Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Willamette College professor Seth Cotlar’s op ed in USA Today offers compelling parallels between the upcoming inauguration and those of Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan. In both of those transitions there was a divide between those who wanted the government to help solve a crisis and those who saw government interference as a problem. Cotlar suggests that we are at a similar crossroads and hopes that like Lincoln and FDR, Biden can shift the anti-government trend… but acknowledges that it won’t be easy or fast:

Reagan didn’t invent anti-government cynicism. It has deep roots in American political culture stretching back to the nation’s founding. We should not expect that one Biden term, committed to a concerted response to the pandemic and the unevenly borne devastation it has wrought, will eliminate such cynicism. 

Even so, just as anti-government sentiment runs deep in American political culture, so does the idea that “we the people” can invest the government with the appropriate powers to serve the general welfare. Utilizing government to improve the health and economic opportunities of poor, working and middle-class Americans has the potential to re-inaugurate the pragmatic and democratic, pro-government tradition that Lincoln and FDR espoused, but which has had too few unapologetic advocates since the the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.

It took us over 40 years to see that government programs like Medicare did not lead to socialism despite the fears that Reagan tried to fuel in the Sixties. MAYBE Biden can begin to get voters to increase their trust in government… but to do so he will need to underscore the many services and programs that are essential for the national well being.

apple.news/A4NgJ6YaWS2WXEASoB6IVqw