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Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

di Rick Perlstein

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310683,844 (3.94)4
Connects the activities and influence of today's conservative movements to a deliberate shift toward right-wing policies that began during the Carter administration and led to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
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This is an excellent history and very detailed. If you lived during 1974-1980 as a young person I highly recommend for things we did not understand that were going on in the US. ( )
  JRobinW | Jun 5, 2023 |
Another Perlstein work that I couldn't out down, even if I had to pause to hold my thoughts om some of the first-person commentaries and sermon segments, as someone in my mid 40s, it seemed less like history and more like a conversation we might have today. ( )
  Brio95 | May 31, 2023 |
DNF. A quarter way through, I abandoned this slog. Perlstein’s history is neither interesting nor enjoyable. I can’t tell if he’s trying to do too much or too little or just can’t find his narrative...but it’s a slog. Perhaps I come back later and finish it, for I find no delight in abandoning a history. Right now, however, i find no delight or enjoyment in reading it, so I’m moving on to other things. ( )
  publiusdb | Apr 4, 2023 |
The best nutshell description of Rick Perlstein’s REAGANLAND: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980 is “this explains how we got where we are.” This is the fourth volume of his exhaustive history of the rise to political dominance of modern conservatism in America and its takeover of the Republican Party. His previous books were BEFORE THE STORM, NIXONLAND, and THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE, which recounted the years between 1964 and the summer of 1976, going from Goldwater to Nixon to the nomination battle for the soul of the party between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. The final book ended at the Kansas City convention in August of ’76 with Ford narrowly triumphing over Reagan on the first ballot, seemingly consigning the former movie star and California Governor to the history books as a has-been who came close and fell just short, and at the age of 65, too old to ever again be a serious contender for the nation’s highest office. At least that is what most of the pundits thought at the time, but Perlstein’s book proves just how wrong they were, and how even the most perceptive of political journalists, not to mention the politicians, had little notion of what was happening in America at the time.

My copy of REAGANLAND comes in at well over a thousand pages, which is good news for those of us, like me, who really enjoy a history book that takes the deep dive into its subject. Perlstein brings back to life the second half of the 1970s in America, a time most who lived through it were glad to move on from and put in the rear view mirror, but his book more than makes the case that what happened during that time laid the foundation for much that followed. That “Make America Great Again” and “A Contract with America” were first heard in the 1980 Presidential campaign is one of the many things I learned in this book. And when I say it’s a deep dive, be prepared to revisit Inflation, Stagflation, the Iranian Revolution and the rise of the Ayatollah, Three Mile Island, the Panama Canal Treaty, the battle to ratify the ERA, the Moral Majority, Billygate, Lancegate, the Camp David Accords, gas lines, the killer rabbit, Proposition 13, Kemp Roth, NCPAC, the “Malaise” speech, Supply-Side economics, “the Miracle at Lake Placid,” Gay rights, Love Canal, the B-1 bomber, the Russian brigade in Cuba, the hostage crisis, Afghanistan, and host of other issues and events that defined the times. There is an incredible cast of characters ranging from idealists, opportunists, incompetents, and zealots, who made their mark. It’s a list that includes Hamilton Jordan, Bert Lance, Phyllis Schafly, Paul Weyrich, Harvey Milk, Dan White, Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer, Orrin Hatch, William Safire, Howard Jarvis, Terry Dolan, Billy Carter, George H. W. Bush, John Sears, John Anderson, Richard Viguerie, Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Ted Kennedy, John Connally, and Jude Wanniski. There’s a trio of serial killers: the Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. A trio of Republican operatives who make names for themselves in the years ahead show up: Newt Gingrich, Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater—and a passing mention of Paul Manafort. Two men who would occupy the Oval Office far in the future, Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, make cameo appearances. But the book is dominated by the two main characters, one who held the Presidency, and the other, who very much wanted to take it from him: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

