Did Reagan Start the Fire?

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth: I think those kinds of comments better than anything I could come up with on my own summarize the frustration. I feel about the way we have elected presidents during my lifetime because I think that's what we keep trying to do. We keep trying to elect a president who feels good to us. And when a person actually has to get an office and run and establish a record, we don't like that so much. And we're ready to try a different kind of guy who might make us feel a little bit better.

[00:00:38] Sarah: This is Sarah 

Beth: and Beth. 

Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. 

[00:00:42] Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.

Hello, and thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are going to spend a minute on the California recall results. Then we're taking a journey back to the political career of one of California's most famous governors, Ronald Reagan. We're going to talk about his presidency and the impacts of it that we see present in our politics today, and then outside of politics, but like just a smidge outside of politics.

We're going to talk about LuLaRich, the Amazon Prime video documentary series about LuLaRoe that we know from Instagram. Many of you are obsessed with right now as are we, we are recording today's episode on Wednesday because we are flying to Austin, Texas on Thursday. Sarah, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about our plans in Austin?

[00:01:48] Sarah: Yes. As you are listening to this on Friday, we'll have just spoken to an organization in Austin called Pink Granite that our executive producer, Amy Whited founded to amplify the voices of women in politics and policy. Beth, before we signed on to work with Amy and this awesome organization, did you know that the Texas State Capitol was in fact made of pink granite? 

[00:02:11] Beth: No, that is the fun fact that I recently discovered. And I love it. I got the sort of femininity and strength combo, but I didn't know it was the actual granite. 

[00:02:20] Sarah: Yeah. It's pink. And then you look at pictures, you're like, yeah, it's pink. How about that, Texas?

You hold multitudes. We really do love speaking in events like this one. And if you think your organization or workplace or student group, or just whatever community gathering you have in mind would benefit from spending some time with us and our talk about hard conversations. Just reach out to Alise and let us know.

[00:02:53] Beth: As we're sitting down to record on Wednesday, we have 70% of the results in from California, which I just want to say, well done in moving this along California. And it appears that governor Newsome has easily survived the recall effort, which to me feels like a real relief. 

[00:03:10] Sarah: Yeah. I think we can call it the AP called it like what, like 14 minutes after the polls closed? I'm sorry. It's not funny. It's a little funny. Yeah, it was a, it was a, it was a walloping. The people of California came out with a very strong voice and said, no, we would like to keep Governor Newsome. Thank you so very much. 

[00:03:29] Beth: Well, it feels like a relief to me is the margin because for a few days we've had all this reporting that this is going to be the big lie, 2.0 that Larry elder wouldn't concede that we, this would end up in court and it just, I like a decisive victory at this point in American history.

[00:03:47] Sarah: Well, I do give Larry Elder credit for his concession. And also, I would like to say that this is clearly the strategy moving forward. If we do not win, it means it's because the election was rigged. I mean, Tomi Lahren was coming out saying very publicly that if Newsome wins, it means it was rigged. And so I just think that we have to acknowledge that that is not an exception to the rule anymore.

That is the new role. That is how many inside, particularly the extremely conservative wing of the Republican party are going to talk about particularly close elections, moving forward. 

[00:04:33] Beth: It is such a hall of mirrors too. We were just having a conversation with Maggie Penton, and I should tell you, we have such good news about Maggie.

She is an executive producer of Pantsuit Politics, and she has for quite some time been leading the moderation team on our Pantsuit Politics Facebook gathering place. And we have brought on Maggie as a part of our team officially to help us with social media and community engagement. But we were having a conversation with Maggie, where she said something really smart.

You'll see why we brought her on our team. She was talking about how clear it is to her, who in her life is really plugged into conservative media because it's like they receive the talking points of the week. You see this so clearly with this election result narrative, that it's not only that people are uncertain of how elections work that turns into people have questions and that's newsworthy that people have questions.

And that turns into it must be this way or it's rigged. And that echo chamber just keeps swirling around to the point where you talk to people who genuinely are surprised that anyone is going to vote to keep Gavin Newsome, right. There are folks who are just so consumed in that media sphere that it's inconceivable that Newsome would survive this.

And therefore it must be rigged. Meanwhile, in the kind of mainstream media. Sources that I consider credible and consume regularly. You have like panic that there could be an unseating of governor news might take kind of taking the opposite track here. And the fear is intense that because there's a little bump in the polls or a little momentum or things, feel a little shaky for a second.

He's doomed. It's the strangest thing. 

[00:06:26] Sarah: Skipping ahead to our conversation on LuLaRoe. There was a moment in the documentary where the expert on MLMs says, if anything is possible, nothing is true. And I know that he was talking about MLMs and we can talk about that in a moment, because I think that is incredibly insightful and accurate when it comes to that environment.

But I immediately thought of our political environment and particularly the way we talk about the parties in the election. And for so long, the narrative was well, it's all. It's almost like, if anything, if everything is corrupt in anything, nothing is true. Right? And so the narrative is, well, all politicians are corrupt and the government's always bad and always makes everything worse.

And we have this all encompassing. Everybody lies a little bit, every side does it, this false equivalency and the way that we speak about politics and governance in our country that has set us up to be in this situation where all opinions are. Okay. And well, everybody does it a little bit. And we're, we're in this place where it does feel difficult to combat things that are completely and totally false.

Like this idea of rigged elections, like. That's how we got here is this soup. We've all been serving up day after day that there's no trust in this institution that it's all broken and it's all corruption. And so if anything is possible, then nothing is true. Right? And I feel like that's where we're at, particularly with these narratives that surround elections.

[00:08:07] Beth: I love that quote too. I'm so glad you brought it up. The other thing I keep thinking about with this recall effort is the sort of strategy. This got talked about a lot during the Trump years for obvious reasons, but this sort of control through exhaustion. It is unsustainable for us to constantly be in election cycles, high stakes election cycles, not just regular election cycles, not just, oh, we're already doing the midterms even though they're next November.

