The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan

The Eighties certainly were a palmy time for American conservatism. Though the conflicts which have eaten away at their majority (until it wasn't a majority any more) were all visible from the beginning, it was hard to worry about them when the day was young and the sledding was fresh. It is revealing, both of that time and our own, that the reviews I see here (most, apparently, written by conservatives) disagree so sharply, both about Ehrman's book and about his topic. The book is fine, though limited. It is kind (which is to say, evasive) about Reagan's worst excesses. The grand cliche of Eighties Scholarship: that Reagan triumphed by "changing the paradigm" -- that he was foremost a "great communicator" who built a new consensus on the core ideas of American politics -- remains untouched. To get a more accurate assessment of Reagan, you will have to read the critical authors regarding whom a divided conservative movement joins in condemnation. I would suggest instead of this book, Garry Wills' _Reagan's America: Innocents at Home_. It's a far better book, both about the parts of Reagan and his "revolution" that worked, and the parts that just weren't there. For a book on the destructive aspects of the Reagan years you will also have to look elsewhere. Conservatives have taken to stabbing each other these days, so those golden days in which the knife was reserved for others are now remembered like a football weekend from one's twenties: the air was cool and crisp, the scent of falling leaves was in the air, one's side was mostly winning and everyone one knew was happy.

I read this book because I wanted to learn more about the history of the American economy. The author, John Ehrman, focuses on changes in domestic policies, politics, and quality of life particularly associated with President Reagan's years in office, 1981 to 1989. Ehrman includes substantial material on changes prior and subsequent to these years, so the continuity to present-day circumstances is excellent. Ehrman helps Americans see themselves from a broader perspective, for example, that on the whole, Americans prefer workable ideas vs. ideologies, and gradual change vs. extremes. A key dynamic for this preference is that second and third generation immigrants of all origins experience improved education, leading to improved work opportunities, leading to improved quality of life, leading to preferring policies that promote economic stability. The author appears to be neo-conservative (moderate) in point of view but I found the book sympathetic and comprehensive in coverage of liberal vs. conservative, moderate vs. extreme, and other contrasting points of view. In fact I found it quite instructive understanding and sorting out these points of view. I concur with the author's assertion that most Americans are centrist and gradual. His work helps us see the actions of President Reagan's administration that worked and the actions that didn't work in building consensus and making successful progress.

John Ehrman, whose 'Rise of Neoconservatism' a decade ago is still the essential work on the subject, has returned with the single book one needs to understand the 1980s. His thesis is that Ronald Reagan was a "transformational President" who both reflected and defined his times and thereby indelibly put his stamp on American civil and cultural life in a way that affects us still and will continue to do so for years to come. 'The Eighties' is a balanced, well-researched, engaging, and ultimately persuasive book. Reagan's success, Ehrman argues, was based on two factors; first, Reagan understood and appealled to the natural and moderate conservatism inherent in American politics. Ehrman's case is that Reaganism, despite the shrillness of its critics, turned out to be a moderate conservatism of the center rather than the extremist caricature touted by the left. Second, Reagan was helped immensely by the ineptness of his opponents and their failure to understand America's conservative centrism; to this day, the Democratic party has not managed to come up with a coherent answer to Reagan. Ehrman is particularly strong describing broad trends without becoming overly dry or academic. His description of the origins of the "culture wars" is very good, as is his discussion of the increasing irrelevance of academia. His introduction contains the clearest and most concise definitions of liberalism and conservatism I have seen. There is a withering assessment of Michael Dukakis as the Democrats' candidate of desperation in the 1988 election against Reagan's Vice President (some guy named Bush, who was elected in a landslide as a proxy for a third Reagan term). Above all, Ehrman's objectivity prevents 'The Eighties' from becoming a hagiography of Reagan--which is why a few on the far right don't like it. The author faces squarely Reagan's shortcomings, especially his managerial style. But rather than add to the plethora of biographic treatments of the 40th president, Ehrman has wisely focused on how Reagan changed American political life immutably. Whether it's welfare reform, abandonment of confiscatory taxes, or the death of Clinton's health care, we have to give Reagan credit--and, for many of us, he gets our thanks as well.

Though the title of his book suggests the possibility of narrative sweep it is in fact a more modestly targeted effort. For the most part Mr. Ehrman treats the '80s as a transitional era, as America went from a failing industrial economy to the exuberant information economy of the '90s and from a near universal acceptance of liberal New Deal/Great Society orthodoxy to the widespread belief, even among Third Way Democrats, in conservative approaches to social problems and the use of free market solutions to provide social services and fuel economic growth. Combined with for the most part ignoring foreign affairs this enables him to take a more sober look at Ronald Reagan than do many of the reverent analysts on the Right and the hysterical critics on the Left. In our hyperpartisan era, such dispassion is somewhat refreshing, but it does seem to make Mr. Ehrman overly cautious in offering assessments, as if giving President Reagan much credit for anything would betray an unforgivable bias. Too often that leads to a certain sense in the book that the changes that took place in the '80s were inevitable and Mr. Reagan just happened to be in office while they went on around him. Surely there's a middle ground between claiming that the Gipper walked on water and pretending that a second Jimmy Carter term, would have been indistinguishable from Reagan's first? That said, there's one theme of the book that Mr. Ehrman handles especially well, a leitmotif that he traces through the decade to devastating effect: the complete failure of liberalism generally and the Democrats in particular to come to grips with the fact that conservatism was being re-established as a credible political philosophy in America, perhaps even its dominant one. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill; Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd; presidential candidates Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis; pundits and academics like Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, Paul Kennedy, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; are all portrayed as just flailing around, denying by turns the importance of Reagan's victory, the potential that Reaganomics could revive the economy, the possibility of prevailing in the Cold War, even the future of America. The occasional reformist voice on the Left--a Gary Hart or Ira Magaziner--was overwhelmed as: "Liberal intellectuals showed themselves still beset with economic anxieties and unable to break free from past perspectives, fear of foreigners [mostly Japan and the Soviets], or unproductive abstractions." Mr. Ehrman depicts the '80s, quite accurately, as a lost decade for liberalism. Many of its legislative achievements and the changes it had brought to institutions endured at decade's end, but they'd lost their intellectual justification. Significantly, when a Democrat did finally win back the presidency, it was a Southern moderate who ran against liberalism as much as against conservatism and still only managed 43% of the vote. Even Bill Clinton though seems not to

Complexities are best understood from numerous points of view. Ehrman's The Eighties provides both a valuable and favorable perspective on a decade of immense complexity. As his subtitle suggests, Ehrman well-researched and well-written book gives Reagan significant credit for changing around US domestic affairs. He presents in detail how Reagan's conservative ideology and his pragmatic political acumen shaped politics and budgetary policy at the national level. One wishes he had looked more closely at the second order effects of Reagan's limited government spending, particularly federal-state relations and law and order issues. While rendering numerous unfavorable judgments of Reagan's Democratic opponents, the major negatives he finds in Reagan administration are limited largely to the Iran-Contra affair. Ehrman gives Reagan an undeserved pass on his historic budgetary deficits and fails to mention the unsuccessful 1982 intervention in Lebanon while noting the public support Reagan received for sending troops into Grenada. Still, The Eighties makes for an interesting and educational read two decades later when once again federal tax rates are lower, defense spending is up, and deficits are growing but, as Ehrman notes, the tone of political discourse is much harsher.