We were different people in the early 1980's. We must have been. How else can we explain the fact that Reagan was reelected. After all, were a politician today to say "We are in a mess, and we need to suffer through it. We need to let the economy adjust and recover so we can get back on a steady footing. Sorry, but it will be rough going, but there is sunshine ahead. However, if we inflate or borrow our way out of this, we will be even worse off than we are now." If a politician said that, he would be run out of office.

Yet, that is precisely what Reagan did, and he won, and won in a landslide.

With all the Reagan adoration recently, many forget that his first term was beset with horrible economic problems, thanks to the many years of Nixon and Carter inflation, bad economic policies, excessive regulation and so on. Reagan inherited an economy even worse than our so-called "crisis", though we weren't so given to panic then, and just called it a recession. Thanks to Nixon's cutting the final ties to gold, prices had risen, depending on the measurement you use, 130% to 600% from 1971 to 1981. The interest rates were solidly int he double digits and the Savings and Loans were beginning to show the strain which would eventually lead to their collapse. (Though the left would later blame "deregulation".)  Thought he formal oil crises were over, foreign imports were still a large part of our consumption and were still expensive. Inflation was running high and growth was zero or negative, leading tot he silly neologism of "stagflation".

However, unlike Carter and Nixon before him, and unlike the leaders of both parties today, Reagan did not see a crisis which must be avoided, or a need to "stimulate" (that is inflate enough to kick the problem a few years down the road). He saw the problem, rightly as the outcome of excessive inflation, coupled with punitive taxes and stifling regulation. He made some corrections, reducing and simplifying taxes and removing the remaining price controls and other senseless, destructive regulations, but he did the one other thing that made all the difference, the one thing no politician today is brave enough to even suggest.

He  made us take our lumps.

Reagan did not try to "stimulate" with newly printed money. He did not try to push down the prime rate or flood the market with cheap dollars. Granted, he did spend to rebuild the decimated military, and he also failed to reign in congressional spending, but apart from the usual government profligate spending, he did not institute any additional measures to "stimulate the economy". He allowed us to undergo a recession. And, int he end, it worked.

Think about our economic history from the mid-1980's until the mid 1990's. Despite large scale spending, despite absurd tax increases from both Bush and Clinton, despite increasing regulation, the economy grew at an unprecedented peace time rate throughout the decade following the "Reagan Recession".

However, I don't expect to see a repeat of that bravery any time soon. Today's supposed conservatives are not only pushing bailouts and reduced interest rates, but are even making excuses for calling for more regulation. In other words, today's Republicans, or what passes for conservatives in the mind of the mainstream, are more like the Nixon-era Republicans, not so much conservatives as smaller-government liberals, willing to meddle with the economy, to impose regulations, and generally accept an interventionist state, just one a little less interventionist than the one the Democrats want.

POSTSCRIPT

I am sure some will tell me that McCain is to blame for this move to the left, or that I am part of the problem because I supported McCain. However I disagree. The problem has been a long time coming, since at least 1996 and the selling out of the Contract With America. McCain is just a symptom. After all, when Romney is being called the conservative candidate can you really claim there is a principled conservative faction within the Republican party?

Granted, all of us were promoting a candidate who was to some degree a big government proponent. McCain, Romney, all of them (with a few exceptions, eliminated very early in the primaries) were big government to some degree. However, I do not think supporting them was a mistake. A third party candidate was not going to win, and even if one did, through some miracle, with no support in congress he would effectively be an impotent president, making even a third party victory rather hollow.

No, supporting the Republican, even though I disagreed, was a step toward reforming the party. As I wrote before, only by remaining loyal to the party will we have a hand in reshaping it, and the Republicans are and will be for the immediate future, the only force which may even possibly bring about a conservative reform movement in government.

Think again of Reagan. Reagan was a Republican during the Goldwater era, but also during the ascendancy of Nixon and Rockefeller. And yet he remained loyal tot he party, as he knew it was the only viable tool for bringing conservative reform. I simply follow his example. I may not agree with today's Republicans, but I support them now, if only because they are not as bad as the alternative, and because I hope that in the near future I may have a hand (though admittedly a very small part) in moving them and their successors slowly to the right.