But then when you add in recall efforts and you add in just regular old activism, here's another bill. That's about to be passed on my gosh. We've got a defeat. It's like the relentlessness of all of this is so disengaging for people. And I struggle with what to do about that because on the one hand, like what a privileged perspective, oh, I get a little tired of having to think about an issue every day.

But on the other hand, it is just true that people are getting a little tired of having to be in a five alarm fire every day. And I got a lot of grace for that, especially in the midst of a pandemic. And so I've thought so much about what if I were in California and every single day I was being bombarded with messages about this.

That's the last thing anybody needs, right. 

[00:09:18] Sarah: Yeah. We had a message from a listener who has an election coming up and she was like, I care, I'm on vote. And also, I don't want to hear about it anymore. It makes me so tired because if everything is a five alarm fire, then nothing is in the same way that if anything is possible, does he have is true?

And if everything is the election of a lifetime and everything is the only one that matters, then it's not like people can't see through that. It's not like people can't connect the dots that wait, is it always true that this is always the election of a lifetime? I mean, in some ways, yeah.

[00:09:52] Beth: In some ways it is.

[00:09:54] Sarah: And in some ways, no. that's just the ever hungry base that is politics. 

[00:10:00] Beth: Well, hats off to all of you in California who took this election seriously and showed. And wrote to us about your experiences with it. And thank goodness for a decisive result that doesn't keep us in another new cycle of was this rigged or not next up, we're going to consider the presidency of Ronald Reagan, which I think is pretty related to where we find ourselves politically.

Right now, Amanda wrote to us sometime ago and said someone who is too young to be gen X and too old to really be a millennial. I have constantly wondered what was so amazing about Ronald Reagan's presidency that invokes so much passion for lack of a better term and worship in my adult life. I have heard about Reagan during every campaign from both Republican and democratic candidates.

And Amanda meets you. She said this worship seems in contrast to what I've read about the 1980s, trickle down economics, high interest rates, et cetera. Please, please, please do a primmer or a series regarding Reagan's terms. And so here we are, Amanda. We're here for you.

We have realized that we've had the chance to think retrospectively about many of the presidents who've governed. During our lifetimes. We talked a lot about Bill Clinton during the height of the me too movement. We have processed the Bush presidency as we have studied nine 11. We've talked a lot about the Obama and Trump presidencies.

In real time, we thought about George HW Bush's presidency. When we read Susan Page's excellent book about Barbara Bush, but we have not spent any time on the president of our birth. Ronald Reagan and 40 years later seemed like a good chance to think about his two terms as president, which was really unusual at the time he served it.

As we were doing this research, I learned that as of Reagan's presidency, only three other US presidents had served two full terms in office: Wilson, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. And The second term for two of those presidents was really significantly impacted by illness. So it was a big deal for Reagan to be in office for two full terms.

And it certainly had a long lasting impact. 

[00:12:26] Sarah: Well, he also tackled another historical first in his first year in office, there was an assassination attempt and he was the first president to survive an assassination attempt at that time. But let's talk about how he got to the white house. So Ronald Reagan had a very traditional Midwestern upbringing, Illinois.

He went on to a moderately successful career and movies and radio and TV. He began his transition into politics with several terms as the president of the screen actors Guild, where he fought for residual checks for actors, which is highly ironic, considering his later activity around unions. We'll get to that in a minute.

Also, this was the beginning of his very passionate opposition to communism. So passionate that during the McCarthy era, he served as an FBI informant during his time at the Screen Actors Guild and would turn in his fellow actors as communist sympathizers. And of course the most interesting part about all this is he was a Democrat almost this entire time.

[00:13:28] Beth: He rose to prominence in 1964. He gave a speech called a time for choosing in support of Barry Goldwater's campaign. And it really made Goldwater, who was pretty radical, more palatable to lots of people. And folks were very impressed with his charisma. It was one of the most successful political speeches launching a career that had happened at that point.

[00:13:51] Sarah: Another theme, Ronald Reagan, Chris, another theme. 

[00:13:55] Ronald Reagan: We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the. And it's been said, if we lose that war, it didn't so doing lose this way of freedom of ours history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent it's happening.

Well, I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the founding fathers. Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro. And in the midst of his story, one of my friends turned to the other and said, we don't know how lucky we are.

And the Cuban stopped and said, how lucky you are. I had some place to escape to. And in that sentence, he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people that it has no other source of power, except the sovereign people is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

[00:14:55] Beth: And so he was drafted to run for the governorship of California. He ran basically on two ideas. One was this sort of personal responsibility that he would just cement into the Republican legacy. And he would cement that personal responsibility idea by talking about what, as he termed them welfare bums.

And then he also ran almost directly against the university of California at Berkeley, and talked about how it was the site of this sort of anti-war anti-capitalist anti heteronormative way of living. And so with those two premises, he took on an incumbent governor of California who really thought Reagan would be pretty easy to beat.

And Reagan won by almost a million votes. 

[00:15:40] Sarah: So he served two terms as the governor of California, he then ran against Gerald Ford from the Republican nomination in 1976. And Really got beat by the moderate wing of the Republican party. Gerald Ford obviously won the nomination and then he ran again for the Republican nomination in 1980, which he won and then ran against an incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, another theme, somebody who thought he would be easy to beat, but he won carrying 44 states and receiving 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49.

[00:16:24] Beth: And I think we should talk for a second about the conditions that allowed that to happen. America was pretty demoralized when Ronald Reagan ran for president, we had come out of Vietnam. We had the Iran hostage crisis. We were struggling economically. Obviously what. Watergate was on everyone's minds.

