Sorry, I usually lurk here but this statement is off the mark. Bush had won the
previous election by using Willie Horton. "It's the Economy Stupid" means focus
on how Republican policies are bad for individual economically as opposed to
Democratic policies. Do not let yourself be diverted into phony Republican wedge
issues like Willie Horton, Anti-immigration, soft on drugs, abortion, political
correctness, William Bennett's morality and who lost China. It means if you let
the Republicans win, you will get Regan high debt, shredded safety net, deflation,
wars to make the world safe for Exxon and right wing death squads and in general a
government more favorable to the wealthy and business and more hostile to the
poor, minorities, the individuals and the disadvantaged.
Why progressives think they can help the situation by attacking Clinton as opposed
to providing a wider base so he has more freedom to act never makes sense to me.
Cheney wrote:
> Dear John & Others:
>
> Bill Clinton's "It's the Economy, Stupid!" strategy followed the same one used
> very successfully by Ronald Reagan in 1980. In Reagan's case, he asked
> U.S. citizens directly, "Are YOU better off than you were four years ago?"
> Not only does that slogan situate all important matters in the economic
> sphere (or the market, as typically conceived today) but also it reduces
> politics to a matter of simply calculating
> one's own immediate financial best interest. Additionally, such a tack
> effectively
> "dehumanizes" the market and the economy, divorcing economic indicators from
> their social, political and moral contexts--except as they relate to the
> individual who's
> in a strong enough respurce position to be thinking about raises, taxes,
> and stocks.
> As a strategy of political expediency, it's brilliant. In terms of deeper
> and longer-term implications for politics and ethics, it's disastrous. As
> Jacob Weisberg described so eloquently in the _New York Times Magazine_,
> Jan. 25, 1998, the U.S. has become a "community of investors," who
> understand politics largely by looking at their own pocketbooks at a
> particular moment.
>
> Fortunately, a number of important critiques of this perspective on human
> affairs have been advanced in just the past few years--see, e.g., Richard
> Sennett's _The Corrosion of Character_.
>
> --George Cheney
>
> George Cheney
> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
> Department of Communication Studies
> The University of Montana-Missoula
> Missoula, MT 59812
> USA
> tel.: 406-243-4426
> fax: 406-243-6136
> e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
