Associated Press
One of the central slogans of President Obama's re-election campaign is one word: "Forward." It created an interesting contrast, then, when Mitt Romney spent a fair amount of time last night looking backward. NBC's First Read had a good take on this, calling it Romney's version of "nostalgic optimism."
If you could sum up the majority of Romney's acceptance speech it would be with these two words: nostalgic optimism. Per NBC's Sarah Blackwill, Romney used the word "restore" three times (" Now is a time to restore the promise of America"). And he vowed to "return" to the foreign policy legacy of Truman and Reagan.
And the message of nostalgic optimism -- to the time of his father and mother -- was typified by this line: "I was born in the middle of the century in the middle of the country, a classic baby boomer. It was a time when Americans were returning from war and eager to work. To be an American was to assume that all things were possible. When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn't whether we'd get there, it was only when we'd get there."
Matt Yglesias picked up on this, too, noting that Romney, born in 1947, said that "we went to bed knowing that we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world."
It seems as if this kind of nostalgia comes up periodically. Romney complained in January that, by expanding public benefits to more Americans, President Obama is pushing the nation towards a society "that would have been unrecognizable to our parents' generation." House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) also lamented not too long ago the notion that Democrats are "snuffing out the America that I grew up in" during the 1950s and 1960s.
I'll give these Republicans the benefit of the doubt and assume they're talking about economic, not cultural, issues. After all, the America that Romney and Boehner grew up, and find themselves nostalgic for, was deeply repressive and discriminatory for women and minorities. I'll hope that when GOP leaders long for a bygone era, this isn't an area in which they hope to turn back the clock.
But that raises a larger point: what does Romney understand about this era he's so fond of? More specifically, does he realize what kind of economic policies were in place at the time?
I've written periodically about this over the years, in large part because I'm fascinated by the right's narrowly-focused hindsight.
What's striking is to realize how extraordinarily liberal the country was, economically, during this era that Romney remembers so fondly. In the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was 90% (nearly triple today's figure); union membership was 30% (more than quadruple today's figure); the Republican Party, which still had plenty of liberals, endorsed all kinds of progressive ideas (spending projects, living wage); and the economy was heavily regulated -- airlines didn't even set their own prices.
Harold Meyerson explored this in even more detail a while back, emphasizing conservative activists' misguided understanding of what it is they think has gone wrong.
When the Tea Partyers get around to identifying how America has changed and to whose benefit, however, they get it almost all wrong. In the worldview of the American right -- and the polling shows conclusively that that's who the Tea Party is -- the nation, misled by President Obama, has gone down the path to socialism. In fact, far from venturing down that road, we've been stuck on the road to hyper-capitalism for three decades now.
The Tea Partyers are right to be wary of income redistribution, but if they had even the slightest openness to empiricism, they'd see that the redistribution of the past 30 years has all been upward -- radically upward. From 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans -- effectively, all but the rich -- increased from 64 percent to 65 percent, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, that means that the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent was growing, too -- from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941 in 1980 -- a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.
Since 1980, it's been a very different story. The economy has continued to grow handsomely, but for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, it's been a time of stagnation and loss. Since 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent has declined from 65 percent to 52 percent. In actual dollars, the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent flat-lined -- going from the $30,941 of 1980 to $31,244 in 2008.
In short, the economic life and prospects for Americans since the Reagan Revolution have grown dim, while the lives of the rich -- the super-rich in particular -- have never been brighter. The share of income accruing to America's wealthiest 1 percent rose from 9 percent in 1974 to a tidy 23.5 percent in 2007.
Even Romney's extended riff on the moon in his speech last night seemed disjointed -- NASA would struggle to survive Romney/Ryan budget cuts, and the Apollo mission was a massive government project, dependent on the kind of taxpayer spending the right now opposes.
What I'd love for Romney to explain is how America achieved greatness, and Americans "assumed that all things were possible," when we had such a big government and extremely high taxes.
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Spot on. Other point I noted last night was that Romney said that nobody was better off now than they were when Obama took office. I bet Mitt Romney is, by a long way, as are 99.9% of the 1%.
Culture of fraud!
I kept asking myself why does this guy say he'll create 12million jobs,i went to his website i couldn't find anything--This morning i found from http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/a-forecast-that-sounds-more-impressive-than-it-is/ That moody's has a forecast about this issue.They project that 12million jobs would be created under current "policies", and boy Romney took that and he is running with it,counting of American idiocy that they won't know where that number comes from.
I hope Obama's campaign points this out.Romney is a fraud.
It's the number of jobs that the CBO predicts will be created anyway over the next four years.
Deleted. Misread. Eyes crossed too early in the day for me.
"...calling it Romney's version of "nostalgic optimism."
