"I was a Republican until they lost their minds."
- Former basketball great (and sometime pundit)Charles Barkley
In this series of diaries, I am trying to lay out the history of exactly how the Party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt came to lose its mind and become the authoritarian, theocratric, militaristic, reckless, lawless conspiracy against the public that we are saddled with today; and how, improbably, such an anti-democratic movement came to dominate the government of the world's mightiest democracy.
Today's episode - Carter Flops, Reagan Seizes the Stage.
Our story so far:
The vast new suburbs of Southern California incubated a new kind of "Movement Conservative" (MoCon),wedded to an ideology of libertarian capitalism, militaristic foreign policy, and an authoritarian Christianity. The MoCons consciously developed a political movement, adapting many of the techniques, such as grassroots organizing and development of alternative communication media, first developed by their arch-enemies, the Communist Left. Step by step, they took over the Republican Party at the local and state level, and proved pivotal in the 1964 prsidential nomination of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater's landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson paradoxically increased the influence of the MoCons within the Republican Party, since many of the older Establishment party figures were swept away in the debacle.
Johnson fractured the Democratic Party by simultaneously pressing Civil Rights legislation and an unpopular, losing land war in Asia. Richard Nixon, in a stunning political comeback, united his party behind his candidacy, and initiated themes which would power the Republican Party's rise to dominance for the next 30 years. These included a "Southern Strategy" of pandering to Southern segregationists in order to wean the South from its historic ties to the Democratic Party; and polarizing politics, aimed at painting the Democrats as weak on national security and "law and order" issues, and out of the mainstream of traditional American values, all of which appealed to many blue-collar Democrats. Nixon defeated Humphrey in 1968, and crushed anti-war, hapless Senator George McGovern in 1972. Nixon's grandiose theory of the "Imperial Presidency" led him to countenance any number of unethical and illegal activities to further his own political ends, some of which led to the Watergate scandal that drove him from office.
Nixon's successor, Vice Prsident appointee Gerald Ford doomed his re-election chances during his first month as President, when he pardoned the reviled Nixon. In the 1976 presidential election, the amiable but now-tainted Ford lost to the amiable, devout Democratic nominee, Georgia peanut farmer Jimmy Carter.
Carter Epitomizes the Weak Democrat, Then Cedes the Stage to
Conservative Hero Ronald Reagan, "His Hour Come Round At Last"
Jimmy Carter is better known today for his accomplishments after he left the presidency than for those during his term of office, and justly so. Although Carter is demonstrably intelligent, energetic, and a great humanitarian who has been awarded both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Albert Schweitzer Prize, as President he is widely regarded as a flop. Surveys of historians tend to rate him in the lower middle ranks of presidents – Herbert Hoover territory.
In fairness, it must be admitted that some of his troubles were not his fault (a stagnant economy with high inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment), some of his accomplishments have been under-rated (the Camp David Accords, which underpin to this day a cessation of hostilities between Egypt and Israel), and some of his best ideas never had time to come to fruition in his short tenure (most notably, he is the only President whose energy policy made a serious attempt to wean America off its dependence on foreign oil.) On the other hand, it was on his initiative that the US supported the Afghanistan mujahideen rebels against the Soviet-installed puppet government, support which led in the fullness of time to the training and inspiration of Osama Bin Laden and other founders of al Qaeda.
In any event, Carter gave his critics ample ammunition to paint him as weak leader, unable to stand up to America’s enemies. He signed a treaty returning the Panama Canal to Panamanian sovereignty, reversing Teddy Roosevelt’s 1903 gunboat diplomacy treaty that made the canal a US territory. He negotiated a nuclear arms limitation treaty with the Soviet Union that the Senate felt was so one-sided that it refused to ratify. When the price of oil skyrocketed in 1979 in the aftermath of the Ayatollah Khomeni’s Iranian Revolution, he made a speech to the nation about a national "crisis in confidence", which has been widely derided as his "malaise" speech. Again, he looked weak.
