Reagan Ascendant
Rick Pearlstein, a man of the Left, has
written a very long (1120 pages in the print edition) and very important
history of American politics from 1976-1980 through the twin lenses of the
flowering of the American Right and Reagan’s successful campaign for the
presidency. This is his fourth volume on the history of the modern American
Right that starts in the 1950’s. (See my earlier review of his “The Invisible Bridge…” https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2014/08/my-amazon-review-of-rick-pearlsteins.html) As
with his prior volumes he is very good at discussing the day-to-day politics of
the era. The liberals were literally out of gas and there was a thunder on the
Right led by the evangelical community, the revival of business lobbying and
the new ideas coming from the neoconservatives. Standing athwart all of this
was the hapless Jimmy Carter who found a way to upset the liberals on his left
and the moderates on his right which leads to a challenge by Senator Edward
Kennedy.
Pearlstein delivers terrific portraits
of John Connally, Nixon’s Treasury Secretary and presumed Republican front
runner in 1979, and anti-Equal Rights Amendment firebrand Phyllis Schlafly who
successfully organizes the Right to defeat the amendment. We see the young Paul
Manafort and Roger Stone practicing their dark arts that would become the basis
of a powerful political consulting firm in the 1980s whose lives would turn
into ignominy with the election of Donald Trump. We also see the rise of the
direct mail wizard Richard Vigueri and his cohorts on the Right, Howard
Phillips and Paul Weyrich.
The religious Right draws its strength
from its opposition to abortion and gay rights. In its opposition to abortion
American Protestants linkup with Catholics for the first time to form a
powerful urban-rural coalition which undermines Democratic dominance of the
eastern and Midwestern urban centers. In their opposition to gay rights, the
Right finds a spokesperson in singer Anita Bryant who leads the charge to
repeal a Miami gay rights ordinance.
Through it all we see Ronald Reagan
methodically plodding along his path to the presidency with the ups and downs
of his campaign culminating with his debate win over Jimmy Carter. To be sure
he fires his first campaign manager, the egotistical John Sears and there are
many gaffes along the way, but Reagan is opportunistic enough make a major
issue out of the Panama Canal Treaty as sign of American retreat. Of course he
and the Republican Party is helped along when everything falls off the tracks
in 1979. We have the Iranian Revolution, the tripling of the price of gasoline,
gas lines, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and the Iranian hostage
crisis.
What Pearlstein misses is the
sociological earthquake that was happening the 1970’s that gave rise to the
religious Right. For example the birthrate collapsed from a peak of 4.3 million
births in 1957 to a low of 3.1 million in 1975 with a modest increase to 3.6
million by 1980. The number of divorces more than doubled from 500,000 in 1970
to 1,200,000 in 1980 and the number of legal abortions increased from 500,000
in 1971 to 1,300,000 in 1980. There was good reason for Americans to be worried
about the traditional family.
And if you overlay that on an increase
in the female labor force participation rate from 43% in 1970 to 51% in 1980
which meant that the traditional one breadwinner household was falling further
and further behind you can add an economic reason for the growing
disenchantment of evangelical Christians. Now overlay that with a double-digit
inflation you have a formula for deep resentment. To quote Karl Marx, “all that
is solid melts into air.” That was the America of 1980.
To focus more on the economic side of
things the roaring inflation was forcing the average worker into higher and tax
brackets, a product of a tightly bracketed tax code. Further, if a second
family member entered the labor force the marginal tax rate could very well be
as high as 40%. Then of a sudden, the California tax revolt leads to the
passage of Proposition 13 which cut property taxes by 60%. Pearlstein is very
good with his discussion of this. I was in the middle of it and was quoted in
the Howard Jarvis Time magazine cover story that he cites. Its passage gives
succor to the Republicans in Congress supporting the Kemp-Roth 30% across the
board income tax cut. That will pass later under Reagan.
However Pearlstein leaves out three
critical factors as to the cause of Proposition 13. First the tax revenue
coming in from rising property values was spent by government, not rebated in
the form of lower rates. Second, the Crawford
vs. L.A. Board of Education decision calling for crosstown busing made the
local school less important to the typical suburban voter. Similarly the Serrano vs. Priest decision equalizing
school finance detached local property taxes from support of local schools.
Both those decisions took place in the early 1970’s which rendered ineffective
the anti-Prop 13 message that the schools would be destroyed if the measure
passed.
One thing that really bothers me about
the book is Pearlstein’s reference to corporate lobbyists as “boardroom
Jacobins.” He fails to understand that the real Jacobins were in the regulatory
agencies who running a regulatory reign of terror against the business
community. To be sure much regulation was needed, but the way they went about
with little attention paid to cost/benefit analysis created a tough adversarial
environment. Further effective business taxation was on the rise because the
great inflation was rendering depreciation allowances woefully inadequate and
stock prices measured in real terms collapsed. Even Senator Kennedy was
supportive of increasing depreciation allowances and he said so in response to
me at a rally in Los Angeles.
As far as the average industrial worker
was concerned the Democratic Party was nowhere to be found. On September 16,
1977 the Youngstown Sheet and Tube factory closed firing 5,000 workers in Ohio’s
Mahoning Valley. Within a few years 50,000 steel jobs were lost. The Democrats
controlled the White House and had huge majorities in both houses of Congress.
They did nothing and it is no wonder that Reagan got the bulk of their votes in
1980. Pearlstein does not mention this.
The Reagan we see in Pearlstein’s book
is sunny optimist. He is pro-immigration, pro-trade and was way ahead of his
time with respect to NAFTA and he had live and let live with respect to gay
rights. He opposed the Briggs Amendment, a California anti-gay measure on the
ballot in 1978. Thus the Reagan of 1980 is a far cry from the Republican Party
of today. Simply put there is no way the wackos in today’s Republican Party
would nominate him.
Rick Pearlstein gives us great history. It
very detailed and well sourced. Despite my quibble above it is a must read for
serious students of America’s political culture.
For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/RTGEJNHPIBVNP/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