That's exactly it! A time when "rich" old white men had the power and made the decisions. Women were home getting pregnant and taking care of the children, and men came home from work and paid the bills and the woman listened to everything with baited breath. Oh, and birth control wasn't legal, and back alley abortions did in more than one woman, and "blacks" knew their place in the back of the bus, and "immigrants" weren't seen or heard, and blue laws were in place, and people were making much less money than they are now, and there was NO such thing as Civil Rights, and those LGBT were still in the closet (wink, wink), and there were work-houses, and the mentally ill went to "sanitariums". Yep, that's the nostalgia that Mittens longs for - remember this is the same guy that "likes to fire people"!
And, of course, minorities were invisible. (At least they damn well better have been if they knew what was good for 'em.)
But, yeah, I too thought it unlikely Mittens was pining for part where the top marginal tax rate was 90%, government was deliberately using that revenue to level out income inequality by building interstate highways and moon rockets and educating veterans for free, industry was heavily unionized, and the multiple between the average
CEO's* corporate president's salary and the average worker's salary was in the low two digits rather than the high three digits.*My mistake. They didn't have "CEO's." Best I can tell, that's a word corporate presidents invented in the 1980s to make them sound important enough to deserve a salary that was 400 times that of the company's average worker.
The Romney Rapture is nothing more than a re-run of Ozzie & Harriet ( The Nelsons). If he looses, does Tagg get a record deal?
Who does Romney think funded that "race to the moon"???? Hint: it wasn't North American (builders of the Apollo spacecraft) and it wasn't Grumman (builders of the LEM).
Speaking of "Middle American Nostalgia", I hear Mitt still keeps his first tricycle in that famous garage. And, when feeling especially zany, rides it around the "rumpus Room".
When I run into this sort of talk, I want to ask the speaker two questions:
My suspicion in many cases is that the two answers would be related.
Back in the day, we had just won WW2, all our national competitors were bombed nearly flat, and optimism in the national spirit was the order of the day.
Today we never win a war, our competitors have run us into the ground and Democrats are leading the fight over table scraps to make sure no one gets too much. There's not much here to look forward to.
But shooter- Steve has pointed out that the policies in place during that time would today be considered by people like you to be 'Socialist' and 'Destroying America'.
And the only reason the Democrats are "fighting over the table scraps" is because THAT IS ALL THE REPUBLICAN POLICIES HAVE LEFT FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
Of course there isn't much too look forward to- Romney and company are trying to take even those scraps and distribute them upwards.
Listen- you seem like a reasonable person. If trickle-down economic theory was effective, then it would have worked like a charm during the 8 years that Mr. Bush was in office. The facts are obivous- it didn't.
At least Obama has had a plan. Can you tell us what Mr. Romney's plan is? No?
Do you know why? Because Mr. Romney WON'T TELL US.
Time to wake up, Shooter. You've been duped by your party.
Sure, the Democrats aren't 'all that', but damn, at least we're trying.
Trickle-down didn't work under Reagan either, and GHWB knew it. So that's a 16-year experiment gone wrong.
let's see, the wars we got into were started by Republicans who based them on lies. Shooter, such a lovely armchair general. He knows how we should "win" wars! And it's so cute to watch you still make baseless claims, Shoot. Lies do seem all you have.
Well fug, this chart says you're wrong.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/02/labor-force-and-unemployment.html
For those of you with no experience in the real world, job creation works like this: the unemployed stand around with nothing to do... until someone with an idea... and the money to pursue that idea... arrives needing help. it applies equally from day labor to rocket science.
For those insisting the economy is trickle up, when was the last time a poor person gave you a job?
Blanks,
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Again.
Wow Airball. After Reagan, Bush I, and Shrub all touted trickle-down economics and it didn't work for any of them, you still believe in it and want to try it again.
That's the definition of insanity.
I'm a Conservative, but when did conservatism change from "Moving forward remembering the lessons of the past" to "Returning to the past". ?
??
And when did conservatism change from pragmatism to fantasy?
Oh, thats right. Reagan.
As a friend of mine who lived through the "bad years" in Germany once told me, "the Nazis didn't elect Hitler, the Conservatives did, because they believed him when he told then he was one of them, a lie they discovered too late."
I truly feel sorry for genuine conservatives like yourself. We need you! And your brand has been hijacked by a bunch of far right radical revolutionaries (there's a one-word term for that).
I was so surprised with all the years of political history in the family that Gov. Romney hired a staff that didn't take the time to review his past elections, consider the questions asked then, come up with simple short answers, and have him prepped for this election. But then, after taking in all three nights, as well as considering they knew who he needed to reach, how he needed to come across to gain those targeted voters, and the amount of time they'd have on ABC, NBC, and CBS, the bad unprofessional choices they made to achieve these goals left me speechless. If these are the people he hires for such an important endeavor, then I can only imagine who he'll employee and appoint if he were to win the office in November.
Plus, with all the money they have, all they could afford was a bad Mary Kay Makeover?
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=483415531676895&set=a.113531838665268.14865.100000253568777&type=1&relevant_count=1
Oh, and excellent coverage from you and the rest of the team. I thought that all six of you, Ezra, and even the gang at Morning Joe did a wonderful job, which was much more informative and enjoyable, despite how hard it was to watch the untruths coming from the convention itself, than MSNBC delivered two years ago. Thanks again.
