Game, Set, and Match to Paul Krugman...

It appears that Paul Krugman wins his fight with David Brooks, who had written this about Paul Krugman's invocation of Ronald Reagan in Philadelphia, Mississippi:

David Brooks: History and Calumny: Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.... But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff.

Here, via Rick Perlstein, is Joseph Crespino:

Did David Brooks Tell the Full Story About Reagan's Neshoba County Fair Visit?: In his November 9, 2007, column in the New York Times, David Brooks discussed Ronald Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 and his use of the term “states’ rights.”  Brooks absolved Reagan of racism, but he ignored the broader significance of Reagan’s Neshoba County appearance.... Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican national committee.  Well before the Republicans had nominated Reagan, the national committee was polling state leaders to line up venues where the Republican nominee might speak.  Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called the “George Wallace inclined voters.”...

On July 31st, just days before Reagan went to Neshoba County, the New York Times reported that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed Reagan.  In its newspaper, the Klan said that the Republican platform “reads as if it were written by a Klansman.”  Reagan rejected the endorsement, but only after a Carter cabinet official brought it up in a campaign speech.  The dubious connection did not stop Reagan from using segregationist language in Neshoba County. 

It was clear from other episodes in that campaign that Reagan was content to let southern Republicans link him to segregationist politics in the South’s recent past.  Reagan’s states rights line was prepared beforehand and reporters covering the event could not recall him using the term before the Neshoba County appearance.  John Bell Williams, an arch-segregationist former governor who had crossed party lines in 1964 to endorse Barry Goldwater, joined Reagan on stage at another campaign stop in Mississippi.  Reagan’s campaign chair in the state, Trent Lott, praised Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist Dixiecrat candidate in 1948, at a Reagan rally, saying that if Thurmond had been elected president “we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

Brooks’s defense of Reagan seemed to be a response to his fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman.... Brook’s column, however, is a good example of conservatives’ discomfort with their racial history.  Reagan is to modern conservatism what Franklin Roosevelt was to liberalism, so it’s not surprising that Brooks would feel the need to defend him.  But Brooks’s throwaway remark that “it’s obviously true that race played a role in the GOP ascent” understates what actually happened.... [Reagan] did it in 1966 when he campaigned for the California governorship by denouncing open housing and civil rights laws.  He did it in 1976 when he tried to beat out Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination by attacking welfare in subtly racist terms. And he did it in Neshoba County in 1980. 

Reagan knew that southern Republicans were making racial appeals to win over conservative southern Democrats, and he was a willing participant.  Despite what Brooks claims, it’s no slur to hold Reagan accountable for the choice that he made.  Neither is it mere partisanship to try to think seriously about the complex ways that white racism has shaped modern conservative politics.     

Comments

[Robert]

My name links to another historian more shrill than Paul K. can be.

[Dan'l]

Funny how those who supported states' rights never supported civil rights as a matter of policy within their own state.

Reagan had been using "states' rights" since the 60s, but always linked it rhetorically to low federal taxation and regulation, not to civil rights controversies. But just coincidentally (right) was against most civil rights laws too, as a defender against federal intrusiveness. Speaking to segregation-leaning audiences in the 60s, he used the magic phrase, signalling to the audience that he was on their side, then could claim no racial meaning to it outside the South. He was quite ready to accomodate the segregationist wing: in 1981, he was prepared to name Mel Bradford to chair the NEH at the behest of Southern social conservative supporters. Bradford had written that SLAVERY was a states' rights issue. In other words, he wasn't just a segregationist, but an unreconstructed Confederate. Reagan was talked out of naming Bradford by neocons who touted Bill Bennett in his stead. Did Reagan know Bradford's record? Probably not, but it took some convincing to get him to backtrack.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

An' another thing: what's all this nonsense about Reagan defeating the Evil Empire by his crazy spending on Star Wars?

I called the Soviet Union as on its last legs in '77 -- by inspection, after a trip across on the Trans-Siberian.

But if any US President -- as opposed to the Russian peoples -- is entitled to any credit for bringing down the monster, surely it's Jimmy Carter, scourge of the Russian Olympics and large scale Christian evangelist.

It's often forgotten that at a time when there were about 150 Jewish refuseniks in Soviet jails there were also over 5,000 Baptists behind bars.