There was just a lot in the national psyche and we didn't really use words like national psyche at that point to talk about what everybody was dealing with and the consistent theme, especially from all of the newspaper pieces that I read from this actual period, not people looking back, but at that time, you just see this theme that Reagan made people feel good.

He just campaigned on this sense of strength and optimism and democracy is going to prevail over the evil communist. There was a simplicity to his messaging and, and it was what people wanted to hear. And it was so different than the really complex realities and circumstances that they were otherwise facing.

[00:17:35] Sarah: Yeah, I think that's really important. I think the other really important part of this. Puzzle is you just can't underestimate how different should it be as a president and as a politician? I was listening to some coverage about his time as president and a diary entry, where they were saying to name 150 judges to the federal bench.

And he was like, that's too much power. I shouldn't be doing that. Like he was like allergic to power and he was certainly allergic to politics and the sort of like dirty politics that Ronald Reagan and the Republican party at that point was leaning all the way into, they had learned from president Nixon, Southern strategy that sort of the dog whistles to the racist.

It was a winning strategy. I mean, he launched his campaign for president in 1980 at a Shoba county fair and Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was the site of the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers and spoke about state's rights. He was endorsed by the KU Klux Klan when he ran in 1980. So I think that, you know, it was this, it feels like to me, when I look back at that electoral blowout, that it wasn't in much the same way Donald Trump's electoral victory was about Trump.

It was about the circumstances surrounding them and somebody willing to exploit them. I feel like Jimmy Carter brought a knife to a gunfight in this electoral campaign, and it shows in that and the way the electoral vote. We're handing it out. 

[00:19:00] Beth: So let's talk about the Reagan legacy and we're going to try to move through this very quickly, but it's a lot y'all he was just an extremely consequential president.

I shared an article for folks on social media to take a look at before this episode from the New York times written in 1986. So talking about his legacy while he was still in office. And at that time there was this constant comparison of Reagan to FDR in the opposite direction. He remade government almost as much as consequentially as FDR.

[00:19:38] Sarah: So let's start with the economics, because I do think your point of like where America was was important, right? I mean, it was a, there were high interest rates. There were high tax rates. There was high unemployment, there was a economic malaise without a doubt. So Reagan rolls into town and he has some very distinctive economic policies that are Vastly different than the FDR approach that the United States was still largely operating under.

For one thing, he dramatically reduced tax rates. The top tax rate fell from about 70% to 50% under Reagan and eventually to just 37%. And now listen, important to note the Democrats in Congress were complicit in these tax rate drops. I mean, it was, it felt like when he won, I think by so much, everybody was like, well, we got to get in line tax jobs are coming, we're going to cut the tax rates and that he certainly.

[00:20:31] Beth: Which is interesting because as governor of California, there were actually tax increases. The sales tax went up, the income tax went up, taxes on liquor and cigarettes went up as part of a deal that he caught with California's assembly leader and property taxes fell, but most taxes went up while he was the governor.

So this is kind of a theme with Reagan too. I think he is a very good example of governing by sleight of hand, there is a rhetoric that doesn't always match the policy, but these times. Decreases set the table for the rest of how taxes would be discussed in our lifetimes. And I think we're still dealing with just the way that he communicated about what taxation represents.

[00:21:17] Sarah: Well, if you even see it in that time for choosing speech about Goldwater, what he starts with is the tax burden. And no society has ever succeeded with over a 30% tax burden. And we're at 37%. And just this, like all these things that I think that was 1966 brother, if all that was true, why are we still talking about it?

We're still here and we're still doing fine, including it's under some of the, you know, budget deficits that you yourself created. So it's just, it's really? Yeah. I think he defined the narrative in a way that is just frustrating because I don't think it's reflective of reality.

[00:21:52] Ronald Reagan: Outside of it's legitimate functions, government does nothing as well, or as economically as the private sector of the. Now we have no better example of this than government's involvement in the farm economy. Over the last 30 years, since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. In the last three years, we've spent $43 in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don't grow. Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal, the assault on freedom carries on private property rights. So diluted that public interest is almost anything. A few government planners decided it should be in a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy. We see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million and a half dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a more compatible use of the land. 

[00:22:44] Sarah: But the other big part of the Reaganomics approach was reducing regulator. One really impactful piece of legislation was the garden St. Germain depository institutions act, which is just a fancy way of saying it allowed banks to provide adjustable rate mortgage loans.

It was a deregulation of the savings and loan industry. Does that sound for a million, those old adjustable rate mortgage loans to anybody? this led to the savings and loan crisis and an explosion of private debt and really the financial industry gambling with taxpayer insured money that we see in the 2008 financial crisis that we see in the great recession, that we see this hands off approach to the financial industry that was really in direct opposition to so much of the regulation we saw come through post great depression.

[00:23:36] Beth: There was also a, serious farm crisis, which has been. backstory in my life for a long time, right out of college. My dad became a loan officer at a bank that primarily provided farm loans. And he didn't stay in that profession because he had to have so many conversations where people's farms were lost.

And again, that New York times article from 1986 described this by saying thousands of families have left their farms. Numerous rural banks have been forced out of business and thousands of other businesses that deal with farmers have collapsed. The farm belts debt crisis will shadow Midwest states, years after the Reagan presidency ends.

And what's really. A lot for me to take in, as we did this research is that I have known that story about my dad for as long as I can remember, and never once associated it with Reagan, never once. And I think that that is thematic. he, he just was excellent at his messaging and conveyed so much optimism and growth and prosperity that it's difficult to link him to all of the suffering that unfolded in the early eighties economically.

[00:24:49] Sarah: So let me put my cards on the table as well. I grew up talking politics with my grandson. And my grandfather hated Ronald Reagan. He was a farmer and he struggled with a lot of debt and he saw, I think, rightly Ronald Reagan coming in to deregulate and open up to the free market, small family farms in a way that would really decimate them and open them up to foreclosure and bankruptcy and to corporate takeover.

