Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980 (Atria Books) by Rick Perlstein
Reaganland is effectively the fourth instalment of an epic history of modern American conservatism, publishing at a time when that creed has grown ever crazier, while remaining powerful. The book follows two key narratives at length and in vivid detail: the story of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and the assembly of the Reagan revolution that swept the Democrats out of power in 1980.
Perlstein’s first book, 2001’s Before the Storm, reflected on Senator Barry Goldwater’s startling rise to the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, and his subsequent thrashing by President Lyndon Johnson – a defeat that some believed to be a terminal repudiation of the GOP’s paranoid tendency. Chance would have been a fine thing. Before the Storm was followed by Nixonland, which covered Richard Nixon’s leading of the Republican party – and the United States – into the abysses, domestic and foreign, of Watergate and Vietnam. The third in the series, The Invisible Bridge, reflected on the beginnings of Ronald Reagan’s efforts during the mid-1970s to reinvent the GOP as the movement of patriotic optimism, which would eventually usher him into the White House. All four books are volumes of shelf-warping heft, but not a single page is redundant.
As can be inferred from the subtitle, “America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980”, Reaganland sets out a somewhat counterintuitive prospect. This was, of course, a period in which the Oval Office was occupied by a Democrat. Perlstein would never be so simplistic as to hold Jimmy Carter entirely responsible for what immediately succeeded him, still less for the bizarre and deranged pass to which American conservatism has since proceeded. (In fairness to Reagan, much of the Republican party today would regard a man of his convictions as some sort of hippy socialist.)
But readers of Reaganland cannot help but ponder how differently history might have unfolded, had the Democrats put someone other than Carter on the ticket in 1976. Although, as the book reminds us, it could have been worse, given that Carter’s principal rivals were California governor Jerry Brown (“A strange man,” understates Perlstein) and George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and a semi-reformed race-baiter. While Perlstein is more sympathetic to Carter than many before him have been, the impression is reinforced of an essentially decent man fundamentally ill-suited to the role he’d been given, unable to buy himself the time needed to learn the job (“Jimmy Carter kept asking people to trust him,” Perlstein summarises. “It didn’t work.”)
As is the case with its predecessor volumes, the real joy of Reaganland is not in the broad historical tapestry, although this is certainly impressive, but in the deftly woven stitches from which it is composed. Perlstein has both a flair and a relish for the incidental but telling detail. Illustrating the decline of New York City in the 1970s, he notes that the Staten Island Express bus had been restricted to 35 miles an hour because the worn-out tyres would burst at higher speed, yet many did not carry fire extinguishers for fear they would be stolen.
The most rewarding details, however, are those which feel most pertinent to our current moment, illustrating that the Republican party’s embrace of kookery did not begin in 2016. The influence and the lunacy of the evangelical lobby are amply demonstrated, as Texas governor and 1980 Republican presidential hopeful John Connally submits to an inquisition at which a hectoring reverend demands, “What reason would you give God for letting you into Heaven?” Reagan’s own willingness to indulge the fruitcake phalanxes is demonstrated through pithy descriptions of his correspondences with New Hampshire newspaper proprietor William Loeb (“the most notorious clown in American politics”) and “psychic” – ie honking fraud – Jeane Dixon.
Perlstein’s chronicling of American conservatism is all the more intriguing and engrossing for the fact that he is not a conservative. But nor, crucially, is he a shrieking partisan hack proceeding on the assumption that the Republican party and everybody who votes for it are by definition depraved, deranged or evil. Although if he ever gets around to tackling the Donald Trump aberration, it will be fascinating to see how limitless his patience really is.
This article is from the New Humanist winter 2020 edition. Subscribe today.