"Operation 2000," a huge Evangelical "effort to evangelize the entire world for Jesus Christ by the year 2000" was running Bibles into Moscow by barges parked under bridges on the Volga -- and the Chairman of the effort was President Carter. Wneh Brezhnev came to Washington, what he saw looking across the desk at him in the Oval Office was, in his view, the Baptist Pope.

[albatross]

I thought Lott's comment about Strom Thurmond was at Thurmond's 100th birthday party, and happened when Reagan had pretty much forgotten his own name. Is this mixing two different stories, or did Lott really make exactly the same comment 20 years earlier?

[RW]

IIRC the "we would have all been better off [if Strom became the POTUS]" was a fairly regular "complement" paid to Thurmond, by Trent Lott and others.

It's just another data point on the color line that such sentiments expressed publicly only became a political liability so late in the game and even then are still not really a liability in the deep south; i.e., Lott just forgot where (and when) he was and gave his stock laud at Thurmond's 100th birthday bash.

[ed]

Brooks writes, "Some inside the campaign wanted to move away from the Southern strategy used by Nixon..."

Wow, there were "some" in the Reagan campaign who wanted to reject barely coded racist campaign tactics. That's amazing! Mr. Brooks should name these heroes forthwith so that we may congratulate them. Incredible, Republicans who didn't want to embrace racism. Are there other GOP candidates who believe this? One can't help but wonder.

[Bernard Yomtov]

"Funny how those who supported states' rights never supported civil rights as a matter of policy within their own state."

This is a critical and generally overlooked point. It was certainly possible to argue both that segregation was immoral and that it was the duty of the states, not the federal government, to abolish it. So far as I know, no one who opposed federal civil rights legislation on states rights grounds took this position.

[Monte Davis]

"An' another thing: what's all this nonsense about Reagan defeating the Evil Empire by his crazy spending on Star Wars?"

Add what the USSR spent on Afghanistan to what they lost in the fall of oil prices from mid-70s to late 80s, and their space-oriented strategic spending is lost in the rounding error.

This nonsense is simply a fig leaf for the uncomfortable fact that SDI promised a lot, spent a lot and produced very little -- a way to say "yebbut, the Reds went broke trying to keep up."

[Monte Davis]

"An' another thing: what's all this nonsense about Reagan defeating the Evil Empire by his crazy spending on Star Wars?"

Add what the USSR spent on Afghanistan to what they lost in the fall of oil prices from mid-70s to late 80s, and their space-oriented strategic spending is lost in the rounding error.

This nonsense is simply a fig leaf for the uncomfortable fact that SDI promised a lot, spent a lot and produced very little -- a way to say "yebbut, the Reds went broke trying to keep up."

[Robert]

Great joke in the letters to editor yesterday in the New York Times. Tracy Brooking writes: "David Brooks is correct. ... While, as Mr. Brooks says, it's obviously true that race played a role in the G.O.P.'s ascent, we can't assume that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American.

All you need is five minutes worth of research to establish the truth of this. Go to your favorite search engine and type in the name of Lee Atwater and the words 'Southern strategy.' This should clear up any lingering doubts you may have over Ronald Reagan and the Southern strategy."

[reason]

David Lloyd-Jones
How interesting - I didn't know that. Every day I walk past a Baptist prayer house and the inmates (oops - sorry the congregation) are almost all russians. I wondered why. Now I guess that could be an explaination.

[Stuart Buck]

I thought Lott's comment about Strom Thurmond was at Thurmond's 100th birthday party, and happened when Reagan had pretty much forgotten his own name. Is this mixing two different stories, or did Lott really make exactly the same comment 20 years earlier?

Apparently Lott doesn't have many original thoughts: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37288-2002Dec10?language=printer

[piotr]

This is so unfair.

There should be some categories in punditry. This was like a bantam weight boxer being creamed by a heavy weight. A national board of punditry should keep a registry of bouts and assign categories.

I understand that they have this system in chess. Perhaps Krugman could give exhibition games, simultaneously refuting 40 bantam-weight pundits, the way a chess grandmaster play with more ordinary players. In other words, fairness would require giving Brooks one month for research and then Krugman would get 10 minutes to refute the results. Any bets?