…than you were 97 days ago? Ronald Reagan’s 1980 question revisited.
Last Monday, I posted “Are you better off than you were 91 days ago?” The vast majority of the friends who engaged said no. Today it is 97 days since Trump’s second inauguration.
You have to be of a certain age or a U.S. History major to get the nuance of the question. On October 28, 1980, in the second Presidential debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan (hosted by The League of Women Voters). Towards the end, Reagan addressed the American people directly:
Next Tuesday is election day. Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls; you’ll stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was 4 years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was 4 years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were 4 years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to who you’ll vote for. If you don’t agree, if you don’t think that this course that we’ve been on for the last 4 years is what you would like to see us follow for the next 4, then I could suggest another choice that you have.
You can see the transcript of the whole debate on the Reagan Library site or watch it on YouTube.
Reagan’s questions were savvy: they not only asked Americans to think selfishly, asking “am I better off and more able to buy the things I want in stores?” But Reagan also asked Americans to think as patriots: is employment up? Is America respected, safe, and strong?
During the 2020 election, Trump asked the same question as a critique of Biden’s economic record. For both Reagan and Trump, the four-year election timeline was convenient. Economists can argue on either side about whose fault the weak economy was under both Carter and Biden, but that isn’t my question.
My question? What’s the rush?
Ordinarily, less than 100 days into a new administration, enough time hasn’t passed to pose the Reagan question, but this is not a typical administration.
The New York Times ($) has a running list of the whirligig of Trump’s initiatives, executive orders, mind-changes, lawsuits, wild claims, illegal acts, and unforced errors (e.g. Defense Secretary Hegseth’s use of Signal to discuss classified military operations).
The economy is in disarray. The Dow, as WSJ ($) put it, is headed for the worst April since 1932 (the start of the Great Depression).
Steve Bannon, Trump’s Secretary of Malice, has a well-known theory that the administration should “flood the zone with shit,” overwhelming the media with so many things that it can’t focus on anything in particular.
Most of the anti-DEI initiatives—indeed, all of the GOP culture wars—are primarily distractions. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t hurting lots of people. They are in the most racist and transphobic ways imaginable. I just don’t believe that the administration cares about DEI initiatives in any substantive way: instead, it is using anti-DEI rhetoric, money-withholding, lawsuits, illegal deportations, arresting judges, and more to test its power and see what it can get away with.
Columbia University folded. Harvard didn’t. What organization will be the next to grow a pair and say no?
There’s a mangled quote from the Philosopher Hannah Arendt going around about how an onslaught of lies isn’t there to convince a populace of any lie in particular, but to make it impossible to believe anything at all. Here’s the actual quote from an interview Arendt did in 1973:
If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
This helps me to make partial sense of what the Trump Administration is doing.
But then it takes me back to Reagan’s questions. Less than 100 days in, many Americans would answer each of his questions with a firm no. No, it isn’t easier to buy things. Unemployment is up, not down. And the USA is less rather than more respected.
What’s the rush?
The best answer I can come up with at the moment is that the Trump Administration, insofar as it has a coherent strategy, is in a race against time. If the economy is going to tank, then they want it to tank in a hurry so that it might be back on the upswing by the midterms in November 2026, 555 days from now.
12 years after the Reagan/Carter debate, Democratic strategist James Carville coined the phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid” as a key part of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1992.
The Trump Administration knows that no administration will thrive in an economic downturn. No administration will keep both houses of Congress at the midterms if citizens feel that they are worse off, especially with the razor thin majorities the GOP has in both the House and Senate.
It’s not too early to ask Reagan’s questions. We just need to keep asking them. Every day.
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* Image Prompt: “Create an image displaying the words ‘Are you better off than you were 97 days ago?’ in a US Patriotic font and style, with a headshot of former president Reagan in the bottom right corner.”
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