Ted’s current condition makes me think back. Could a Democrat not associated with the unpopular Carter Administration have beaten Reagan? Was the conservative movement and mood of the time too strong to be thwarted? Would Kennedy’s personal history have made him unelectable?
If he had won it, and the general election, what kind of POTUS would he have made?
A Democrat? Maybe. This one? Not hardly. If he couldn’t beat Carter, what chance would he have against a candidate who could?
Regards,
Shodan
I agree with Shodan. 1980 was not the Democrats’ year. Reagan had his faults but he was an extremely charismatic candidate and he was telling the voters what they wanted to believe. That’s a tough combination to beat.
That’s not why Reagan won.
Liberalism had been in power pretty much uninterrupted for about a generation come 1980, and in some ways longer than that, as Republican opposition to Democratic ideas weren’t predicated on conservative arguments much before Reagan. So a lot of what was going wrong - in economic policy, crime levels, tax levels, and the like, were because of liberalism’s unchecked excesses.
Top marginal tax rates in the 1970s were at levels no Democrat in their right mind would propose today - they would recognize instantly that those rates would kill economic growth. Yet this realization spread through the Democratic Party because conservatives won that argument - we moved the debate rightward.
Reagan won because liberalism had failed in important ways. Had it not failed in these ways, Reagan never would have had a chance. This should be a warning now as Democrats are in ascendency again.
I can see some parallels between Reagan and Obama in this sense. The Bush Admin’s particular brand of conservatism has failed, and Obama offers a fresh approach that people can feel good about. But that doesn’t mean that conservatism itself has failed, just that manifestation. Conversely, liberalism in general didn’t fail, just the particular brand at the time. Someday, when we all grow up, we might be able to judge ideas/policies on their merit rather than their source, but we’ve still got a long way to go there.
Ted Kennedy just really couldn’t have won, IMHO. He would’ve represented the opposite of what America was looking for at the time. Plus, I just can’t imagine anyone getting elected President with something like Chappaquidick hanging around their neck.
Ted Kennedy’s politics would have never won. The country had decided it no longer wanted Rooseveltian/Kennedyite Democracy. Indeed, the difficulties the Democrats have faced since the 70s can essentially be laid to the fact that they have never managed to coalesce around some new theory of governance. Thus, the only national-level winners have been Democrats who attempted to portray themselves as non-Liberal, without being forced to define what they truly were (President Clinton, e.g.).
It remains to be seen if Senator Obama is offering something new, or just rhetoric in this regard.
But Ted Kennedy offered nothing but unapologetic liberalism from the halcyon days of the 30s-60s. That message was never gonna fly. Hell, even the Democrats rejected it.
I don’t see that his approach is particularly fresh, BTW. He’s just a new guy delivering the message.
And before you disagree, remember all that commentary about how little difference there was between Hillary Clinton’s policy proposals and Obama’s.
Frankly, the Democrats don’t have a lot of original thinking going on right now - most of their rhetoric is devoted to preserving or expanding New Deal/Great Society era programs. And while I’m sure Democrats consider that necessary, they ought to recognize too that we’re in the 21st century, and solutions from seventy or forty years back might not work anymore.
Liberals where at least honest about their economic policies: collect taxes combined with government spending. The Reagan economic policy was built on sand: lower taxes, spend more money, and borrow to make up the difference. Twenty five years of that have put our economy in the straits it’s in today. Conservatives are not people who should be pointing any fingers on the subject of unchecked excess.
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You know whenever I see thread title like this in GD (“What if X had happened?”), I am always reminded of the Saturday Night Live segment (probably 20 years old) that had the proposition “What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?” and discussed this with a historian and and aviation engineer.
That was probably the best parody of the whole “What if…” genre of questions.
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Carry on.
My favorite was, “What if Superman’s spaceship had landed in Germany rather than the U.S.?”
“UBERMANN KILLS EVERY PERSON IN ENGLAND!”
Actually, I don’t disagree too much with that. I don’t think his policies are what’s drawing people to him, it’s that he exudes character, and many Americans believe that is what’s needed now. Reagan’s approach wasn’t all that fresh, either, but he exuded confidence and many Americans believed that was what was needed at the time, as well.
Also, right now, it’s the Primary season, and the Dems sound like New Dealers because they’re still preaching to the choir and they’re not going to leave their playbook for the General lying around.
I am going to give credit to:
A. The "misery index " (inflation plus unemployment) which was 21.98 by the fall of '80 and never reached that high again (yet)
&
B. Ayaltollah Khomeni and the American Hostages being held in Iran
More than some judicial, chin-pulling rejection of liberalism by the American people as the reason Reagan won the general election by 10 percentage points of the popular vote.
Ironically, one reason Carter won the Democratic primaries early on was the rally round the President feeling that the hostage taking generated (His approval ratings went from the 20’s to the 60’s by 3 months or so later when New Hampshire rolled around). It was only later that it became clear that 444 days was on the horizon that it began to kill him. That, Chappaqudick , and the inability of Kennedy to give a compelling argument for why him and not Carter is why Carter whipped his ass.
I think Kennedy Reagan would have been a different election than the one we had in 1980 _ it **would **have been liberalism vs. conservatism as those terms meant then and it **would **have been about ideas and a direction for the country rather than what I suggest it really was about : Carter’s leadership such as it was and the sorry economy.
If Kennedy were President I don’t think we would have had as big a deficit, as low taxes, medium range nukes in Europe, Nicaraguan Elections in 1990, a 400 ship Navy, Star Wars, Iran Contra, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
What we would have in its place I am not as sure - some form of NAtional Health care maybe …
OTOH, there’s no reason to fear that solutions that work in the rest of the industrialized world, now, won’t work here, now.
Many political pundits believe that one flaw in Kennedy’s candidacy was how he failed to answer a straightforward question in an interview with former CBS reporter Roger Mudd. here’s how Mudd described it:
If Kennedy had trouble with “Why do you want to be President?” Ronald Reagan would have demolished him in a debate.
Teddy had far too much personal baggage to win in 1980: Chappaquiddick, past affairs and drinking binges, and his clearly-distant relationship with his wife Joan. The economy was in bad shape and I don’t think he had any engaging or persuasive message for what to do about it. The historical tide was turning against Democrats that year, and any nominee of the party would have had a very tough time defeating the personable, charming (to many, if not to me) Reagan. The GOP message on taxes, crime and foreign policy was much better than the Dems’ that year, too.
Incidentally, the American edition of Jeffrey Archer’s Shall We Tell the President? is a detective story set in an alternate universe in which Teddy won in 1980. He has a small cameo role. His VP, IIRC, was former Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas.