Rural Iowa

Iowans need former minister Mike Huckabee to re-tell the history of the Ronald Reagan years like we need a hole in the head. Huckabee recently launched a company called Learn Our History, and one of its projects is a children’s cartoon series meant to revise the history of Reagan’s presidency and other things Huckabee says liberals got wrong. Having lived through the Reagan years, I prefer the unvarnished and personal recollections of that time to the revisionist tales of Huckabee and others. Reagan was no saint and if a person lived through his presidency, we would know it. Where to begin?

Returning to Iowa from military service, it was tough to find work after graduate school. In June of 1981, I started looking for work that would pay the bills so I could stay in Johnson County. Buying every local newspaper, I remember marking each job with an “X” in the help wanted pages after contacting the company. Life had changed dramatically from a decade previously when all a person had to do was make the rounds of the major employers to find a good paying, union job. No more. I took a government job, because that was what was offered. There was a small retirement plan, no pension and no health care benefits.

About a month later, on August 3, 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) went on strike. Reagan ordered them back to work and on August 5th, he fired the 11,345 of them who did not cross the picket line, breaking and ultimately decertifying the union. During later years, I met Reagan’s chief counsel in the PATCO action and asked him about the strike and Reagan’s handling of these government employees. What started in 1981 continues, without apology, to this day as part of Reagan’s legacy of breaking the power of unions. The unintended consequence of Reagan’s outlook towards unions was to make life harder for the middle class.

Having met my future spouse in my government job, I knew we had to move on to better paying work with better benefits, plus we were ready to start a family. Once again, I started applying to every advertisement that looked like a possible match to improve our income and benefits. After responding to dozens of advertisements, I ended up in a position with a local trucking company. There was health insurance, and a “profit sharing” retirement plan, but no pension. Later, the “profit sharing” retirement plan was replaced with a 401k plan and a small company match.

It was a company that capitalized on the 1980 Motor Carrier Act that deregulated trucking and helped break the teamsters’ union in trucking. This Carter era legislation was implemented during the Reagan years. While some trucking employees continue to be represented by a master contract with the Teamsters, their numbers diminished after deregulation. While shippers benefited from lower costs, the expense reduction came mostly from the new, non-union companies created post-deregulation. Lower shipping costs were made possible by lower wages and fewer benefits for trucking industry employees, another feature of the Reagan revolution.

Mike Huckabee needs to support his family, so I wouldn’t deny him the right to earn a living in the punditocracy/ideology business. Seems unlikely that his business would pay a pension, so I hope he is making his money up front. For a prominent former or pseudo politician like Huckabee, there is a living to be made by distorting the facts of history, as it is just one more thing for the middle class to deal with in the post Reagan society.