Remains of the days of Reagan

A bottomed-out President George W. Bush and losses in New Jersey presidential elections extending to the late 1980s invariably prompt Republicans to designate the Reagan era as a modern touchstone for their party.

The fact that he won here in back-to-back elections still sparks the GOP to pepper their fighting words with Reagan invocations, evidenced by McCain surrogates specifically targeting “Reagan Democrats” at the opening of their headquarters in Woodbridge this summer.

The Gipper remains the man among GOP, going up to the top of their ticket, where Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) repeatedly refers to Reagan as his hero and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hits a raise the roof crescendo every time she utters the late president’s name on the stump.

Having beaten the Republicans in the last four presidential elections in New Jersey, Democrats appear poised once again to capture a win on Election Day, and capture it decisively if a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll showing Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) with an 18-point lead over McCain is close to accurate.

But rather than seeing the Bush years as a radical departure from Reagan as do most of their GOP counterparts, most Democrats argue that the course of history has at last repudiated Reagan:  on the role of government, on his economic policies and his environmental preparation for the country.

“We’ve seen over the course of these last years that we need a trickle up economy as opposed to a trickle down economy, which is what Reagan championed,” said Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood), who’s locked in a 7th Congressional District battle with state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon).

“We need a commitment in our country to solving issues at the level of working people who have been hit with foreclosure,” Stender added.

To President Jimmy Carter’s painstaking explication of an energy policy, Reagan the candidate once famously pronounced that he didn’t have an energy policy because America is energy rich. “If you want to build a new economy, we need investment in renewable fuels and green collar jobs,” said Stender.

Republicans, of course, strongly disagree with the assessment that Reagan can now be relegated to either some Chester Arthur era of irrelevance or to the scrap heap of what’s wrong with America.

 “In better economic times, the Reagan principles are very much in play,” said Dale Florio, chair of the Somerset County Republican Party.

State Sen. Joseph Kyrillos (R-Monmouth) argues that while the end of the Cold War and the abortion issue altered the political landscape post-Reagan, his philosophy of government still prevails, forcing the opposition to check more liberal views, particularly on taxes.

“I would make the argument that the Democrats pretty much embraced Reaganomics,” said Kyrillos. “If you look at Clinton’s rhetoric, for example, about the era of big government being over and the federal reserve under Alan Greenspan - his presidency was one of moderation. Of course, he was also being tempered by Newt Gingrich in the Congress, warning about spending, warning about tax cuts and pushing for balanced budgets.”

Indeed, it was Clinton, coming out of the conservative Democratic Leadership Council, who beat the first President Bush here in 1992, and then conquered U.S. Sen. Bob Dole four years later.  

In the words of Essex County Democratic Party operative Tom Barrett, “Clinton turned New Jersey into a blue state.”

Obama comes with different credentials.

But although he jousted with Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) during the primary on the issue of whether her husband presented any significant and lasting departure from the Reagan era, essentially agreeing with Kyrillos’ assessment that President Clinton didn’t, Obama himself arguably arrives on the scene with no earth-shattering agenda .

Some New Jersey Republicans maintain that Obama’s pledge to cut taxes on 95 percent of the population reflect a sober absorption of the Reagan message.

 “Reaganomics, which is let the private sector flourish, is still the standard order of the day – has been for the last 30 years,” said Kyrillos.

Still, in Obama, it’s watered down from Reagan, in his view.

Working the other side of the aisle from Kyrillos, Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) can’t escape the Philadelphia, Miss. side of the story when it comes to Reagan.  

The senator recalls the presidential candidate standing in the southern town where Civil Rights workers died and making a direct case to voters there that government ought to stay out of people’s lives. Now in the wake of Katrina, in the wake of what the senator sees as an unnecessary war launched by an oil baron president, who admitted too late that “America is addicted to oil,” Reagan in retrospect appears out of touch, in Rice’s view.

“He was an actor and I loved him in the movies, but the power structure used him, discovered that he was the best actor to put on a front,” said Rice. “In today’s society – and this is, of course, what we’re seeing with Barack’s candidacy – we’re going to look at the character of the person.”

As New Jersey urbanized over the course of the last 20 years, as demographics changed and as New Yorkers more densely populated the state, the core Reagan message concurrently lost relevance, and no longer carries the power it did in a predominantly suburban environment, Rice argues.

“When you get up close to the people in places like Newark and Jersey City, you see that the people are truly suffering out there,” said the senator. “They need help.”

But coming up the middle on Reagan - who with moderate Gov. Tom Kean operating on the statewide level performed well in Hudson County - is state Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex).

Codey dismisses trickle-down economics but recognizes what he sees as the 40th president’s good humored demeanor and leadership skills as pluses that would stand any contemporary leader – or candidate - in good stead.

“I think there are so many things in favor of the Democrats right now, in terms of the war and the economy,” said Codey. “I do believe that if McCain was a different type of figure in terms of likeability – more like Reagan - it might have been different for him.”