Talene Bilazarian (Johns Hopkins) on Lessons from 1984: “Morning in America” and 2012

It’s strange to think that the ad comes four years after Carter’s loss in the election of 1980, a fact which does not go unobserved by the Reagan campaign. The clip closes with the quiet smugness of a gloating winner, “Why would we ever want to return to where we were just four short years ago?”

The challenges the country faced thirty years ago certainly put my political disillusionment into perspective. You can go back to the Carter presidency for a truly impressive laundry list of political failures. It was not morning in America in 1980. If anything, the sun was setting…

According to Nate Silver at the New York Times, “It would be hard to overstate what a disaster the economy looked like at this point in 1980. In many ways, it seemed to be melting down as badly as the economy was in September and October 2008 when the magnitude of the financial crisis was becoming clear.” But it wasn’t just economy—the United States was still locked in a Cold War with our greatest, nuclear-armed foe. The country was suffering huge inflation as a result of the oil crisis, and the dramatic and humiliating Iranian hostage crisis had been dragging on for months.

Peeking into America’s past prompts questions about the uniqueness of millennial disillusionment. Is the conversation we are having today about the brokenness of the American political system unique to 2012? Or are these the same observations we make every time the nation is in crisis, every time it isn’t morning in America?

The point is not to belittle the legitimate observations about the shortcomings of American government made by my peers. I share their fear and frustration about America’s future. The 2012 campaign in particular has left me dismayed at what can only be characterized as summer of partisan sound bites. We have sacrificed meaningful debate to parse a few choice phrases: Romney’s London Olympics gaffe, Mrs. Romney’s flippant characterization of the media as “you people”, and Obama’s over-examined “you didn’t build that” comment. It’s made a mockery of both candidates and marred whatever sanity remained in the presidency. That’s tragic.

But I wonder if we need to remind ourselves that we’re not so exceptional, that our exasperation looks not so different from the young people who lost faith in the presidency after Watergate and again after the disappointment of the Carter years. Go back further to the Johnson administration. Millennial political exasperation almost seems laughable when compared to the outpouring of anger and rejection on college campuses across the country over American policy in Vietnam.

Those young people, the “millennials” of their own era, also believed themselves determinedly different and uniquely disappointed by their government. But as they came of age, they lost some of their fire. They transitioned into adulthood and took on the habits and desires of the very people they had scorned just years before. Why will millennials be any different?

For an extra dose of cynicism, I think back to the Reagan campaign clip. The ad makes bold political claims focusing on the domestic economy alone. Americans under Reagan are “prouder and stronger and better,” but only on the basis of job growth, interest rates, and homeownership statistics. This overtly suggests that national prosperity is measured in solely monetary terms, and that you can draw a direct link between economic success and national pride.

Will we, like the electorate of 1984, be won over by the promise of economic prosperity, believing that “Morning in America” is totally monetary? Will we, like the young people of generations before us, see our political frustration and activism fade as we approach middle age and achieve financial security? This question of millennial exceptionalism is at the very heart of our symposium. I side with the patterns of history, believing that growing up in this century will resonate strongly with the past.