All Thanks to Taxi Driver?

Robert Mundell says Taxi Driver was the most important film in the history of wealth creation:

John Hinckley, the deranged would-be assassin who attempted to kill US president Ronald Reagan in 1981, claimed that he was inspired by it. He said that his action was an attempt to impress Foster. (The movie features a scene in which a mohawked De Niro attempts to assassinate a politician.)

According to Mundell, the wave of sympathy for Reagan that was engendered by the assassination attempt deterred Democrats in Congress from voting against his proposed tax cuts. Because of this accident of history, the US administered a big fiscal stimulus at the same time that Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve was administering tight money. This, for Mundell, was vital in creating the era of prosperity that followed.

Frankly, all the evidence used in this argument strikes me as suspect. John Hinckley was a crazy person, and I see little clear reason to believe that in a Taxi Driver-less world he wouldn't have seized on some other putative reason to shoot the president. Nor do I see clear reason to believe that the Hinkley shooting was essential to getting the tax cuts passed (Reagan's large electoral win plus the fact that tax cuts are popular seem like an adequate explanation), or that the tax cuts had such a large positive impact on economic growth (after all, within a couple of years even Reagan was agreeing to start rolling them back).

But apparently Mundell has a Nobel prize, so what do I know?

Comments

counterfactuals are not my stock in trade, but actually, getting reagan's tax cuts passed was a closely run thing, and there is no question that his grace under fire, so to speak, engendered sympathy for reagan and his positions.

his "large electoral win," after all, was a "large electoral vote win," not a large "popular" win, and there actually did still exist such a thing as fiscally responsible republicans in 1981.

Posted by howard | May 19, 2008 5:39 PM

Maybe the answer here is "Mundell has a sense of humor" or even "Mundell watched that American Dad! episode where Stan goes back in time, gets Scorcese off cocaine, directs a bad Taxi Driver with John Wayne in the lead, Hinckley doesn't shoot Reagan and the USSR takes over the USA". Though I think A is more likely than B.

Posted by Cisco | May 19, 2008 5:44 PM

Then the answers, simple Matt - all you have to do is get a Nobel prize, too. What, like that's hard?

Posted by Trigger | May 19, 2008 5:47 PM

Maybe the answer here is "Mundell has a sense of humor" or even "Mundell watched that American Dad! episode where Stan goes back in time, gets Scorcese off cocaine, directs a bad Taxi Driver with John Wayne in the lead, Hinckley doesn't shoot Reagan and the USSR takes over the USA". Though I think A is more likely than B.

Posted by Cisco | May 19, 2008 5:49 PM

Travis Bickle never actually fires a shot at the Senator. He runs away after being noticed by a secret service agent. Moreover, his motivation was not to impress the Jodi Foster character, but to get revenge on the Cybil Shepard character.

Posted by blah | May 19, 2008 5:51 PM

Wasn't it the late 70's "Happy Days" episode when Potzie blew Fonzie - the harbinger of a gay backlash culminating in Reagan's reactionary triumph?

Posted by Trevor | May 19, 2008 5:56 PM

"John Hinckley was a crazy person, and I see little clear reason to believe that in a Taxi Driver-less world he wouldn't have seized on some other putative reason to shoot the president."

Apart from him wanting to impress a star OF Taxi Driver who he had become obsessed with, having watched the film repeatedly? and that the film has a abortive political assassination?

You are so fucking half-baked sometimes, it's beyond belief. Please, try to actually think before you post - you may well be surprisingly well-versed in sub-genres, but you are a clown in the main arena.

Posted by James | May 19, 2008 5:57 PM

Yeah! Now you finally get to see a great economist at work. This is how rational empiricism gets done, baby! I'll bet he's got scads of regression analyses to prove his case, too.

Posted by DCBob | May 19, 2008 5:58 PM

A Nobel prize in economics doesn't confer talent in pop-media punditry. This is either humor or an attempt at the kind of 'big-think' geniuses like Thomas Friedman get paid for.

