Lynn Smith: The original Big Lie

In his January 1981 inaugural address, a newly elected Ronald Reagan declared that, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” In doing so, he began a wholesale rejection of the public policies that had successfully built the most powerful force on earth ... the American Middle Class.

Unwittingly, Reagan spouted a lie that continues to be the rallying cry for two generations of right-wing apostles, and tragically began a 40-year trend that’s now resulted in the public’s utter contempt for politics. Indeed, a straight line can be drawn from Reagan’s opening salvo to Trump’s catastrophic denigration of our nation’s institutions, and as a result, Americans are growing more cynical every day. But this overwhelming distrust of government is relatively new.

When Republican President Dwight Eisenhower left office in 1961, polls showed that 75% of Americans believed elected officials in Washington could be trusted to do what was right for the country. Eisenhower continued FDR’s popular New Deal programs, increased the minimum wage, expanded Social Security participation, and created the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Most notably, Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System, which crisscrossed our nation with 41,000 miles of new roads, connecting small cities with urban opportunities, while creating tens of thousands of new jobs. Unlike Reagan, Eisenhower (and most of his predecessors) believed that the strategic use of governmental resources could accelerate America’s progress and reduce our rural pockets of poverty.

It wasn’t until the Watergate scandal that a majority of Americans began to lose faith in the governing class, and by association, the government. In polls taken after Nixon’s resignation in 1974, public approval of politicians had plummeted to 34%, and because our newly acquired cynicism coincided perfectly with Reagan’s anti-government rhetoric, he was propelled into the presidency in 1980.

And it was his presidency that began four decades of disinformation, leaving Americans disillusioned and distrustful. Life in this hall of mirrors has convinced millions of hard-working citizens that their interests are aligned with a billionaire corporate class that views governmental intervention the same way that Superman views kryptonite. With the benefit of 40 years of hindsight, it’s clear Reagan’s pledge to “starve the beast” led to the blanket deregulation and regressive taxation that has made a real hash of things for most Americans. During his two terms in office, Reagan doubled the size of the national debt, and began to dismantle the financial oversight that could have prevented the Great Recession in ‘08.

Reagan also helped set in motion ballooning income inequality, underfunded educational systems, deteriorating infrastructure, and runaway costs for healthcare and higher education.

Most tragically, his war on drugs served to ignore mental illness and criminalize addiction. His war on public education helped create the metastasizing network of for-profit charters that have sadly re-segregated our country’s schools.

Because I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and again in 1984, and George HW Bush in 1988, it’s fair to say that I’m indirectly complicit in almost every public policy outcome that I’m now condemning.

This is the bottom line: Modern Republicans inherited, then embraced a governing ideology that rests on the premise that “government is the problem,” so it’s proven impossible for them to develop coherent policy agendas for determining what the government should be doing. Because the GOP has been unable to develop a shared set of priorities, conservative legislative solutions have been sacrificed in favor of governing by gesture … jumping impulsively from one hot-button cultural issue to another, dividing our country, while achieving nothing in return.

Now, Republicans are almost entirely engaged in a perpetual campaign for the attention of the most radical elements of their base, flitting from Critical Race Theory to transgender demonization to Hunter’s laptop. On a daily basis, the GOP demonstrates that despite being given majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives, that control hasn’t resulted in any serious commitment to actually govern.

Our governmental system was (almost) perfectly crafted by our founders. The problem is that “we the people” continue to elect dolts, and sometimes crooked dolts, to serve in public office. The brightest stars among us now choose private sector opportunities rather than serving “problem” institutions like the state and federal government. With so many of our best minds on the sidelines, subpar outcomes have become predictable, but can’t be allowed to become permanent.

Good government can give us safe spaces in which to live our lives. Great government can align itself with the causes of truth, justice, fairness, and peace.

I’d like “we the people” to do both.

— Community Columnist Lynn Smith is a retired wealth management executive who resides in Holland. Contact her at lynn.angleworks@gmail.com. 

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Lynn Smith: The original Big Lie