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.