The late novelist John Gardner once explained how he dissuaded his writing students from attempting pulp fiction projects as a way to finance their serious craft. He used to tell them not to underestimate the difficulty of junk writing: writing a genuine junk book takes a genuinely junk mind.

Posted by STS | May 19, 2008 5:58 PM

"John Hinckley was a crazy person, and I see little clear reason to believe that in a Taxi Driver-less world he wouldn't have seized on some other putative reason to shoot the president."

Apart from him wanting to impress a star OF Taxi Driver who he had become obsessed with, having watched the film repeatedly? and that the film has a abortive political assassination?

You are so half-baked sometimes, it's beyond belief. Please, try to actually think before you post - you may well be surprisingly well-versed in sub-genres, but you are a clown in the main arena.

Posted by James | May 19, 2008 6:01 PM

Also, De Niro never attempts to assassinate a politician. He goes to a political rally armed to the teeth and chats up a secret service agent, and it's implied he's thinking about assassinating the politician, but he doesn't actually attempt it. To then use that scene and say it lead to Hinkley is, quite frankly, pot induced Freshman dorm talk.

Posted by Raznor | May 19, 2008 6:07 PM

Someday a real rain will come and wash all the economic royalist trust fund scumbags off the Democratic Party.

Posted by Petey | May 19, 2008 6:10 PM

You're right, Petey, you do remind a lot of us of Travis Bickle.

Posted by Curly | May 19, 2008 6:13 PM

Raznor,

Nope. He talks with the secret service, then later and mohawked, he tries to get close to the Senator to shoot him, but the Secret Service force him to run off, to go and shoot Harvey Keitel in the gut.

Posted by James | May 19, 2008 6:13 PM

Not sure that's the real Petey, but that's the best post this thread.

Posted by James | May 19, 2008 6:16 PM

I like the new Clash-inspired punk-populist Petey better.

Posted by Kraz | May 19, 2008 6:27 PM

"Not sure that's the real Petey, but that's the best post this thread."

Do I have to go and list for you the 57 reasons why universal healthcare is the Holy Grail of progressive politics and policy in order to prove it's really me?

Posted by Petey | May 19, 2008 6:28 PM

Check that, the Clash doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. I just like reading that comment to the tune of Red Angel Dragnet.

Posted by Kraz | May 19, 2008 6:30 PM

I never realized this before, but apparently Hinckley first wanted to assassinate Jimmy Carter:

In his confused mind, John came to believe he knew a way to Foster’s heart. He would assassinate a president, thus proving his own importance and imitating Travis Bickle who had intended to kill a presidential candidate. John followed Jimmy Carter around with the idea of shooting him.

John traveled to Nashville where President Carter was scheduled to make a campaign appearance. An airport security device detected handguns in his suitcases. The firearms were confiscated. John was in custody for a few hours and paid a $62.50 fine.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/assassins/john_hinckley/4.html

Posted by blah | May 19, 2008 6:30 PM

I took a class with Dr. Mundell a couple of years ago, and at one point during the semester he told this story. I assure you, it's a joke -- if I recall correctly, he prefaced it by saying as much. He actually has a pretty wicked sense of humor.

Unfortunately, I can't find any videos online of his appearances on the David Letterman show, but check out:

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001065.html

to get some idea of just how seriously he takes himself.

Posted by matt | May 19, 2008 6:32 PM

I took a class with Dr. Mundell a couple of years ago, and at one point during the semester he told this story. I assure you, it's a joke -- if I recall correctly, he prefaced it by saying as much. He actually has a pretty wicked sense of humor.

Unfortunately, I can't find any videos online of his appearances on the David Letterman show, but check out:

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001065.html

to get some idea of just how seriously he takes himself.

Posted by matt | May 19, 2008 6:33 PM

I took a class with Dr. Mundell a couple of years ago, and at one point during the semester he told this story. I assure you, it's a joke -- if I recall correctly, he prefaced it by saying as much. He actually has a pretty wicked sense of humor.

Unfortunately, I can't find any videos online of his appearances on the David Letterman show, but check out:

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001065.html

to get some idea of just how seriously he takes himself.