REAGANAND follows two narrative paths dominated by both men, as one confronts a series of challenges from the White House while trying to hold an ever more fractious Democratic Party together, while the other maneuvers among rivals in the Republican Party and tries to convince a skeptical public that he is up to the job. The majority of the space is given over to Carter, after all, he was the President, and I must say that Perlstein writes one of the most damning accounts of the Carter Presidency I have ever read by an objective observer. He makes a good case that the problem was Carter himself, an honest and well meaning man, but one who’s apparent high intelligence blinded him to the obvious. A devout Christian who possessed a moralistic streak that often led him to look down on what he considered the grubby and demeaning aspects of politics, and those who practiced it, which included a great many of his fellow Democrats. The Carter in Perlstein’s book totally lacks the ability to see things from the point of view of others, an essential aspect of a good leader. He was a micro-manager who expected admiration for how rigorously he used his intelligence to arrive at a decision after looking at all sides first, but the American people had little patience for this public dithering, and he quickly developed a reputation as wishy-washy and indecisive. He got off to a bad start in the awkward and undignified 1976 Presidential campaign, marred by Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz’s racist dirty joke, an epic microphone failure during a debate with Gerald Ford, and Carter’s own unforced error by giving a Playboy interview where he revealed a little too much. The more Americans saw of Jimmy Carter, the less they liked him, and though he won the Presidency by promising to restore honesty and decency to the White House after Watergate, those virtues began to matter less when inflation began driving prices up at the grocery store and gas station, factory assembly lines started shutting down, and foreign enemies openly flouted their contempt for a post-Vietnam America abroad. Carter had the bad luck to encounter an inflationary spiral he was not responsible for, and be handed the ticking time bomb that was the Shah’s Iran, but it was his responsibility to deal with those challenges, and lecturing Americans about “austerity,” “limits,” and “sacrifice” didn’t cut it. In retrospect, Carter’s policies were remarkably pragmatic, his energy program would have made the country self sufficient and off mid east oil before the end of the century. But he lacked the political skills to sell his vision, and didn’t try to hone them so that he could. As a result, he lost the Democratic establishment, which was still enamored with big government New Deal solutions, and was challenged for re-election by the remaining Kennedy brother who promised to make full employment a priority instead of reigning in inflation.

While the Carter White House stumbled from crisis to crisis, the opposition was getting its act together. Phyllis Schlafly led a counter revolution against the feminist movement that stopped the Equal Rights Amendment in its tracks. The increasingly emboldened crusade by homosexuals for equal rights helped prompt fundamentalist Christians to abandon a hundred years of political non-involvement and organize against gay rights initiatives and ordinances anywhere and everywhere they appeared, not to mention pushing back hard against what they saw as government intrusion on the way they ran their private Christian schools. Thus the Moral Majority was born, and in Jerry Falwell, they had a determined and charismatic leader. The heads of American corporations decided they’d had enough of paying union wages to their workers, taxes to the federal government, and having to comply with regulations that protected the environment and worker safety, and began putting big money behind Republican candidates who vowed to rid them of all three concerns. The Political Action Committee (PAC) became their weapon of choice, and money was soon in the hands of Republican operatives who knew how to put it to good use. A group of conservative economists began preaching the miracle of lower tax rates, and the wonders they would bring. The National Rifle Association, formerly an association of sportsmen, was taken over by a group determined to fight gun control anywhere it raised its head. Hard line Cold Warriors, on the defensive after the defeat in Vietnam and the rise of détente with the Soviet Union, vigorously returned to the public square arguing that America was falling behind and that Communism was on a roll. All these different factions began to walk in lock step; they had money behind them, and an enthusiasm and determination that won them many converts. The status quo, symbolized by Carter and the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress, were no match for these challengers. The country was changing though few in the media really took notice as working class home owners now came to resent the high taxes they were paying while their standard of living declined. John Wayne passed away and the fictional Texas oilman, J.R. Ewing, from the primetime soap opera Dallas, became a cultural icon. More and more, it was less about the little man and more about the big dogs.

The genial Reagan of Perlstein’s book is less the fabulist of THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE, and more the optimistic reactionary he appeared to be at the time. After he shakes off attempts by his campaign managers to make him appear more moderate, and begins listening to those who said “let Reagan be Reagan.” He becomes the one leader all those far flung groups of conservatives and their various agendas could come together behind. Reagan was comfortable in front of audiences, and he knew how to make a point in plain language, and he didn’t come off like an old man. He disdained Communism, big government, and the high taxes that funded it, and said there was nothing wrong with America that a change of leadership couldn’t fix. He brimmed with good humor and optimism, things Carter sorely lacked, and when he faced the President on a debate stage one week before the country voted in 1980, he mopped the floor with his over confident opponent, who arrogantly thought that the former California governor and ex-movie star, who knew how to present himself well in front of a camera, would be no match his vaunted intelligence.

