The problematic staying power of “voodoo economics”
Recently deceased President George H. W. Bush was especially fond of foreign affairs and had a most extensive resume in public service prior to becoming president in 1989. These matters are in common agreement as the nation mourns the loss of the 41 st president.
Bush and the persistent currency of “voodoo.” (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) ASSOCIATED PRESS
It is all the more remarkable that as a rhetorician, Bush said perhaps only four things across his career that have made a mark, that each of these were connected more to domestic than foreign affairs, and that three of them came in just one speech, Bush’s nomination-acceptance in 1988. This was a speech, moreover, co-written by a speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, whose political idol was Ronald Reagan as opposed to Bush himself. The four semi-immortal words of George H. W. Bush were “voodoo economic policies,” Bush’s jab at Reagan’s economic plan on the campaign stump during the Republican primaries in 1980; and from the 1988 speech, “read my lips, no new taxes,” a “kinder, gentler nation,” and “a thousand points of light.”
In terms of continuing relevance in political debates, “voodoo economic policies” are the most significant words Bush ever uttered. “Voodoo economics” remains a mainstay every time, in punditry, journalism, scholarship, and speechmaking, through the Trump tax cut of 2017, a push is made in this country for a tax cut. Nothing else Bush ever said has that kind of staying power. Here is a rhetorical means that carries force in political maneuvering more than a generation after the first time it was uttered. Its companion in the history of political rhetoric is presidential contender William Jennings Bryan’s use of the metaphor, in 1896, of a “cross of gold,” which has dogged every debate about the role of gold in monetary arrangements since.
The staying power of “voodoo economics” remains in defiance of its particulars, which are flawed to the point of hopelessness.