Posted by matt | May 19, 2008 6:37 PM

I think your post is representative of the sort of traditional thinking about the effects of assassinations and attempted assassinations: that they don't really have much effect at all and it would be better if we could all focus our attention on important matters.

Peter Dale Scott says he's found that it's "indecorous" to bring it up and that sums it up.

In fact, shooting at Presidents, Presidential candidates and sometimes killing them, has had a tremendous effect on American politics, even if it's out of line to say so.

Posted by Garuda | May 19, 2008 6:38 PM

The Congress in 1981 had, before Hinckley's assassination attempt, seemed ready to do battle with Reagan over the tax cut. But when St. Ronnie returned from the dead, Congress compensated by rolling over and playing dead, passing his tax cut virtually without a fight.

That's how I remember it, anyway.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | May 19, 2008 7:06 PM

"Check that, the Clash doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. I just like reading that comment to the tune of Red Angel Dragnet."

This is radio petey from pirate satellite
Orbiting your living room,
Cashing in the bill of rights
Cuban army surplus or refusing all third lights
This is radio petey on pirate satellite

Posted by Petey | May 19, 2008 7:21 PM

This reminds me that when I was in college taking Economics 101 during the Nixon administration I learned that loose fiscal policy and loose monetary policy would stimulate the economy at the risk of inflation, tight fiscal policy and tight monetary policy would cool off inflation but crash the economy, and that tight fiscal policy and loose monetary policy would have an effect somewhere in between, but not necessarily good. I wondered about the effect of loose fiscal policy and tight monetary policy, but was told that no one had tried it and it wouldn't make much sense. That was then.

Posted by CJColucci | May 19, 2008 7:34 PM

Mundell won his Nobel prize for stuff he did a long, long time ago, way before he went nuts and became a supply-sider.

Posted by Ragout | May 19, 2008 8:02 PM

The Reagan presidency without the assasination attempt would have been like the Bush II presidency without 9/11.

Both were well on their way to becoming one term presidents until fate took over.

Posted by TimB. | May 19, 2008 8:07 PM

Haha... Mundell must watch American Dad. Next up he's going to write an article on where to find Ollie North's gold.

Posted by recusancy | May 19, 2008 8:18 PM

I think if Petey were clever, he would have written:

"To a certain trust fund scum bag, Fearless was the most important film in the history of wealth creation."

But clever at this point is asking too much.

Posted by jlw | May 19, 2008 9:29 PM

And yet:

Vice president George H.W. Bush, father of the current president, George Bush, Jr., assumed the duties of the presidency briefly after the shooting and nearly became president as Reagan almost died from the shooting. A bullet missed his aorta by less than an inch.

The Bush and Hinckley families go back to the oil-wildcatting days of the 1960s in Texas. (Ironically, they go back even farther in a genealogical sense, since the have a common ancestor in Samuel Hinckley, who lived in the late 1600s.)

Posted by red@cted | May 19, 2008 10:45 PM

"A Nobel prize in economics doesn't confer talent in pop-media punditry."

That's funny, actors and politicians believe their fame bestows them economics intuition and knowledge superior to that of Nobel Prize winners.

Imagine that.

Posted by Me | May 20, 2008 12:19 AM

"A Nobel prize in economics doesn't confer talent in pop-media punditry."

That's funny, actors and musicians - half-baked ones at that - believe their fame bestows them economics intuition and knowledge superior to that of Nobel Prize winners.

Imagine that.

Posted by Me | May 20, 2008 12:21 AM

The Iranian hostage crisis and the double digit interests rates played a much bigger role than the movie in getting Reagan elected and his stimulus legislation passed.

Posted by Rich | May 20, 2008 2:17 AM

Blah: "Travis Bickle never actually fires a shot at the Senator. He runs away after being noticed by a secret service agent. Moreover, his motivation was not to impress the Jodi Foster character, but to get revenge on the Cybil Shepard character."

You're missing the point. It's irrelevant what was done in the movie. What matters is that Hinckley was allegedly influenced by the movie in specific ways - one, to commit an assassination, and two, to somehow be involved with Foster.