What I especially liked about REAGANLAND was the forgotten history it revealed, and truths obscured by the passage of time. There were once many pro-life Democrats, and pro-immigration Republicans, Reagan among them. How fundamentalist Christians and cultural conservatives were animated by a hatred of what they saw as tolerance for sexual degeneracy from the beginning; there’s a quote by an Idaho Republican voter from late in the ‘80s campaign that is chilling. How American politics, never as civil as we’d like remember it as being in the past, nevertheless descended to a new level of organized nastiness from it never again rose above after NCPAC successfully took down a slew of veteran Democratic Senate incumbents in the ‘80s election. How the liberal establishment was simply caught flat footed by the desertion of White working class voters to the Reagan banner; an anecdote of a reporter for a Socialist magazines’ visit to some bars in Macomb County, Michigan, during the Republican convention in Detroit, is most revealing. That Jimmy Carter was taken to task for being “mean” to Reagan on the stump during their campaign. It is absolutely quaint to read what the President said back then when compared what is routinely said in political discourse today. How if Carter’s campaign had just done some decent opposition research against Reagan, something that is Politics 101, they might have fared much better. It’s worth remembering that Reagan’s campaign got off to a rocky start, both in the primaries and the general election before finding its footing.

I’ve come to believe that when America went to vote on Election Day 1980, that they were voting against a status quo which stretched back to the assassination of JFK, seventeen Novembers in the past. In the years since there had been Vietnam, racial and generational strife, Watergate, an energy crisis, the social dislocation of the Women’s and Gay rights movements, and a line of leaders that seemingly couldn’t meet the challenges of their time, and restore stability and prosperity. The Iranian Hostage Crisis and inflation were just the straws that broke the patience of a country that felt like it had put up with a lot. Because of this, the voters handed Reagan to most consequential Presidential victory since FDR vanquished the Depression era Herbert Hoover, whom the defeated Carter would compared to for many years to come. On Inauguration Day in 1981, Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as President before a crowd of ecstatic conservatives as dreams and hopes nurtured since Barry Goldwater’s failed ’64 Presidential campaign now seemed within reach. They were filled with determination, and looked to the future with confidence. That day is quite a contrast when compared with another group of conservative Republicans who descended on the Capital on another January day in 2021. What happened in the intervening years is another story as important as the one told in the preceding sixteen, and I hope a writer as good as Rick Perlstein tackles that story, and produces a book as insightful as REAGANLAND. ( )
  wb4ever1 | Nov 23, 2022 |
Review of: Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, by Rick Perlstein
by Stan Prager (10-31-20)