And now on the way to my C my grandmother, my grandfather passed away several years ago. I see those big corporate farms. I see those signs and I think about him. And I think about what. Ronald Reagan did and what he saw clearly and what a lot of farmers saw now, Ronald Reagan backed off some of the deregulation when it came to the farm crisis.

He responded to a lot of that political pressure, which again, is that theme. Like you think he's an ideal log, but he will bend pretty quickly. And when it is politically expedient, and I think you see that you see a lot of that with the farm crisis as like farm aid and celebrities like John Mellencamp, and these people start to weigh in and it gets more and more press coverage.

And these heartbreaking stories of families across the country, losing their farms. There was, there were some allowances given, but it wasn't enough. I mean, the, what people were worried about came true. And I mean, I don't think all of this falls at Ronald Reagan's feed, I think that there were changes in the way farming was happening.

Obviously farming post great depression looked much different than farming by the 1980s. And certainly from farming now became much more effective. And there's some really complex factors involving exports and global demand and all of that played a role, but it's always the sort of like just cold hearted approach to the suffering caused by these policies that sticks out to me.

And I think we'll see that as we roll through other aspects of Reaganomics, specifically the reduction in government spending Reagan Haft. The budget for public housing, leading to a crisis and homelessness in 1980s, he slashed the department of health and human services budget by 25% and refuse to acknowledge the AIDS crisis, which was a huge public health crisis that I'm sure the department of health and human services could have used funding to combat.

He reduced by 18% federal funding for maternal and child health. There was a massive increase in child poverty and unintended pregnancy, a decrease in life expectancy for black and indigenous Americans. And the government is the problem. Government is the problem. That was the narrative. He used to fuel this decimation of funding for these departments.

Some of which have almost not recovered even to their 1980 level, which is something that caught my attention where I think we were, I don't even remember what we were researching, but I thought, I don't think HUD has gotten back to or barely back to its 1989. 

[00:27:50] Beth: It's important to be precise about this language though.

When you talk about Reagan and cutting government spending, he didn't cut overall government spending. He grew the size of the government. He grew the national debt. He grew the deficit. He grew the trade deficit enormously. It is just that he cut government social welfare spending. So those cuts dramatically contributed to income inequality.

They produced short-term economic success using the traditional metrics that favor people who already have money. So there are people who talk about Reaganomics still as like the gold standard of how we ought to manage the economy. But that is a gold standard for managing the economy for a very few people.

When you look back at the results of Reaganomics, what you see is worsening poverty, worsening, hunger, worsening, homelessness. There are just real consequences. And I say all this with a whole lot of humility, because I have for most of my life, believe that Reagan knew what he was doing on the economy and that things really were roaring under his presidency.

And so I have to look back at the data on this soberly and, and understanding that that's just not what, what happened. 

[00:29:07] Sarah: And as we look at his domestic policy, I think one of the most relevant pieces is his union-busting. Recently, I read where the American worker is empowered in a way. It hasn't been in decades, due to sort of the great resignation and the changes in the economy.

And I thought that's great, like union membership rose, I think in the last year. And I think when I started to suggest this topic a long time ago, and I've been sort of batting it around in my head that the union aspect in particular, I think is one of the most impactful parts of the Reagan presidency in his first year in office.

After being endorsed by the professional air traffic controllers organization, this was a big deal for them not to endorse the Democrat, to endorse the Republican nominee. He of course fails to support them vows, to fight for them. I also think an important historical aspect of this is that the professional air traffic controllers were dominated by Vietnam veterans.

Who'd learned air traffic control in the military and then came home and joined this profession. There's a lot of continuing sort of specialized training that was expensive to get through. I read a really great new Yorker article. It will link to about one family's journey in the author's father, who was an air traffic controller and all the training he went through and his journey into this profession.

And then what happened with the strikes? So the air traffic controllers begin their negotiations in February. After Reagan is elected, they begin a strike. It was an illegal strike. No doubt about it. The strike was illegal under the current law, but really nobody had enforced the law up until that point.

Reagan gave them a 48-hour deadline said, if you do not come back to work, you will be fired. And then he fired 11,345. Striking air traffic controllers and banned them from federal service for life, and basically opened the flood gates for private employers to do the same. It had an incredible impact on union membership.

It had an incredible impact on strikes. I read that in 1970, there were over 380 major strikes or lockouts by 1980, the number had dropped to under 200 in 1999. It fell to 17. And in 2010, there were only 11. The air traffic controllers union was de-certified, which basically means it was disbanded and destroyed and union membership.

Over the eight years that Ronald Reagan was in office dropped from 20% to just 16% and continue to decrease. He really flipped the story. We were telling ourselves as Americans that strikebreakers were bad. He was just, he was, he made everybody stop feeling. shame for breaking strikes, especially in corporate America, and really said the strikers were the ones who didn't deserve our sympathy, that they were being selfish and really screwing over regular Americans.

And I think that, that I still hear that so much. I mean, I've started bus before my stepfather still has such animosity towards unions. And you can just hear that, like the anger and the rage really towards unions and this narrative that like they're screwing over regular people.

[00:32:20] Beth: I think that that is what Reagan did most effectively. People talk about how he felt so uplifting to them, but he felt uplifting at someone's expense. There was a welfare queen story that he famously told. Cause he had this really deep belief that black women would receive government aid and have more children in order to receive more aid. And even though data did not bear that out, he told stories as though they were a hundred percent accurate.

Reporters went looking for the subject of one of these stories and learned that it was just a story like it, there wasn't a person that he was telling this story about this detailed story about all these life choices made connected to welfare. And so I think you see it with unions and you see it with, with welfare programs.

I read a quote from him about how people experiencing homeless had an effect chosen homelessness. he just really. Uplifted the American spirit for some people by claiming that if you weren't prospering, it's because you didn't want to prosper or because someone else was too lazy to work with you on your prosperity.