Hinckley's alleged intent was to impress Foster, but he also had obvious motivations like most assassins to rebel against authority figures. This was Travis Bickle's motivation as well - the Cybill Shepherd character was merely the excuse. Hinckley's was that his parents were right wing Christian freaks who kicked him out.

Quite frankly, I'd say there is decent circumstantial evidence that Hinckley was recruited by George H. W. Bush operatives to assassinate Reagan. The odds that Hinckley, not a known gun enthusiast or marksman, was able to buy a .22, then manage to get close enough to Reagan to be able to hit Reagan in the side, the one place his vest wasn't protecting him, is pretty "conspiracy theory" in itself.

Especially when Judy Woodruff heard gun shots from an alleged Secret Service over watch position above her - a story she later recanted after remembering how many news people ended up suicides after the JFK assassination for questioning the official story.

Matt is probably right that Hinckley would have assassinated somebody, had he not been recruited by Bush to kill Reagan. In fact, there was considerable evidence that he intended to kill Foster herself at one point before focusing on Reagan.

As an aside, a second copycat assassin came close to killing Foster as she performed in a play a few weeks later. She even saw the man in the audience and was freaked out. The individual was discovered by a maid who found threatening papers in his hotel room and he was arrested later by the FBI.

Foster herself was lucky she wasn't arrested for the Reagan assassination. She had said in a press release that she had no contact with Hinckley at all. Unfortunately for her Hinckley had recorded tapes of phone calls with her. Presumably she had told the truth to the FBI - or they would have probably assumed she was in on the assassination.

That all this led to Reagan being treated with kid gloves by Democrats is, I suppose, possible, but I find that unlikely, since politicians aren't noted for such sensitivity.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 20, 2008 7:47 AM

"The odds that Hinckley, not a known gun enthusiast or marksman, was able to buy a .22, then manage to get close enough to Reagan to be able to hit Reagan in the side, the one place his vest wasn't protecting him, is pretty "conspiracy theory" in itself.

Since the shot that hit Reagan's side was a richochet off the limo door, it was either one of the most remarkable examples of marksmanship in history or a random redirect of a bad miss.

Especially when Judy Woodruff heard gun shots from an alleged Secret Service over watch position above her

Given the amount of cement and masonry around the site, there would have been far too many echoes to take that report seriously.

That all this led to Reagan being treated with kid gloves by Democrats is, I suppose, possible, but I find that unlikely, since politicians aren't noted for such sensitivity.

Go back and look at the polling. Regan had been facing stiff opposition from Congress before the assasination, including a loss on a Social Security plan by something like an 80-90 vote margin in the Senate. After his "grace under fire" (which was an invention - at the time he was supposedly delivering witty quips he was unconscious as a result of blood loss) the increased affection of the public made many of the Dems decide it was too risky to take him on.

Posted by stuck in 200 | May 20, 2008 10:29 AM

Wouldn't Nashville and not Taxi Driver figure as most important in this calculus? It came out a year before Taxi Driver, features a character (Keith Carradine, if I recall) who actually shoots a public figure (instead of merely toying with the notion, as Travis Bickle does), and -- all apologies to Bernard Herrmann -- has a better soundtrack, to boot. Granted, Hinckley was trying to "impress" Foster, but I like to think that a display of movie erudition -- no, no, Jodie, it wasn't Taxi Driver I was emulating, but Nashville, that underservedly neglected Robert Altman classic which came out the year before you donned those cokebottle sunglasses in [i]Taxi Driver[/i]... -- would've impressed her all the more. Insofar as Jodie could (then or now) be swayed by any XY-chromosomed individual....

I guess the more vexing question is: did Hinckley's devotion, like, make her go gay? That's a question of more serious moment than idle speculation about either Taxi Driver's or Nashville's wealth-creating chops....

