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Home Front: Politix
Carter vs. Reagan: The Last Semi-Intelligent Presidential Race
2020-09-26

[Mises.org] Presidential campaigns in the United States tend to be discouraging affairs, even if one is not a libertarian who has zero expectations that anything good can come from American elections. The old saw that insanity consists of doing the same thing repeatedly and somehow expecting different results applies to presidential campaigns as well as to anything else.

For whatever reason, Americans (and especially the American media) seem to believe that the process by which voters select presidential candidates some day will produce a Marcus Aurelius (or some other philosopher king) as opposed to the final race we have between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, neither of whom will resurrect memories of orators like Daniel Webster or Frederick Douglass. Instead, it will be a race in which observers watch to see who commits the most malapropisms.
Posted by:Clem

#8  Soviet Collapse surprised everyone.
Personal Anecdote just after the Berlin Wall 'Fell". I was in the line of a bank ATM listening to two graduate students discussing their friend's "horrible luck":

Said friend was ABD (All But Dissertation) with a International Political Science degree in, wait for it, Soviet Russia (AKA Kremlinology 101) and was certain that a cushy federal job in the State Department was right around the corner. And the Wall Fell and the Warsaw Pact collapsed AND his Soviet Russia knowledge became nearly worthless.
Posted by: magpie   2020-09-26 22:40  

#7  ^ That's how I recollect it also. In fact, one of Reagan's major insights was that the Soviet Union could be beaten. "We win. They lose." But the MSM was flying topcover for the USSR almost as much as they do for the Democrats today, by odd coincidence, so they missed that entirely.
Posted by: Matt   2020-09-26 19:38  

#6  Revisionist bovine excrement.
I lived through that period and there were many people claiming that Communism was unstoppable. That Socialism had Won™ in Europe and that we should face reality and surrender.
Posted by: magpie   2020-09-26 18:05  

#5  Anderson was part of what became the McCain wing of the Swamp Party. Were it not for him, the first Reagan election would have been even more massive a victory.
Posted by: Theager Borgia1057   2020-09-26 17:38  

#4  Outspending the Soviets along with tanking oil prices (thanks, KSA) gave Yuri Andropov a cold & put the kabosh on the CCCP.
Posted by: Clem   2020-09-26 07:09  

#3  The writer embellishes Carter, who was a micromanaging bumbling fool who WAS soft on communism and Iran as well as a poor leader

"Reagan, on the other hand, accused Carter of being weak on communism in general and on the USSR in particular. Like so many people caught up in the rancid politics of the Cold War, both men‐but especially Reagan‐saw the Soviet Union as an entity that would last for generations, despite the fact that the once mighty Evil Empire was only a decade away from collapsing."

as if that was fated without Reagan's military buildup
Posted by: Frank G   2020-09-26 06:54  

#2  Anderson pretty much took votes from Reagan.
Posted by: 3dc   2020-09-26 02:00  

#1  Ah... Anderson was in that race as a strong 3rd party....
Posted by: 3dc   2020-09-26 01:59  

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