But it was his mishandling of the 1979-80 Iran Hostage Crisis that secured his place in the public mind as a weak leader. When Iranian radicals seized the American embassy in Teheran along with 52 hostages in response to the entry of the former Shah into the United Staes for cancer treatment, Carter unwisely chose to combine aggressive rhetoric with a complete failure to match his words with actions. The crisis atmosphere continued for the remainder of Carter’s presidency, with the nightly news keeping count of the ever increasing number of days of hostage captivity, a continual reminder of Carter's ineffectuality. (In a final humiliation, the hostages were finally released the day his successor was inaugurated.)
The 1980 Election: Part 2 of America's Political Realignment to Republican Dominance
In many ways, the 1980 presidential election completed the realignment of the American political landscape begun with the election of Nixon in 1968. A striking number of elements of that earlier election were replayed in this one - a divided Democratic party headed by an unpopular President who was blamed for an ongoing and seemingly endless foreign policy fiasco, and a Republican Party challenger who deliberately worked to attract socially conservative elements of the Democratic base in the South and in unions. However, in the 1980 election, the MoCon grip on the Republican Party was stronger, the Establishment wing weaker, and liberal Republicans were a fast-disappearing species. On the Democratic side, the candidate was the very model of the "New Democrat" as later preached by the Democratic Leadership Council - Southern, devout, a strong family man, moderate in approach and centrist in his views. Despite all that, or perhaps because of it, he had virtually no passionate supporters within the Democratic Party, or even outside of it. The 1980 election proved to be pivotal in the struggle for the soul of the Republican Party, and for the future electoral strength of both parties.
In the run-up to the nomination, the unpopular Carter drew a strong primary challenge from Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, brother of the slain President. Carter eventually managed to quell this intra-party revolt, and even to garner Kennedy's support in the general election, but the cost to his candidacy had been high.
Republicans that year had a crowded field, with a strong candidate from each wing of the party: Representative John Anderson of Illinois, the last of the Liberals; George H.W. Bush, a transplant from Connecticut to the Texas oil patch, representing the Establishment; and the MoCon leader and hero, Ronald Reagan.
High Noon for the MoCons – The Arrival, At Last, of Ronald Reagan
Reagan had been present at the creation of the modern conservative movement. A former New Deal Democrat, he had become strongly anti-communist in the 1940’s and 1950’s as the head of the Screen Actors Guild, and cooperated actively with House Un-American Activities Committee to purge Hollywood of the red taint. He moved over to the Republican Party in the Eisenhower years, and at the 1964 Republican Convention he made a well-regarded speech in favor of the nomination of Barry Goldwater. After Goldwater’s massive electoral defeat by Lyndon Johnson, Reagan became the spiritual leader of the conservative movement. He became a perrenial favorite on the MoCon circuit, making speeches, writing columns, speaking out on radio. His combination of hard-right rhetoric, genial charm, and a showman’s flair for seizing the moment made him an attractive standard-bearer for movement adherents.
In 1966 he won the Governorship of California against two-term incumbent Pat Brown (Jerry’s dad). This was the first major political victory of the MoCons, and cemented Reagan as the leader of the movement. He became a popular and generally effective Governor, who continued to capture attention with his tough rhetoric, while at the same time demonstrating the practical political skills to cut deals with the Democratic majority in the state legislature in order to get his bills passed. In 1968, he made his first foray into presidential politics by taking advantage of the "Stop Nixon" movement (ironically, spearheaded by party moderates) to garner 600 votes at the Republican Convention, but was ultimately crushed by the Nixon machine. Reagan made a gracious speech urging unanimous approval of Nixon as the 1968 presidential nominee, which earned him political capital on all sides of the party.
In 1976, he was the official favorite of the party’s right wing, and came within a hair of unseating incumbent President Gerald Ford for the nomination. When Ford went down to defeat against Carter, Reagan became the heir apparent.
