America's right turn

In 1968, 17-year-old Patrick Caddell polled a working-class neighbourhood in Jacksonville, Florida, about the upcoming presidential race for a high school project. He was surprised to hear, again and again, “Wallace or Kennedy, either one.” This seemed to make no sense. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a segregationist, was the ideological opposite and avowed foe of Robert Kennedy, who had pushed civil rights as attorney general in his brother’s administration. Young Caddell had an insight: In politics, feelings mattered more than policy. For all their apparent differences, Wallace and Kennedy were both tough guys; they both seemed to be mad at something most of the time. Voters could relate: The feeling abroad in the land in 1968 (not unlike 2020) was alienation.

Later, working out of his college dorm room, Caddell became a paid political consultant. One of his clients in the 1972 election was Joe Biden, then 29, running for the United States Senate from Delaware. Caddell told  Biden not to attack his opponent. That would just make him look like another politician. Rather, he should run against Washington.  Biden took the advice and won.

Rick Perlstein tells this anecdote early in Reaganland, his absorbing political and social history of the late 1970s. More than 700 pages later, Perlstein notes that  Biden, himself, went on to become “an exquisitely well-calibrated politician.”  The joy of this book, and the reason it remains fresh for nearly a thousand pages, is that personality and character constantly confound the conventional wisdom.

Perlstein’s broad theme is well known, partly because he has made it so through his three earlier volumes (Before the Storm, Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge) on the rise of the New Right in American politics.

One of Perlstein’s favourite sports is to poke fun at the cluelessness of establishment commentators from the mainstream media. In 1977, he reports, pundits were pronouncing the near death of the Republican Party. The Boston Globe’s  David Nyhan said “the two party system is now down to one and a half parties.” That was because, “the party of Abraham Lincoln forgot its heritage and started neglecting minorities.”

In fact, Perlstein points out, the “party of Lincoln” knew exactly what it was doing: marching into the once-Democratic Solid South to convert angry white voters into Republicans. In 1968 and 1972, Richard Nixon had made a start with his Southern Strategy, using code words like “states’ rights” to appeal to racists, but by 1980, the Republican Party seemed to dispense with subtlety.

REAGANLAND: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980

Author: Rick Perlstein

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Price: $40 

Pages: 1,120

 

Ronald Reagan’s first major appearance of the 1980 general election campaign was at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi. This was Klan country. Families came to the Neshoba County Fair every year to enjoy the mule races and beauty and pie-eating contests. “White families, that is,” Perlstein archly notes. “Blacks only participated as employees.”

In the hot sun, before an adoring audience, on a stage crowded with Confederate flags, Reagan began with a football story and some corny jokes, and then plunged into the wickedness of federal interference in the lives of ordinary Americans. But then, Perlstein notes, Reagan, one of the most sure-footed stump speakers ever, began to get “wobbly.” Instead of pausing for his punch lines, he rushed ahead. He seemed to want to get the speech over with.

The speech was a bust. Reagan actually dropped in the polls in Mississippi. He rec­o­­vered later, taking every Southern state but Jimmy Carter’s Georgia. Still, the fact was that Reagan was not comfo­rta­ble play­ing the race card, and he couldn’t hide it.

The glimpse into Reagan’s conscience is characteristic of Perlstein’s storytelling. Reagan is hardly a hero to Perlstein, whose own politics are to the left. But in this description, the former movie actor turned politician is intensely human, and capable of empathy, or at least shame.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter’s campaign advisers underestimated him. “They presumed the public would see what they saw. Which was that Carter was smart and that Reagan was stupid. And that therefore Reagan would lose any debate,” Perlstein writes. “Which overlooked the fact that Reagan had won practically every debate he had participated in — going back at least to 1967, when he appeared on the same TV hookup with Robert F Kennedy to discuss the Vietnam War, and twisted his opponent into such knots that Kennedy subsequently ordered staffers never to pair him with “that son-of-a-bitch” ever again.”

At their final debate in late October, Carter started in on Reagan for having advocated, “on four different occasions,” for “making Social Security a voluntary system, which would, in effect, very quickly bankrupt it.” After Reagan responded with a wandering anecdote about an orphan and someone’s aunt, Carter bore in and attacked Reagan for opposing Medicare. Now, Carter warned, Reagan was trying to block national health insurance.

As Perlstein tells it, Reagan looked at Carter smilingly, his face betraying “a hint of pity.” Then the old cowboy with an easy, genial chuckle, delivered the knockout blow. “There you go again!” he said, beaming. The audience gave a “burst of delighted laughter. … Jimmy Carter was being mean again.” A few days later, the Republican candidate won in an electoral vote landslide.

The 1980 election marks the end of this book, and the end of Perlstein’s four-volume saga on the rise of conservatism in America. One hopes he does not stop there. Reaganland is full of portents for the current day.

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