And, and I do think that has it. It has certainly infected my consciousness. And I think it has for a lot of us.

[00:33:44] Sarah: Seems like a good point to pivot to his legacy on race. and Tony 19 audio was released of him having a conversation with Richard Nixon, which will really just turn your stomach. He is using racist slurs.

He is referencing that welfare queen stereotype. It is nasty and is nasty. And I think that that is the truest reflection of how he really felt. I think that he had a gift for using certain black Republicans to. To sort of do the, see I'm not racist when his, the impact of his policies were clearly racist the war on drugs.

Listen, we're not breaking any new ground here. When we say that the war on drugs, decimated black communities, the number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses increased from 50,019 80 to over 400,000 by 1997. And it doesn't really end with the war on drugs either. I mean, you're talking about the rolling back of affirmative action.

you're talking about the rolling back of the voting rights act down to even his foreign policy and the way he dealt with South Africa and apartheid. It's just how you could look at this man's legacy and see nothing but systemic racism is beyond. 

[00:35:09] Beth: He also was strongly in favor of the death penalty. One of his great frustrations as governor of California, was that the California Supreme court, during his term issued an opinion, the stop stopped the death penalty from being carried on. And I just think you, you have to look at all of his rhetoric and understand that this was a person who, who did not have a lot of capacity for forgiveness or empathy or redemption.

And those are harsh words to say, especially about somebody who's dead and someone who is so widely admired. But I think when you look back. You understand that Reagan like every president doesn't just represent one, man. He represents a whole lot of people and a big chunk of a moment in time. And one of the reasons that he is so lionized today in the conservative movement is that he shifted the entirety of the federal bureaucracy to the right.

He put. Tons of people who had no previous experience into permanent roles within the federal government, he appointed lots of young federal judges. He really cemented the religious right as part of the power structure. And so there is a lot of investment in the story of Ronald Reagan as the person who said the kind of shining city on a hill thing and the person who, who uplifted everyone.

And I think it's important to hold alongside that since the reality of the language that he used about African nations and the language that he used about American citizens who are experiencing poverty and the language he used about people who had committed crime. 

[00:36:54] Sarah: Well, and I think what you're getting at is so right with his emphasis on story, he held almost no complexity. It was about good guys and bad guys. It wasn't about data. It wasn't about impact. It wasn't about the reality on the ground. It was about the story that he told to himself as much as anybody else. And I think you really see that when you start talking about foreign policy, when you start talking about the cold war, you know, Reagan was primarily animated by this anti-communist fervor looking all the way back to his time and the screen actors Guild, but certainly men, his approach to sort of this post-Vietnam era in American policy, the narrative is that he was this like hawk. It's almost like, you know, we were watching Rambo and voting for Reagan, right? We wanted the big strong man to go in there and show that America was the good guy, but at no cost, because the reality is he had very little stomach for actual combat. I mean, he spent a lot of money. It was like $2.8 trillion on the military, but he really had very little true action.

He had the invasion of Granada. Which was like 600 people and lasted two days. And then he had the 1986 bombing of Libya, which was even shorter. So, you know, it's like he talked a good game and he understood the power of this, like military mind. I thought the grossest thing I read was that his biographer Lou Kane, and called him shameless and using Granada to really give America this.

Like, you don't have to feel bad about Vietnam anymore. The war resulted in more metals per soldier than any military operation in us history. So he was, he was pouring out the metals and these like two-day wars and spending a ton on the military, but his actual foreign policy, even when it came to the USSR was not that simple story.

[00:38:58] Beth: Yeah, I, so my jaw gets tight. Every time we talk about Ronald Reagan, Mike preparing for this episode just made me very stressed because I'm not interested in having a conversation just to like bash a former president or the people who supported him or the people who still think he's great. When I look back, especially at the cold war stuff, the foreign policy aspects, the very transactional nature.

Cause you, you said earlier say, or you think he's an idealogue well, you only think he's an idealogue in retrospect. I mean, part of what people liked about him during his presidency is that he did compromise all the time. He compromised on the foreign stage. He compromised on domestic policy. He, one of his biggest accomplishments was, making changes to social security, to try to increase its sustainability.

And that was done through a bipartisan commission. And you can debate the effectiveness of that and the impact of it all day. But at the time people felt good about that. And even people who really opposed his economic policies like Edward Kennedy said we needed to feel good about the president. And he made us feel good about the president.

Again, Mario Cuomo, as governor of New York said, like, he's just been somebody that my children look at and feel proud of and our country needed that it was really important. I think those kinds of comments better than anything I could come up with on my own summarize the frustration I feel about the way we have elected presidents during my lifetime.

Cause I think that's what we keep trying to do. We keep trying to elect a president who feels good to us. And when a person actually has to get an office and run and establish a record, we don't like that so much. And we're ready to try a different kind of guy who might make us feel a little bit better.

I was really struck by this quote from Grover Norquist who founded the Reagan legacy project and whose name you probably know from all of his don't raise taxes ever, for any reason pledge. He said, if you want to contend for the future, you have to contend for the public understanding of the past. And that to me is like the most interesting thing about Ronald Reagan, that there has been this incredibly deliberate effort to create a past story about Ronald Reagan that plays for the continuing viability of the Republican party going forward.

[00:41:26] Sarah: So a couple of things. One, I didn't say that I thought he was an ideolog. I think that there is some criticism that he's an ideologue, but then when you look at the way he actually performs, he's much more malleable when it comes to policy. I think the cold war is a great example of that. I mean, he was really animated by a fear of nuclear war, as I think a lot of people in his generation where there was a pretty funny story about how a lot of it was his being affected by movies.

Like the day the earth stood still and how he really believed that like the prospect of an alien invasion meant that the United States and the Soviet Union would have to come together to the point that Colin Powell would butter under his breath. Every time he brought it up here, come the little green men, which I thought was just a historical note, deserving of attention.