Romney saw himself as Reggie in the Archie comics and Chatsworth Osborne Jr on Dobie Gillis. He strove and succeeded in emulating Thurston Howell 111 but missed out on learning any empathy for anyone else. Add in feelings of religious superiority and you have Caligula without the parties or Lex Luther with better hair.
Team Obama needs to study up on the 1996 Democratic Convention where, like this year, we get the last word. In a speech that Romney's nostalgia echoes, Bob Dole talked about how great we used to be and the values we had in The Greatest Generation, and he promised that he would be today's bridge to that noble past.
A couple of weeks later, Clinton confidently contrasted, noting that Dole had said he'd be a bridge to the past, but Clinton would build our bridge to our better, brighter future. I turned to my wife as soon as Clinton said the line and told her the election was over.
Romney opened himself up to the exact same response, and I think it would work as well today as it did 16 years ago. Republicans want to take us back; Democrats know the only option is to keep moving Forward.
Just to remind everyone, it was always the evocation of a nostalgia for a 'better' past that fueled 1930s fascism, particularly if it was the very people who had managed to destroy some traditional way of life or sector. (Old Adolph meticulously planned a museum of the Jewish people once he had eradicated them completely. Never built, thank heaven.)
You sir, score 100 points for best point of the day here.
Nostalgia is longing for a better time that never existed. It definitely seemed a running theme that if we could all just go back 50-100yrs we'd all be just fine.
It's because they didn't actually LIVE in the 50's that they want to go back to. They lived in enclaves and prep schools and the roads didn't go thru the 'bad' parts. They watched Opie in Mayberry and thought that was how life was for the 'great unwashed'.
Good stuff, Steve! This is exactly the type of perspective that brings me here to maddowblog everyday!
"I have a plan to create 12-million new jobs". Mitt Romney
And that plan is???
1) drill baby drill
2) school vouchers
3) unmistakable consequences
4) cut the deficit, balanced budget
5) reduce taxes on business and repeal Obamacare
6) pander to women
7) don't raise taxes
8) outlaw abortion
9) outlaw gay marriage
10) mock the environment
11) a chicken in every pot
12) jobs tour (not an apology tour)
13) USA USA USA
14) Invade Iran
15) Pander to Israel (uncle Sheldon)
16) F Russia, those pussies
17) invoke Reagan's name
18) ask rhetorical questions to the red meat mob
Of course Republicans are nostalgic for the Fifties. The country was run by white men, women obeyed the men, the darkies knew their place, and the lib'ruls were afraid of being called commies and losing their jobs.
As someone 3 years older than Romney, I can tell you that January 1, 1960 was a date I really liked.
I would pin it more to 1/20/1961 (JFK's Inauguration Day), but your point is well taken.
And, if I were really being a "calendar-nazi", I'd point out that since our calendar has no year "0", decades, centuries, millenia, etc. actually end with the years that end in "0" - i.e. 1960 was actually the last year of the 50s. But I won't point that out. :D
Vulture/Voucher 2012
Proving Two Rights DO Make a Wrong!
;-)
So, is Romney saying we are no longer exceptional?
Will have to show some of my old veteran friends, but, most of them will deny all of what is here and say that Obama doesn't understand America or veterans. But, maybe some of them will understand that Romney is only a small step above Jane Fonda (they all hate her), at least Hanoi Jane stood up for what she believed in (even though I think she went way over the top when in Hanoi). The Mittster just wishes he could have served, but there were those poor folks in France that needed his guidance.
Of course Romney is nostalgic for the 1950s! Just like 'way too many of the Boomers, he was a child and didn't have to concern himself with getting a job, paying taxes or, if he'd just graduated from HS, the draft. The biggest problem he probably faced during that entire period was trying to stay up later than his scheduled bed-time!
I'm 62 and have very few "bad" memories of the 1950s, most likely for the reason I mentioned. On the other hand, were my parents still living, I've little doubt their view of that decade might just be a little less rosy. They experienced the 1950s, I was merely alive during it.
There's a world of difference...
talk about nostalgia...Some say the Republicans want to go back to the Fifties (on contraception) or the 1890's Gilded Age (Corporate dominance) or the 1840's (expansionism). I'd say the want to go back to the 1400's and recreat the Venetian Republic. That would be characterized by a weak, small central government of aristocrats, the real power in the hands of merchant princes and guilds (effectively industrial cartels. All social controls and relief/charity was in the hands of the church as a co-equal arm of government. As for the commoners, they were serfs, tied to the land or menial jobs and of no consequence. That was the best they had 700 years ago, but that model shouldn't be a goal.
I don't mind being a calendar nazi. Gotta remember zero is a number. years start at zero and go about 365 days. Year number 1 ends December 31, 0000 not 12/31/0001.
Thanks, Bye
ITS NOT WE BUILT IT!!!!!!! ITS EVERYBODY BUILT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!