In Hearts of Atlantis, Stephen King channels the fabled lost continent as metaphor for the glorious promise of the sixties that vanished so utterly that nary a trace remains. Atlantis sank, King declares bitterly in his fiction. He has a point. If you want to chart the actual moments those collective hopes and dreams were swamped by currents of reaction and finally submerged in the merciless wake of a new brand of unforgiving conservatism, you absolutely must turn to Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, Rick Perlstein’s brilliant, epic political history of an era too often overlooked that surely echoes upon America in 2020 with far greater resonance than perhaps any before or since. But be warned: you may need forearms even bigger than the sign-spinning guy in the Progressive commercial to handle this dense, massive 914-page tome that is nevertheless so readable and engaging that your wrists will tire before your interest flags.
Reaganland is a big book because it is actually several overlapping books. It is first and foremost the history of the United States at an existential crossroads. At the same time, it is a close account of the ill-fated presidency of Jimmy Carter. And, too, it is something of a “making of the president 1980.” This is truly ambitious stuff, and that Perlstein largely succeeds in pulling it off should earn him wide and lasting accolades both as a historian and an observer of the American experience.
Reaganland is the final volume in a series launched nearly two decades ago by Perlstein, a progressive historian, that chronicles the rise of the right in modern American politics. Before the Storm focused on Goldwater’s ascent upon the banner of far-right conservatism. This was followed by Nixonland, which profiled a president who thrived on division and earned the author outsize critical acclaim; and, The Invisible Bridge, which revealed how Ronald Reagan—stridently unapologetic for the Vietnam debacle, for Nixon’s crimes, and for angry white reaction to Civil Rights—brought notions once the creature of the extreme right into the mainstream, and began to pave the road that would take him to the White House. Reaganland is written in the same captivating, breathless style Perlstein made famous in his earlier works, but he has clearly honed his craft: the narrative is more measured, less frenetic, and is crowned with a strong concluding chapter—something conspicuously absent in The Invisible Bridge.
The grand—and sometimes allied—causes of the Sixties were Civil Rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, but concomitant social and political revolutions spawned a myriad of others that included antipoverty efforts for the underprivileged, environmental activism, equal treatment for homosexuals and other marginalized groups such as Native Americans and Chicano farm workers, constitutional reform, consumer safety, and most especially equality for women, of which the right to terminate a pregnancy was only one component. The common theme was inclusion, equality, and cultural secularism. The antiwar movement came to not only dominate but virtually overshadow all else, but at the same time served as a unifying factor that stitched together a kind of counterculture coat of many colors to oppose an often stubbornly unyielding status quo. When the war wound down, that fabric frayed. Those who once marched together now marched apart.
This fragmentation was not generally adversarial; groups once in alliance simply went their own ways, organically seeking to advance the causes dear to them. And there was much optimism. Vietnam was history. Civil Rights had made such strides, even if there remained so much unfinished business. Much of what had been counterculture appeared to have entered the mainstream. It seemed like so much was possible. At Woodstock, Grace Slick had declared that “It’s a new dawn,” and the equality and opportunity that assurance heralded actually seemed within reach. Yet, there were unseen, menacing clouds forming just beneath the horizon.
Few suspected that forces of reaction quietly gathering strength would one day unite to destroy the progress towards a more just society that seemed to lie just ahead. Perlstein’s genius in Reaganland lies in his meticulous identification of each of these disparate forces, revealing their respective origin stories and relating how they came to maximize strength in a collective embrace. The Equal Rights Amendment, riding on a wave of massive bipartisan public support, was but three states away from ratification when a bizarre woman named Phyllis Schlafly seemingly crawled out of the woodwork to mobilize legions of conservative women to oppose it. Gay people were on their way to greater social acceptance via local ordinances which one by one went down to defeat after former beauty queen and orange juice hawker Anita Bryant mounted what turned into a nationwide campaign of resistance. The landmark Roe v. Wade case that guaranteed a woman’s right to choose sparked the birth of a passionate right-to-life movement that soon became the central creature of the emerging Christian evangelical “Moral Majority,” that found easy alliance with those condemning gays and women’s lib. Most critically—in a key component that was to have lasting implications, as Perlstein deftly underscores—the Christian right also pioneered a political doctrine of "co-belligerency" that encouraged groups otherwise not aligned to make common ground against shared “enemies.” Sure, Catholics, Mormons and Jews were destined to burn in a fiery hell one day, reasoned evangelical Protestants, but in the meantime they could be enlisted as partners in a crusade to combat abortion, homosexuality and other miscellaneous signposts of moral decay besetting the nation.
That all this moral outrage could turn into a formidable political dynamic seems to have been largely unanticipated. But, as Perlstein reminds us, maybe it should not have been so surprising: candidate Jimmy Carter, himself deeply religious and well ahead in the 1976 race for the White House, saw a precipitous fifteen-point drop in the polls after an interview in Playboy where he admitted that he sometimes lusted in his heart. Perhaps the sun wasn’t quite ready to come up for that new dawn after all.