But I mean, because he was so motivated by that he didn't really take a hard line. Once Gorbachev came into office, like a lot of people wanted him to, and he opened up a little bit of space for to push back on sort of the political powers in the USSR who wanted to just keep piling money and bankrupting the country into their military might to meet the United States.

So I do think that there are moments where he like with the farm crisis, with the cold war, it just shows the 

[00:42:36] Beth: And social security, that happened with social security too. They, they made it look like Democrats had agreed to reduce benefits and Republicans had agreed to increase taxes. And so everybody walked away saying, we can, we can make something happen on social security because everybody lost something.

[00:42:49] Sarah: Well, and I think that's the narrative around his partnership with Tip O'Neill, who was the house speaker at the time. And the house remained in democratic control throughout his presidency. But The reason I actually am interested in bashing on Ronald Reagan is because exactly what you articulated.

He was an idealogue in some ways, and his control and movement of the Republican party to the far, right? This sort of, no, we're not going to become more like Democrats because we feel bad about Watergate. We're going to go the other way. And that's where you see his idealogue sort of streak in his devotion to the conservative movement, his willingness to do what it took politically to push not only the Republican party further to the right, but the federal government further to the right and this desire to recast this man as something, he was not deserves a Valiant impassioned opposition, because he didn't get it a lot during his presidency because he hasn't gotten it a lot in, during the composition of his legacy.

And I'll be honest. It just makes me mad. I mean, even in foreign policy, like Contra is a huge deal. They broke the law. The administration broke the law. They secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, to fund a movement in Nicaragua. That's busted. And we just ignore that when we talk about Ronald Reagan and it drives me crazy.

And I think what makes me so angry about him while he was president and certainly the way he's treated since he left the presidency and passed away. Is it is it's that it's the tying together. It's that shining city on a hill folksy jelly bean bullshit. That really just hides meanness. That's all I see when I look at Ronald Reagan and his presidency is just meanness and hatefulness at every turn that if somebody didn't meet his narrative, that made him feel better about who was the good guy and who was the bad guy.

He did not care. He did not care. And I like, I think the meanness is what really is at the core of him. I think you hear it in that recording with Nixon. I think you see it and the way he ignored the AIDS crisis and the homelessness crisis, the way he fired all those air traffic controllers, like it's, to me, it's just the maintenance and the fact that it's always wrapped up in this optimism and this let's all feel better.

And when, I mean us, I mean a very select amount of us, right? It's a very defined population I heard when I was reading this, somebody on a podcast say the overwhelming message of the Reagan charisma, that Reagan messaging was you have nothing to be ashamed of. And I thought, isn't that the truth? And isn't that the tragedy that coming off, Watergate and Vietnam and all these things that we really should have been ashamed of, that we should have owned and looked at honestly, and needed leadership to help us do that.

He sold us a line of crap while hurting as many people in the process as he could. 

[00:46:13] Beth: And we were ripe for that. You know, I, I think that piece of it both helps me understand why we are, where we are today and breaks my heart. I read some of his comments to see pack in 1985 that really put the current political moment in greater relief for me, because there are so many times when I think this partisanship, this polarization, the lack of civility feels so new and so intense.

And in a way, it is different now because when you read about the work that was done on social security, the partnership with Devonia, a lot of those things, the compromises that did take place, you think, well, that could never happen today, but the language was there. So SeaPak 1985. Reagan says, 

[00:47:06] Ronald Reagan: The normal was portrayed as eccentric and only the abnormal was worthy of emulation. The irreverent was celebrated, but only irreverence about certain things irreverence towards say organized religion. Yes. Irreverence toward establishment, liberalism, not too much of that. They celebrated their courage and taking on safe targets and padded each other on the back for slinging stones at a confused Goliath who was too demoralized and really too good to fight back.

[00:47:38] Beth: Now that is a little bit more eloquent than Donald Trump, but it is not that different from Donald Trump. And that's just, that's, it's hard to look at. And I think it's important to look at. 

[00:47:51] Sarah: Make no mistake. The reason I'm so angry is because I think he was the president. The year we were born, he started this massive movement that I feel like has affected every aspect of my life for 40 years, the nastiness in politics, the racism in the Republican party, the idea that government is the problem. Something to be slayed that it's okay, that greed is good. Just all this stuff. And I think, oh, no, it just feels like it's like going back to it's this, this weird form of terrible nostalgia, right?

But every, this, this man has affected my whole life, my indefinitely, my whole political life. And so it's just hard not to be so angry, so angry at him. 

[00:48:53] Beth: I feel like the best summary for this conversation that I came across in my research was from professor Julian Zelizer of Princeton university. He had a conversation about the Reagan legacy with NPR in 2011, and then said, there's been a lot of mythmaking with Ronald Reagan and like many presidents we've turned him into something he wasn't and often remembered politics that didn't exist in the period and use it today for our memory and for political purposes.

And just knowing that when we have these folks that we hold up and demand be added to Mount Rushmore or whatever, that there is a motivation for that. And that that motivation is often really divorced from what actually took place while people were governing matters. 

[00:49:37] Sarah: Well, I will be honest. I do feel a little bit better. I feel like anything we can do to more openly and honestly, and transparently assess this man's legacy is a public service and a public good. And it definitely makes me feel a little bit better and maybe even a little bit less angry. Beth, what is on your mind outside politics? 

[00:50:10] Beth: I think what's on everyone's minds outside of politics. Just a smidge outside of politics, not everyone, but we are hearing from many, many of you that you are watching. Lula rich, Amazon Prime's documentary series about LuLaRoe. My first question, Sarah is, did you have the leggings?

[00:50:27] Sarah: I did not. I kinda missed it. I remember them being all over Facebook. And I do remember having a moment where I was like, am I missing out? Do I need this unicorn legging design? I definitely remember that vividly. 

