The Reagan Era

December 1, 2014
At the beginning of the 1980s, Reaganism aspired to “liberate the sleeping giants of American wealth and enterprise from the fetters of social obligation, and to make such a flight from obligation unashamed and free from rebuke.” In assessing its success, Rossinow (Visions of Progress), professor of history at Metropolitan State University, delivers a sweeping account of America’s recent past. Central to his sense of Reaganism is economic policy, in which Reagan proved to be most legislatively effective—though Rossinow meticulously enumerates the harm of supply-side economics. He is equally critical of Reagan’s foreign policy, particularly his almost pathological obsession with Central America; the section exposing Reagan’s complicity in the Iran-Contra scandal is one of the book’s most damning portions. In demystifying Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War, Rossinow argues that the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. occurred despite Reagan’s confrontational foreign policy, not because of it. Far from protecting the United States, programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative threatened to derail whatever peace Gorbachev seemed interested in pursuing. Rossinow explains how the hedonist excess of Reaganism led to the cultural traditionalism that defined subsequent generations of the GOP, and though critical of Reagan and his acolytes, he demonstrates the powerful and lasting impact of Reaganism in American politics and values.

December 15, 2014
Rossinow (History/Metropolitan State Univ.; Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America, 2007, etc.) revisits the 1980s and finds things both to admire and disdain in the president, the culture and the rest of us.In a work that will not completely please Ronald Reagan's vast choruses of admirers and detractors, the author, who has written frequently about the choreography of history and politics, declares that he offers "a sober evaluation of Reagan and the era of American politics that he dominated." But as the text unfolds, Rossinow's disgust with the excesses of the period-the lies, the deceptions, the neglect of the helpless-grows ever more edged. After sketching Reagan's rise, the author revisits many of the personalities and events whose names continue to evoke strongly partisan reactions 35 years later. Margaret Thatcher, cocaine and crack, "Just Say No," David Stockman, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the Falklands, the PATCO strike, Ed Meese, the Beirut bombings, Bonfire of the Vanities, Ivan Boesky, Rock Hudson and AIDS, Bernhard Goetz, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Oliver North and Iran-Contra, Chernobyl, Michael Dukakis, Willie Horton-these and numerous others appear throughout. Rossinow is hardest on Reagan (and his circle) for the neglect of the poor, the ill (especially AIDS victims) and the nonwhite, but he also gives Reagan credit for his hard stance with the Soviets and for restoring American confidence, though he reminds us that the Strategic Defense Initiative-the "Star Wars" missile protection system-was daffy from the outset. He suggests that Reagan escaped a possible impeachment (Iran-Contra) due to the declining mental acuity that ended in Alzheimer's, and he devotes some pages to Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush and to the nastiness of campaigns. A thoughtful analysis that will annoy and please readers on both sides of the aisle.

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