Of course, the left did not help matters, often ideologically unyielding in its demand to have it all rather than settle for some, as well as blind to unintended consequences. Nothing was to alienate white members of the national coalition to advance civil rights for African Americans more than busing, a flawed shortcut that ignored the greater imperative for federal aid to fund and rebuild decaying inner-city schools, de facto segregated by income inequality. Efforts to advance what was seen as a far too radical federal universal job guarantee ended up energizing opposition that denied victory to other avenues of reform. And there’s much more. Perlstein recounts the success of Ralph Nader’s crusade for automobile safety, which exposed carmakers for deliberately skimping on relatively inexpensive design modifications that could have saved countless lives in order to turn out even greater profits. Auto manufacturers were finally brought to heel. Consumer advocacy became a thing, with widespread public support and frequent industry acquiescence. But even Nader—not unaware of consequences, unintended or otherwise—advised caution when a protégé pressed a campaign to ban TV ads for sugary cereals that targeted children, predicting with some prescience that “if you take on the advertisers you will end up with so many regulators with their bones bleached in the desert.” [p245] Captains of industry Perlstein terms “Boardroom Jacobins” were stirred to collective action by what was perceived as regulatory overreach, and big business soon joined hands to beat all such efforts back.
Meanwhile, subsequent to Nixon’s fall and Ford’s defeat to Carter in 1976, pundits—not for the last time—prematurely foretold the extinction of the Republican Party, leaving stalwart policy wonks on the right seemingly adrift, clinging to their opposition to the pending Salt II arms agreement and the Panama Canal Treaty, furiously wielding oars of obstruction but yet still lacking a reliable vessel to stem the tide. Bitterly opposed to the prevailing wisdom that counseled moderation to ensure not only relevance but survival, they chafed at accommodation with the Ford-Kissinger-Rockefeller wing of the party that preached détente abroad and compromise at home. They looked around for a new champion … and once again found Ronald Reagan!
The former Bedtime for Bonzo co-star and corporate shill had launched his political career railing against communists concealed in every cupboard, as well as shrewdly exploiting populist rage at long-haired antiwar demonstrators. As governor of California he directed an especially violent crackdown known as “Bloody Thursday” on non-violent protesters at UC Berkeley’s People’s Park that resulted in one death and hundreds of injuries after overzealous police fired tear gas and shotguns loaded with buckshot at the crowd. In a comment that eerily presaged Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” remark, Reagan declared that "Once the dogs of war have been unleashed, you must expect … that people … will make mistakes on both sides." But a year later he was even less apologetic, proclaiming that "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with.” This was their candidate, who—remarkably one would think—had nearly snatched the nomination away from Ford in ’76, and then went on to cheer party unity while campaigning for Ford with even less enthusiasm than Bernie Sanders exhibited for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Many hold Reagan at least partially responsible for Ford’s loss in the general election.
But Reagan’s neglect of Ford left him neatly positioned as the front-runner for 1980. As conservatives dug in, others of the party faithful recoiled in horror, fearing a repeat of the drubbing at the polls they took in 1964 with Barry “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” Goldwater at the top of the ticket. And Reagan did seem extreme, perhaps more so than Goldwater. The sounds of sabers rattling nearly drowned out his words every time he mentioned the U.S.S.R. And he said lots of truly crazy things, both publicly and privately, once even wondering aloud over dinner with columnist Jack Germond whether “Ford had staged fake assassination attempts to win sympathy for his renomination.” Germond later recalled that “He was always a man with a very loose hold on the real world around him.” [p617] Germond had a good point: Reagan once asserted that "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal," boosted the valuable recycling potential of nuclear waste, and insisted that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do"—prompting some joker at a rally to decorate a tree with a sign that said "Chop me down before I kill again."
But Reagan had a real talent with dog whistles, launching his campaign with a speech praising “states’ rights” at a county fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. He once boasted he “would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964," claimed "Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine," and bemoaned the Voting Rights Act as "humiliating to the South." A whiff of racism also clung to his disdain for Medicaid recipients as a "a faceless mass, waiting for handouts," and his recycling ad nauseum of his dubious anecdote of a “Chicago welfare queen” with twelve social security cards who bilked the government out of $150,000. Unreconstructed whites ate this red meat up. Nixon’s “southern strategy” reached new heights under Reagan.
But a white southerner who was not a racist was actually the president of the United States. Despite the book’s title, the central protagonist of Reaganland is Jimmy Carter, a man who arrived at the Oval Office buoyed by public confidence rarely seen in the modern era—and then spent four years on a rollercoaster of support that plummeted far more often than it climbed. At one point his approval rating was a staggering 77% … at another 28%—only four points above where Nixon’s stood when he resigned in disgrace. These days, as the nonagenarian Carter has established himself as the most impressive ex-president since John Quincy Adams, we tend to forget what a truly bad president he was. Not that he didn’t have good intentions, only that—like Woodrow Wilson six decades before him—he was unusually adept at using them to pave his way to hell. A technocrat with an arrogant certitude that he had all the answers, he arrived on the Beltway with little idea of how the world worked, a family in tow that seemed like they were right out of central casting for a Beverly Hillbillies sequel. He often gravely lectured the public on what was really wrong with the country—and then seemed to lay blame upon Americans for outsize expectations. And he dithered, tacking this way and that way, alienating both sides of the aisle in a feeble attempt to seem to stand above the fray.