Reagan won the 1980 nomination handily, then surprised most observers by selecting Bush, his strongest primary opponent, as his Vice Presidential running mate. Bush had won the enmity of many Reagan supporters by his fierce criticisms of the eventual nominee, memorably calling Reagan’s economic policies "voodoo economics". Trouble between the Establishment-minded Bush and the Reagan true believers started early and never healed. A disaffected Anderson launched a third party bid which started with great fanfare but ultimately fizzled, having relatively little effect on the general election.
Reagan's nomination completed the takeover of the Republican Party by the MoCons. After him, no Republican presidential candidate could win the party's nod without pledging fealty (however forced or insincere) to the MoCon creed. Liberal Republicans in the mold of Nelson Rockefeller, once a major force within the party, were forced to the sidelines, or accepted conversion to the new conservative orthodoxy as the price of power. Reagan and the MoCons had won dominance of the party by out-working and out-organizing the opposition. Taking a leaf from the book of their arch-enemies, the Communist Left, they focused on grassroots organizing at the local level; creating alternative media to communicate to the faithful - conservative journals, conservative book stores, conservative radio programs, and the like; building an entire conservative infrastructure of think tanks, conferences, etc.; mobilizing supporters in elections with a vigorous get-out-the-vote effort; and a relentless, step by step strategy of taking over the Republican Party, starting at the local level, then in the states, and finally nationally. Having at last wrested control of the Republican Party from the Establishment and Liberal forces of yore, they now turned to the task of electing one of their own to the Presidency, and imposing their vision on the nation.
Back on the campaign trail, Reagan the sunny, strong showman trounced the wooden, weak, and worried Carter. Meanwhile, Nixon’s Southern Strategy was weakening support for Democrats in the South, and a historically bad economy and Reagan’s social conservatism caused a number of unions to break tradition and endorse the Republican nominee. In the end, Carter won only six states and the District of Columbia. Reagan’s lopsided victory against an incumbent president ushered in what supporters call "the Reagan Revolution".
Just as Reagan's capture of the Republican nomination cemented the hold of the MoCons on the Republican Party, his election as President would contribute to a durable electoral advantage for Republicans over Democrats at the national level. Democrats had damaged their appeal to their own base through social engineering (however well-intended or even necessary) on issues of racial and gender equality, made worse by major foreign policy missteps, and topped off in Carter's case by one of the worst economies since the Great Depression. Much of the old Democratic base was ready for a change, and Reagan offered them a seemingly attractive alternative.
Ronald Reagan’s Presidency is the centerpoint of our tale, as we recount the modern conservative movement’s simultaneous rise to power and fall from grace. His election represents the culmination of the movement’s early rise. After him, the movement would consolidate its grasp on power while, in the eyes of many, forfeiting its moral right to hold it.
Reagan’s political philosophy was simple, direct, and (mostly) coherent. His strong distaste for communism led him to a libertarian view, which proposed smaller government, fewer regulations, a freer market, and lower taxes. Government would be refocused on national defense and public safety, and away from social welfare programs. So far, so good. Reasonable persons may disagree about the relative merits of these goals, but most would grant that there was nothing inherently evil or unworkable about this program. Unfortunately for libertarians, many social welfare programs are hugely popular with the voting public, Social Security being the poster child in this regard. This gave Reagan a dilemma – how to beef up the military without cutting social programs or raising taxes? The solution was what G.H.W. Bush had called "voodoo economics", the so-called "Laffer curve", or "supply-side" theory. Under this doctrine, tax cuts unleashed so much productivity in the private sector, that tax revenues would actually rise, despite the lower rates. Under this unorthodox and unproven view, tax cuts would actually be self-funding, as government took a smaller slice of a rapidly growing economic pie.
So the Reagan administration set to cutting taxes while pouring money into the military, never mind the deficits in the short run. Reagan again worked his magic with a Democratically controlled legislature, forging a strong working bond with Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. Taxes were cut, the military was expanded, deficits mounted, and the economy soared.