[00:50:42] Beth: I didn't buy them, but someone gifted me a pair and I was kind of out of it too. I didn't see it all over my Facebook page or anything like that.

But when I received them, I put them on, they were red. They were as promised buttery soft. And I wore them two times before they got massive holes all around the thigh. We're in the defective. Things were not going well with LuLaRoe manufacturing when they reached me. 

[00:51:10] Sarah: And that's what we learned from the entire series is that there were, there were many aspects that didn't go well, one of them was manufacturing.

This is a very character-rich documentary, lots of characters. 

[00:51:24] Beth: Which is clear from scene one, right? 

[00:51:26] Sarah: Literally got five minutes into this baby. We're talking about how to, of their adopted children married each other. I'm like five minutes in we're into the siblings, adopted siblings, but siblings marrying each other.

I was like, whoa, this is we're off to start. Remember how I had that? Like really thoughtful self-reflective, diatribe about how it wasn't going to binge things anymore. I do. Yeah. I benched this definitely finished it. 

[00:51:53] Beth: You had to, because that story about the adopted siblings who married each other is a great example of how this documentary would like tiptoe up to something super fascinating and then like jet away from it.

And so they kind of had to binge it cause you were like, I want, I want to know more about that. And then it just ended then they just quit.

[00:52:13] Sarah: Yeah. I think they did such an interesting job. I mean, it wasn't hard to make it interesting. The family that started and still owns this company is full of characters.

They made lots of mistakes. I think they would probably even tell you that. I think it's an interesting illustration of multi-level marketing because of how quickly they grew, how big they grew and how quickly they got there. But I think some of the best parts of the documentary were the parts with the retailers themselves and the women inside the system.

I thought it was a really good, interesting choice to include women that have stayed with LuLaRoe. At least one of them, they had like the number three in the pyramid, and she was a little cagey during her interview. A lot about how much she made and how many people she brought in. They had somebody who got out was devastated, two women who just were like it ruined my life.

And I just think it like list that whole expanse of experience was really, really interesting and, and reflective of like a lot of what I see in my life with my friends of people who've gotten involved with multi-level marketing companies.

[00:53:15] Beth: I have so many things I want to discuss with you about multi-level marketing companies and we are going to do that.

We're going to do in a main segment of a future show. I want to talk about the business model itself. I just have, I have a lot on my mind about that. I'm trying to stay focused, stay on this documentary. What I thought was interesting about the woman who you described as cagey, which she was, she was not very forthcoming about, especially the financial side of her participation.

I read her as someone who was really still trying to figure out what all this was. And I liked watching somebody trying to figure out what all this was and trying to figure out, did she do something wrong? Was her success at someone else's expense in a way that she didn't recognize at the time, should she feel guilty about it?

Like how much did this impact her marriage? I feel like she was still working a lot of things out and I thought that was the most gripping part of the whole thing. Just what, what does this mean for people who were in it and who actually did find a lot of financial rewards, at least for some period of time.

[00:54:18] Sarah: Well, I thought that was the journey. Several people in the documentary were on like, just trying to put all this together, trying to put this together into the bigger universe of multilevel marketing. And what does it mean and what does it, what does it show us about these businesses and what does it show us about their attitudes towards women?

I thought the documentary did an excellent job of pointing out the inherent conflict, inevitable conflict between selling this, support your family and still be this perfect present mother and playing on people's fears and dreams of being able to support their family and work and also be present for their kids.

I mean, there was a couple times I was listening and I thought, dang, we have what these people want. Right? This is what they were striving for. We have a business where we do something we love that matters, and that has purpose. We have really flexible schedules were here for our kids and also it's.

Really hard and it's still really stressful. And the like light-filled sunflower field vision of that life that LuLaRoe presented is not realistic. And even the best of circumstances. 

[00:55:31] Beth: Yeah. I just don't think anybody can have what was being sold there. And I don't mean that in a depressing way. I just, I think any growing business is going to take more and more of you.

And that's just a fact. And so there are a lot of decisions to make about what growth means for you. And when you're in an organization like that, you don't get as much decision-making runway as we have, you know, because someone is telling you what needs to happen next. And I like another thing I'm just interested in with LulaRoe in particular, I think this is true of a lot of multi-level marketing, but with LuLaRoe in particular, you had people get in because they actually dug the clothes.

Right. And I wish the documentary had probed more. What was the moment when you realized that it really wasn't about the clothes and what happened for you when it stopped being about the clothes? Like there were, there were so many paths that I wish they had gone down more, but that was the one that I had the biggest question about with all of the retailers that they had access to.

[00:56:32] Sarah: It reminded me of the WEWORK documentary. Cause there was a couple of times where I thought y'all had something, the concept that the retailers wouldn't know what pattern they were getting, that they were finite, that they were special to the moment. And you didn't know who was going to get them and where they would vote.

That was cool. That created demand. It created energy. It's like y'all could have just stuck with that. Like you didn't have to, you know, it was like growth for growth's sake. Instead of saying like, wait, we have a really cool idea here. That's clearly hit. Do we have to try to extract so much out of it that there's nothing left, right?

That we, that the leggings were soft. People did love them. The patterns were fun, but that wasn't enough, right? That just wasn't enough, especially to feed what was at that time. Clearly a pyramid, right? 

[00:57:22] Beth: Another aspect of this that I thought was a good choice. I have a lot of criticism for the people who made this, but a good choice I thought was inherent in that it was kind of panning back and forth. If you haven't seen it between the interview of the couple that started this thing, and those two people in depositions with the state of Washington. 

[00:57:41] Sarah: Real different vibe. 

[00:57:42] Beth: A really different vibe. And honestly, I think that is the thing that I, I wish I had better words to describe how, how gut-wrenching it is for me to see this onstage presence.

