Democrat returned to the presidency, President Bill Clinton was exceedingly wary of straying from the "antigovernmentism" that Reagan preached. Congress, under the control of Democrats as well as Republicans during Reagan's presidency, gave in to Reaganism as well.

Newt Gingrich, Williams suggests, was to Ronald Reagan as the monster was to Dr. Frankenstein. Reaganism shifted the party system rightward, driving moderates out of the Republican Party and Democrats to the wilderness. The result, ironically, was that Gingrich, as House Speaker, lost control of his own "monster," the Class of '94 among House Republicans, and was driven into retirement. The people of the nation suffered as a result, as "Mean Reaganism in the 1990s blocked enlightened compromises between Congress and the president to support democratic capitalism by offsetting the income and wealth inequalities it produced" (127).

Reagan's management, moreover, was not only malign, it was incompetent. His economic record was objectively bad when it was not morally repugnant, and his assault on the executive branch of government, through statute, regulations, and guerilla warfare within the bureaucracy, decreased the systemic capacity of government. The national government is less effective and less efficient as a result. How else, Williams asks, can one explain the Savings and Loan debacle; the inadequate funding of government auditors; the increasing concentration of wealth; the end of Aid to Families with Dependent Children; and even the catastrophic failures of government known to American citizens today by the shorthand terms of "9-11" and "Enron"?

The logic of Williams's argument is disarmingly simple. There are national governmental agencies that are responsible for such things as keeping terrorists off of airplanes. Reaganism harmed government agencies. Therefore, any failure of a government agency represents a preventable consequence of elevating Ronald Reagan to the presidency and to the status of an "-ism" (the "only president warranting an 'ism' attached to his name" (49), Williams rather remarkably contends). Presumably...