”There were always those who told us that taxes couldn’t be cut until spending was reduced,” the President [Reagan] said in his first month in office. ”Well, you know, we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath. Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance.” Are we to believe that it never occurred to him the children would plunge into debt?

The large lesson is simply this: President Reagan thought it was possible to weaken American government without weakening American influence. It is not possible.

…The seeming economic collapse of the 1980’s has not been the result of ”imperial overstretch” but of internal, somewhat conspiratorial politics.

—DP Moynihan, Debunking the Myth of Decline: NYT, 19 June 1988