Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980
Ron Perlstein
Simon & Schuster (August 2020)
In the land of cynics, the faith of a patriot can sometimes shine a light on enduring values
I have read and reviewed Christopher Leonard’s Kochland and view it the same way I now view Ron Perlstein’s book: not as a biography of a major leader but rather as a detailed analysis of the context, the frame of reference for that leader’s impact and significance.
Charles Koch remains an active and effective chairman and CEO of Koch Industries since succeeding his father in 1967. primarily. Perlstein focuses on the four years preceding the 33rd U.S. president’s first term, following the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and then the first four years of the Reagan presidency. Koch continues to be a corporate executive whereas Reagan had a more diverse career, culminating in his two-term presidency. He died in 2004.
To Perlstein’s great credit, what he reveals about each of the three four-year segment sheds light on the other two. I delighted in reading Perlstein’s juxtapositions of dozens of similarities and differences, not only between the two leaders’ style but also between the core values that guided and informed their decisions.
Over the years, I have accumulated a file of items for which I have been unable to identify a source. When sharing one now, with which I wholly agree, perhaps you or someone else will let me know its source so that I can then add proper attribution. However controversial Reagan’s presidency may be, I think what follows is a fair evaluation:
“Reagan’s extraordinary personality enabled him to dominate national politics in the 1980s in a way that no president since his boyhood idol, Franklin Roosevelt, had done. Reagan’s high-spirited optimism, his unembarrassed patriotism, his soaring, symbol-laden oratory, and his jaunty, almost cock-sure public demeanor won him the admiration even of many Americans who disagreed with his policies. He helped restore to public discourse a heady sense of possibilities, a belief in America’s moral superiority, and even a faith in leadership. It is clear that many (although far from all) Americans felt better about their society and its future in the 1980s than they had a decade earlier and than they would a decade later. And it is clear that the refurbished nationalism that Reagan so energetically promoted reached out through American culture and became one of the defining characteristics of the era.”
If you know the source of this mini-commentary, please let me know.
In his insightful review of Reaganland for The New York Times, Evan Thomas points out that In 1968, 17-year-old Patrick Caddell polled a working-class neighborhood in Jacksonville, Fla., about the upcoming presidential race for a high school project. He was surprised to hear, again and again, “Wallace or Kennedy, either one.” This seemed to make no sense. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a segregationist, was the ideological opposite and avowed foe of Robert Kennedy, who had pushed civil rights as attorney general in his brother’s administration. Young Caddell had an insight: In politics, feelings mattered more than policy. For all their apparent differences, Wallace and Kennedy were both tough guys; they both seemed to be mad at something most of the time. Voters could relate: The feeling abroad in the land in 1968 (not unlike 2020) was alienation.”
I well recall when Regan suggested, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'” When a sufficient number of voters feel alienated from government, incumbent administrations (e.g. Humphrey/LBJ, Ford/Nixon, Carter, Bush 41, Gore/Clinton) are replaced. Politicians never lose sight of their ambitions. Statesmen never lose touch wigth those whom they are privileged to serve.
Most presidential scholars rank Reagan somewhere in the middle quintile of U.S. prersidednts but few of them question the sincerity of his professed faith in the basic values articulated in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and then in the Constitution (1789). The scope and depth of his sincerity are unquestioned but his interpretation of those values remains in dispute. I think his greatest performance was the presentation of his “Space Shuttle Challenger” address” to the nation on January 28, 1986, a speech drafted by Peggy Noonan. The words may have been hers but the dominant emotions were without doubt Reagan’s.
Although the scope of this narrative coverage is mostly limited to the four years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and then Reagan’s first term, Ron Perlstein’s insights — in my opinion — have much wider application, not only to Reagan’s life and career prior to 1976 but also to the the changes that were occurring throughout the world during the 16 preceding years. There is a context to Reagan’s great appeal, at least initially, as well as to the emphatic rejection of Carter’s pursuit of a second term. There were specific reasons why a majority of American citizens were convinced that government was not the solution to their problem in 1980, government was the problem and Ronald Reagan convinced them that he was the solution.
“We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.
“With God’s help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us…and after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.”
That was what he believed and that is who he was. Not a great president, in my opinion, but the best Ronald Reagan he could be and that is so much more than what can now be said of most of the so-called “public servants” in the federal government.