Posted by SuperNintendoChalmers | May 20, 2008 1:25 PM

Wouldn't Nashville and not Taxi Driver figure as most important in this calculus? It came out a year before Taxi Driver, features a character (Keith Carradine, if I recall) who actually shoots a public figure (instead of merely toying with the notion, as Travis Bickle does), and -- all apologies to Bernard Herrmann -- has a better soundtrack, to boot. Granted, Hinckley was trying to "impress" Foster, but I like to think that a display of movie erudition -- no, no, Jodie, it wasn't Taxi Driver I was emulating, but Nashville, that underservedly neglected Robert Altman classic which came out the year before you donned those cokebottle sunglasses in [i]Taxi Driver[/i]... -- would've impressed her all the more. Insofar as Jodie could (then or now) be swayed by any XY-chromosomed individual....

I guess the more vexing question is: did Hinckley's devotion, like, make her go gay? That's a question of more serious moment than idle speculation about either Taxi Driver's or Nashville's wealth-creating chops....

Posted by SuperNintendoChalmers | May 20, 2008 1:27 PM

Wouldn't Nashville and not Taxi Driver figure as most important in this calculus? It came out a year before Taxi Driver, features a character (Keith Carradine, if I recall) who actually shoots a public figure (instead of merely toying with the notion, as Travis Bickle does), and -- all apologies to Bernard Herrmann -- has a better soundtrack, to boot. Granted, Hinckley was trying to "impress" Foster, but I like to think that a display of movie erudition -- no, no, Jodie, it wasn't Taxi Driver I was emulating, but Nashville, that underservedly neglected Robert Altman classic which came out the year before you donned those cokebottle sunglasses in [i]Taxi Driver[/i]... -- would've impressed her all the more. Insofar as Jodie could (then or now) be swayed by any XY-chromosomed individual....

I guess the more vexing question is: did Hinckley's devotion, like, make her go gay? That's a question of more serious moment than idle speculation about either Taxi Driver's or Nashville's wealth-creating chops....

Posted by SuperNintendoChalmers | May 20, 2008 1:28 PM

Wouldn't Nashville and not Taxi Driver figure as most important in this calculus? It came out a year before Taxi Driver, features a character (Keith Carradine, if I recall) who actually shoots a public figure (instead of merely toying with the notion, as Travis Bickle does), and -- all apologies to Bernard Herrmann -- has a better soundtrack, to boot. Granted, Hinckley was trying to "impress" Foster, but I like to think that a display of movie erudition -- no, no, Jodie, it wasn't Taxi Driver I was emulating, but Nashville, that underservedly neglected Robert Altman classic which came out the year before you donned those cokebottle sunglasses in [i]Taxi Driver[/i]... -- would've impressed her all the more. Insofar as Jodie could (then or now) be swayed by any XY-chromosomed individual....

I guess the more vexing question is: did Hinckley's devotion, like, make her go gay? That's a question of more serious moment than idle speculation about either Taxi Driver's or Nashville's wealth-creating chops....

Posted by SuperNintendoChalmers | May 20, 2008 2:27 PM

If in fact the bullet that hit Reagan was a bad miss that ricocheted (an interesting coincidence in itself, right?), then one might be less inclined to go with the conspiracy theory.

And yes, echoes could have confused the issue, which is why an analysis of the sounds would be useful - and probably will never be done.

As for Foster going gay because of Hinckley, doubtful. As far as I know, she was suspected of being gay (or bi) as far back as 1977, when, at the age of fifteen, she was photographed leaving a Rome, Italy, restaurant with her co-star in a film, Sydne Rome, with her pants unzipped. Since her life partner of 14 years up until recently was a woman named Cydney, that seems interesting. Her mother had a lesbian affair after the breakup with her father, and it would seem Foster has been assiduously recreating her mother's lifestyle.

Personally I think she's bi more than gay. But most bisexuals are not "half and half"; they lean more one way than the other. So I suspect Foster prefers being a lesbian, but is willing to bed men on occasion. No one knows who the father of her children is, or whether they were artificially inseminated, but I have my own "conspiracy theory" about that.

I still don't see any citations here of any Democrats of the time or later saying that they treated Reagan differently afterward, however. So I still have to regard the hypothesis as not proven.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 20, 2008 10:15 PM