You know, hashtag girl bossing it everywhere, like pumping people up all the time to this like cynical disengaged. I don't recall. I didn't know about that wealthy person sitting in depositions, totally denying responsibility for anything. And even the questions that they showed were not like hardcore interrogation, just basic questions about the company they passed on.

And it was just the disparity between who those people showed up as for the interview versus the deposition just spoke volumes. 

[00:58:38] Sarah: Yes. I thought that was very striking and made them look so bad. Although if the depositions had not been in the film, they still would've looked bad. I don't really know why they agreed to do the interview.

Although clearly part of their story is that they were treated unfairly and that it, things went viral and it wasn't their fault. And it was blown out of proportion. I mean, like it's clear to see their sort of like what they tell themselves about what happened. I would love to have this documentary, like almost the same length by the same people from a really successful multi-level marketing.

Well, I don't know how we define successful multi-level marketing, but something like an Amway, because I think it's easy to watch this and think, well, they grow too fast or these people are. You know, bananas and they didn't know what they were doing, but I think you'd see the same things. If you showed it with, you know, long-term or traditionally successful multi-level marketing, you'd see the same stinking themes. 

[00:59:37] Beth: The same themes in terms of, can you say more about that?

[00:59:40] Sarah: Like the same themes as, as far as retailers are like people at the bottom that get left behind people that feel like they're being gaslit that no matter what they do, it's not good enough. Just all those sort of heartbreaking moments with the, with the people working within the system, especially in the bottom wrongs and probably some of the people that still do it and love it.

You know, it's not some of those people would still be present too. I think LuLaRoe is such a special case. I mean, most of them know what they're doing enough at least to not get sued by a state for being a pyramid scheme or for, I don't know, stating on one of their zooms, the way we stopped being a pyramid scheme is which was just a head-slapping moment in a, a wide variety of head-slapping moments throughout this documentary.

But I still think some of these problems will be present. I mean, I'm excited for us to talk about this more in-depth on a later show, because I just think this is a conversation we clearly. Keep having, we had it with the dream. We, you know, we have it when we talk about lots of multilevel marketing companies, there's lots of really great reads about what these do to free male friendships.

Like they're proliferating in the age of social media. And, you know, we're seeing the problems over and over and over again. And it's clearly a conversation that lots of people are having and lots of people are ready to have. 

[01:01:03] Beth: And it is so connected to work that we do all the time. I'm specifically thinking about our next book that comes out next may because you and I spend so much time talking about where do we get a sense of connection to other human beings?

Where do we feel like we're in community with other people who do we allow to influence us? And that is what makes LuLaRoe a compelling story to that. You watch these events and you look at the teams and the groups, and you see like this true desire for colleagues among all these women who are out there working so hard every day.

Oh, yes, 

[01:01:37] Sarah: absolutely. I think that that community connection that multi-level marketing has, and look, this is not new. You best believe that designing women has an amazing episode on multi-level marketing from like the eighties where Charlynn, I think it's a Bluebell and they sell cleaning products and there's this very like clear Mary Kay light character that shows up and they're struggling with all this.

Like, you know, it feels like if there's some real cultish aspects of it, but there are also women who feel empowered to go out and provide for their families for the first time. And like, it's not, this is nothing new. This is con this conversation has come up before men. And so we find a better way, I think, to, to really wrap our arms around multi-level marketing and to regulate it more aggressively in my personal opinion, the S we're going to keep having it, I think.

[01:02:29] Beth: And you know, some of the coverage of it makes me mad because. There's a fine line before something starts to feel cultish, especially in the way that we use the term cultish in documentaries like this. And yes, a lot of the women involved in this particular company and in others are looking for a sense of community and connection, but that also creates like the toxic working conditions that have infiltrated corporations forever, that it's men looking for genuine connection with their colleagues and a club-like environment, right.

Where they have a role and they feel important and there's a hierarchy and there are things to aspire to. And, and there is a sense of, it works if you work at, you're not working hard enough, if it's not working well enough for you. And that is absolutely law firm culture. And so I always kind of want to step back because I am so personally fascinated with this kind of content and say like, well, wait a second.

Who else should the cameras be turned on when we're asking these kinds of questions? Right. Well, we're going to talk a lot more about this in an upcoming episode. I know you're probably frustrated because we did not hit the aspect that you are most fascinated with because there are so many here. 

[01:03:40] Sarah: Cause this is four episodes, y'all. We weren't gonna get to all that. 

[01:03:42] Beth: We'll come back to it. We promise. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed this conversation, we would love for you to share Pantsuit Politics with a friend, or you can head over to Patrion or apple podcast subscriptions to get more of us, including a deep dive into Reagan's time as California's governor.

If you just didn't get enough, Ronald Reagan, today, we will be back in your ears on Tuesday. We are going to come back to Anne Helen Petersen's writing. And discuss that fantastic piece. She wrote about the professionalization of kids activities. We're also going to get into Derek Thompson's Atlantic piece around men and college admissions.

So there'll be lots of big feelings around. Here's what we're saying until then. We hope you have the best weekend available to you.

[01:04:31] Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.  

Alise Napp is our managing director.

[01:04:36] Sarah: Megan Hart is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.

[01:04:41] Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

[01:04:45] Executive Producers (Read their own names):  Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.

The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True, Amy Whited, Emily Holladay, Katy Stigers.

[01:05:17] Beth: Melinda Johnston, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

[01:05:26] Sarah: one. Oh, wait, we gotta clap.

It's been too long. Two to three, four. 

[01:05:35] Beth: Five six. That was the least helpful count-off we've ever done. It's just been a long day here so long. We have a very long day tomorrow. We can do this. We can make the podcast. Okay. Okay.

I mean, part of what people liked about him during his pregnancy. Pregnancy?! 

[01:05:52] Sarah: Oh.

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