In fairness, he had a lot to deal with. Carter inherited a nation more socio-economically shook up than any since the 1930s. In 1969, the United States had proudly put a man on the moon. Only a few short years later, a country weaned on wallowing in American exceptionalism saw factories shuttered, runaway inflation, surging crime, cities on the verge of bankruptcy, and long lines just to gas up your car at an ever-skyrocketing cost. And that was before a nuclear power plant melted down, Iranians took fifty-two Americans hostage, and Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan. All this was further complicated by a new wave of media hype that saw the birth of the “bothersiderism” that gives equal weight to scandals legitimate or spurious—an unfortunate ingredient that remains so baked into current reporting.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Reaganland is Perlstein’s superlative rendering of what America was like in the mid-70s. Stephen King’s horror is often so effective at least part due to the fads, fast food, and pop music he uses as so many props in his novels. If that stuff is real, perhaps ghosts or killer cars could be real, as well. Likewise, Perlstein brings a gritty authenticity home by stepping beyond politics and policy to enrich the narrative with headlines of serial killers and plane crashes, of assassination and mass suicide, adroitly resurrecting the almost numbing sense of anxiety that informed the times. DeNiro’s Taxi Driver rides again, and the reader winces through every page.
Carter certainly had his hands full, especially as the hostage crisis dragged on, but it hardly ranked up there with Truman’s Berlin Airlift or JFK’s Cuban missiles. There were indeed crises, but Carter seemed to manufacture even more—and to get in his own way most of the time. And his attempts to reassure consistently backfired, fueling even more national uncertainty. All this offered a perfect storm of opportunity for right-wing elements who discovered co-belligerency was not only a tactic but a way of life. Against all advice and all odds, Reagan—retaining his “very loose hold on the real world around him”—saw no contradiction bringing his brand of conservatism to join forces with those maligning gays, opposing abortion, stonewalling the ERA, and boosting the Christian right. Corporate CEO’s—Perlstein’s “Boardroom Jacobins”—already on the defensive, were more than ready to finance it. Carter, flailing, played right into their hands. Already the most right-of-center Democratic president of the twentieth century, he too shared that weird vision of the erosion of American morality. And Perlstein reminds us that the debacle of financial deregulation usually traced back to Reagan actually began on Carter’s watch, the seeds sown for the wage stagnation, growth of income inequality, and endless cycles of recession that has been de rigueur in American life ever since. Carter failed to make a good closing argument for why he should be re-elected, and the unthinkable occurred: Ronald Reagan became president of the United States. The result was that the middle-class dream that seemed so much in jeopardy under Carter was permanently crushed once Reagan’s regime of tax cuts, deregulation, and the supply-side approach George H.W. Bush rightly branded as “voodoo economics” became standard operating policy. Progressive reform sputtered and stalled. The little engine that FDR had ignited to manifest a social and economic miracle for America crashed and burned forever on the vanguard of Reaganomics.
Some readers might be intimidated by the size of Reaganland, but it’s a long book because it tells a long story, and it contains lots of moving parts. Perlstein succeeds magnificently because he demonstrates how all those parts fit together, replete with the nuance and complexity critical to historical analysis. Is it perfect? Of course not. I’m a political junkie, but there were certain segments on policy and legislative wrangling that seemed interminable. And if Perlstein mentioned “Boardroom Jacobins” just one more time, I might have screamed. But these are quibbles. This is without doubt the author’s finest book, and I highly recommend it, as both an invaluable reference work and a cover-to-cover read.
In Hearts of Atlantis, Stephen King imagines the sixties as bookended by JFK’s 1963 assassination and John Lennon’s murder in 1980. Perlstein seems to follow that same school of thought, for the final page of Reaganland also wraps up with Lennon’s untimely death. In an afterword to his work of fiction, King muses: “Although it is difficult to believe, the sixties are not fictional; they actually happened.” If you are more partial to nonfiction and want the real story of how the sixties ended, of how Atlantis sank, you must read Reaganland.

[Note: this review goes to press just a few days before the most consequential presidential election in modern American history. This book and this review are reminders that elections do matter.]

Review of: Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, by Rick Perlstein https://regarp.com/2020/10/31/review-of-reaganland-americas-right-turn-1976-1980...

PODCAST: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-d42x2-f0f2d4

I reviewed Perlstein’s previous books here:

Review of: The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein https://regarp.com/2015/10/11/review-of-the-invisible-bridge-the-fall-of-nixon-a...

Review of: Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, by Rick Perlstein https://regarp.com/2018/08/28/review-of-nixonland-the-rise-of-a-president-and-th... ( )
  Garp83 | Oct 31, 2020 |
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Connects the activities and influence of today's conservative movements to a deliberate shift toward right-wing policies that began during the Carter administration and led to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

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