Customer Reviews

The Illusion of a Conservative Reagan Revolution

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this book, author Larry Schwab does a marvelous job of exposing the myth of the conservative Reagan Revolution as being almost entirely false.

Most liberals and conservatives agree on what Reagan's presidency meant for America. According to the conventional story, the 1980s saw a dramatic reversal of the previous five decades' political trends, ie the growth of Big Government from the New Deal through the Great Society eras. The Eighties also supposedly saw a massive political and ideological realignment of the American people. All the trends were allegedly in the direction of the brand of conservatism espoused by Reagan and his supporters.

Most liberals and conservatives agree on these things. They disagree on whether these things were good or bad. Conservatives argue that Reagan's massive assault on Big Government resulted in a boom of prosperity based on laissez faire, a reduction in the federal government's size and power, and a return to traditional values. Liberals argue that Reagan's destruction of the welfare state led to a Social Darwinist dystopia where rich Wall Street types prospered and everyone else was relegated to varying degrees of pauperhood, while the New Right theocracy did its best to undo the civil rights of women and minorities.

Both of these views are wrong, as Schwab shows. In reality, the "Reagan Revolution" was mostly rhetorical, not real. There was very little real change in a conservative direction. Yes, if one focuses purely on rhetoric, Reagan and many of his allies sounded quite conservative and different from their predecessors. But if you bother to look at actual policies and results - as Schwab has so painstakingly done in this book - you quickly realize that the conventional wisdom about the Reagan Revolution is wrong. In fact, there really wasn't a Reagan Revolution at all.

There was no dramatic shift in party alignment. Despite Reagan's two electoral wins by hefty margins, the Democrats continued to win in most areas other than the presidency. For example, they kept control of the House of Reps throughout the Eighties, and had the Senate for part of the decade as well. In addition, they controlled more state governments during the time period than the Republicans did.

Using mountains of polling data, Schwab shows there was no dramatic, consistent rightward movement in public opinion, either. People then, as now and probably always, have inconsistent views and are conservative on some things but liberal on others. Nor was Reagan particularly popular. His approval numbers were generally below average for a post-WWII president. His landslide victories were mostly due to good timing - in 1980, anti-Carter sentiment swept him into office, and the 1984 election happened at a time when the economy was recovering dramatically from a nasty recession early in his first term.

The chapter on policy is alone worth the price of the book. Here Schwab shows dozens of different ways in which, not only did the federal government's size and power not decrease at all during Reagan's two terms, but on the contrary, it grew significantly across the board, in almost every area. By contrast, the late-1970s actually saw slower growth of government and more deregulation than did the 1980s. No major New Deal or Great Society program was significantly shrunk, let alone eliminated. And while Reagan famously cut taxes in his first term, he later helped pass several major tax increases which more than made up the difference. Throughout most of his two terms, the federal government consumed a greater percentage of GDP in taxes and spent a greater proportion of GDP than it had in the Seventies. Nor were these increases primarily due to military spending. For much of the Reagan era, social spending grew more than military spending.

The book can be a little dry and repetitive at times, but it's so important as a necessary corrective to the popular narrative of the Reagan era, and so chock-full of pertinent facts and figures to back up its argument, that it deserves five stars.