Meanwhile, he was talking tough and standing tall. He crushed the air traffic controllers' union when it went out on an illegal strike, despite the fact that it had endorsed him in the 1980 election. He also jettisoned Nixon’s legacy of detente with the Soviet Union, which he called an "evil empire", and initiated a period of confrontation and a renewed nuclear arms race.
All this made him enormously popular with large sections of the public, including many former Democrats with Southern or blue-collar roots. The 1984 presidential election turned out to be just a minor speed bump in his path, leaving the Democratic candidate, former Carter Vice President Walter Mondale, as road kill. Reagan won 49 of 50 states, leaving Mondale with only DC and his home state of Minnesota.
Reagan’s second term was dominated by his foreign policy breakthroughs with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and by scandals in his administration, the most serious of which, and the only one that implicated Reagan personally, was the Iran-contra controversy.
Republicans generally give Reagan credit for "winning" the Cold War. In their view, by showing the necessary steel, and by spending the enemy into the ground militarily, Reagan caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. A more balanced assessment must give at least partial credit to the surprising Mr.Gorbachev, who came to power in early 1985 with a zeal to reform both his country’s creaking economic system, and its repressive political regime. It often happens that a little bit of reform unleashes pent-up forces beyond the capacity of the reformer to control, and the result can be unpredictable. In the American Revolution, we ended up with the Constitution and a stable, democratic government. In France they got the Terror and later, Napolean Bonaparte as Emperor. In the Soviet Union, Mr. Gorbachev must be credited with igniting the sparks which, over a tumultuous few years, consumed the old system and, peacefully but at great cost to its citizens, gave birth to the new.
Unqualified credit can be given to President Reagan in terms of his reaction to the initiatives of Mr. Gorbachev. As he had with the Democratically-controlled legislatures in California and in Washington, Reagan reached across the ideological divide (a bit further this time), and cut pragmatic political deals with his erstwhile foe. The result was a series of landmark agreements on nuclear arms limitations, and a dramatic lessening of world tensions. Reagan may not have caused the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union, he may not even have had the power to stop them, but he certainly had the power to ensure that the resulting transition was not peaceful. Had he been as inflexible and bellicose as his rhetoric, he may have precipitated any number of violent tragedies. As it happened, Reagan and Gorbachev, two men with the hearts of revolutionaries but the minds of practical politicians, both seized the moment, and our world is safer today because of it.
During the period of this real and stunning achievement, Reagan’s administration was showing increasing evidence of the venality and disregard for the law that had characterized the Nixon presidency, and which would be such a distinguishing mark of the Bush II era. A series of scandals involving high administration officials came to light. The most serious, and the only one to involve Reagan personally, was the Iran-contra affair. Reagan had countenanced a blatantly illegal trade of arms to Iran in return for financial support for a group of anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua known as the contras. Direct support of the contras had been outlawed by Congress due to concerns about human rights abuses by the group, so the administration devised a series of elaborate circumventions. Public opinion was initially outraged, but a televised investigation served mainly to make media darlings of the accused conspirators Lt.. Col. Oliver North and Rear Admiral John Poindexter of the NSA. In the subsequent report, Reagan was painted as a "hands off", out of touch executive who did not exercise sufficient oversight of his subordinates. Reagan’s popularity suffered a transient dip below 50% during this time, but soon rebounded strongly.
As the Reagan era came to as close, both parties struggled with the question of who to choose as its standard-bearer for the 1988 presidential election. Sitting Vice President George H. W. Bush was the national figure who came closest to being able to claim the Reagan mantle, and he managed to fend off challenges from Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole and televangelist Pat Robertson for the nomination. He had the great good fortune to draw as his opponent the decent, wonkish, and all-too-easily caricatured Governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukkis.
The Republicans would get another stint in the White House.