AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGINS TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973---Episode 11

    RONALD REAGAN WAS A SHAMELESS LIAR--BEFORE 
  HE WAS POTUS AND AFTER HE WAS POTUS

   Compiling lists of Reaganisms became a national pastime. Reagan often made up apocryphal quotes from prominent individuals including Oliver Wendell Holmes and Winston Churchill. Perhaps it was fitting, therefore, that his press spokesman,  Larry Speakes, admitted that he had made up quotes and attributed them to Reagan, anticipating what he would have wanted to say. 

   For meetings with visitors and even his own cabinet officials, Reagan read from three-by-five-inch cards provided by staffers. Visitors would be mortified on those occasions when he unknowingly read from the wrong set of cards. He extrapolated from personal experience to form his views of the world. Facts could be ignored or contradicted when they didn't support his preferred narrative. When William Clark, a former California Supreme Court justice, took over as national security advisor in 1982, he was shocked to discover how little Reagan actually knew about the world. He instructed the Pentagon and CIA to produce films explaining security issues and describing the world leaders Reagan would be meeting. 

   Reagan's disengaged style and lack of foreign policy experience left the door open to palace intrigue among his subordinates, who were eager to fill the void. Vice President Bush displayed firm, if nefarious, establishment credentials, with long-standing family ties to Rockefeller, Morgan, and Harriman interests. After graduating from Yale, he had moved to Texas, become an oilman, and run unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1970. Richard Nixon had engineered his appointment as Republican Party chairman. 

   Jeane Kirkpatrick would also play a prominent role in shaping foreign policy. A conservative Democrat and Georgetown political scientist who supported Reagan because of his staunch anticommunism, she was rewarded with an appointment as ambassador to the United Nations. Kirkpatrick supplied the Reaganites with a justification for supporting right-wing dictatorships, calling them "authoritarian" regimes instead of "totalitarian" ones. Along with her colleague Ernest Lefever, a defender of repressive regimes from El Salvador to South Africa, became assistant secretary of state for human rights. The New York Times described him as "an ultraconservative who sneers at existing policy as sentimental nonsense and believes it is profound error to embarrass allies, however repressive, with talk about habeas corpus." He dismissed concerns about torture in Argentina and Chile because it was "a residual practice of the Iberian tradition." His center had recently been assailed for accepting a large contribution from Nestle' after conducting a study supportive of its campaign to convince mothers to replace breast-feeding with infant formula despite evidence that the switch had contributed to  tripling of infant malnutrition in underdeveloped nations. In June, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected Lefever as unqualified for the position. Five of the committee's nine Republicans joined with all eight Democrats in the vote. He was replaced by the equally objectionable Elliott Abrams. 

   Not everyone welcomed the opportunity for freelancing that resulted from Reagan's inattention. General Colin Powell, the deputy to National Security Advisor Frank Carlucci, recalled, "The President's passive management style placed a tremendous burden on us. Until we got used to it, we felt uneasy implementing recommendations without a clear decision . . . One morning . . . Frank moaned. . . 'My God, we didn't sign on to run this country!' " James Baker, who served Reagan as campaign manager, White House chief of staff, and Treasury secretary, described the resulting foreign policy structure as a "witches' brew of intrigue . . . and separate agendas." Though often at one another's throats over control o policy, Reagan's top advisors shared an enthusiasm for covert operations. Together with Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Bush, they initiated operations in Central America and Africa through the National Security Planning Group, while supporting Soviet-bloc dissidents and expanding Carter's programs in Afghanistan. 

   Global economic travails made their job easier. The rapid economic growth experienced by resource-rich third-world countries in the 1960s and early 1970s ground to a halt by the mid-1970s as the worldwide economic decline undercut income earned through raw-material exports. Third-world debt ballooned, crippling the prospects for continued development and devastating already impoverished populations. Revolutionary states that had overthrown colonialist regimes and experimented with socialism were among the hardest hit, leading many to question the viability of leftist development models. Reagan saw the resulting unrest as an opportunity to topple unfriendly governments and prove the superiority of capitalism.