The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics [Paperback]

Matthew Dallek (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195174070 | ISBN-13: 978-0195174076 | Publication Date: April 8, 2004

Ronald Reagan's first great victory in the 1966 California governor's race is one of the pivotal stories of American political history, a victory that seemed to come from nowhere and has long since confounded his critics. Just four years earlier Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown was celebrated as the "Giant Killer" for his 1962 victory over Richard Nixon, and his liberal agenda reigned supreme. Yet in 1966 political neophyte Reagan trounced Brown by almost one million votes, marking not only the coming-of-age of Reagan's new conservatism but also the first serious blow to modern liberalism. Drawing on scores of oral histories, thousands of archival documents, and personal interviews with participants, Dallek offers a gripping new portrait of the 1960s that is far more complicated than our collective memory of that decade.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination for governor of California in 1966, The New York Times called the GOP's decision "against all counsels of common sense and political prudence." That comment probably deserves to go down in history as one of the most spectacularly wrong political assessments ever to appear in a newspaper. As historian Matthew Dallek writes in The Right Moment, his account of Reagan's campaign against Democratic governor Pat Brown, "Ronald Reagan redefined politics like no one since Franklin Roosevelt." The future president's "stunning, out-of-nowhere victory," in which he beat Brown by nearly a million votes, altered the course of American politics for at least a generation: it signaled liberalism's descent into the fatal politics of 1970s McGovernism, announced the rebirth of the conservative movement out of the ashes of Barry Goldwater's crushing defeat two years earlier, and foreshadowed Reagan's greater accomplishments on the national stage.

Before becoming governor, Reagan faced the formidable challenge of persuading mainstream voters that an affable actor could indeed perform effectively as a chief executive. But an even trickier task, in Dallek's telling, was how Reagan rescued the conservative movement from its own extremist elements. There was, for instance, the John Birch Society, a right-wing organization whose thousands of members would form a part of any successful conservative coalition, but whose leaders believed in the plainly absurd idea that President Eisenhower was a Communist agent. Reagan at once had to harness this group's energies and keep his distance from its nuttier beliefs. This he accomplished with a deftly written one-page statement repudiating some of what the group's leaders had alleged and courting their followers at the same time. By zeroing in on this half-forgotten episode of Reagan's career, Dallek shows how the consequences of one election can reverberate throughout the years. This book is almost as much about Pat Brown as it is about Ronald Reagan--fans of Ronald Radosh's Divided They Fell, for instance, will surely enjoy that aspect of it--but most readers will be drawn to The Right Moment for its detailed chronicle of how Reagan got his start in politics. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The so-called Reagan revolution, according to Dallek, did not begin in 1980 when Reagan won the presidency, but in 1966 when the conservative Hollywood actor, a former FBI informant with no political experience, won a landslide victory in the California gubernatorial race against two-term Democratic incumbent Pat Brown. In this briskly readable, insightful but unsurprising study, Dallek (who has been a columnist for Slate and a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, Salon and other publications) argues with some justification that the California election was a watershed event. Reagan, positioning himself as a champion of law and order, and as a bold-thinking conservative with fresh ideas and programs, distanced himself from the Republican Party's extremist right wing. Tapping into widespread frustration over high taxes, crime and bloated budgets, genial, telegenic ReaganAand the conservative movementAlearned how to push the right buttons on key issues, turning welfare, urban riots and student protest into cudgels that could be used to bash liberals. Meanwhile, Brown greatly underestimated Reagan's appeal, and though Brown had a strong record on education and civil rights, his faith in the ability of big government to solve social ills was being challenged by entrenched poverty, the Watts riots and campus sit-ins. In Dallek's analysis, Reagan benefited immensely from a liberalism that had moved too far in a direction most voters were unwilling to go; Reagan's rhetorical commitment to smaller government and his support for a strong military budget would resonate for decades. Dallek's evenhanded, incisive critique will compel both liberals and conservatives to rethink their strategies. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195174070
• ISBN-13: 978-0195174076
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #852,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Objective History of the Gipper's First Big Game, December 10, 2000

By 

Thomas Stamper (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics (Hardcover)

Much is made of our current leaders being products of the turbulent 1960s, but author Matthew Dallek reminds us, in this very evenhanded account, that Ronald Reagan's political fortune was due largely to that same turmoil. Dallek makes a good point that the impact of Reagan's 1966 win of the California governorship has been ignored by current journalists and historians. Today, the 60s counterculture is romanticized by the baby-boomer media, like Stonewall Jackson is lionized by the Daughters of the Confederacy. But in the 1960s, civil unrest wasn't too fashionable. People were frightened. Enter Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was considered a lightweight by Democrats and liberal Republicans, and on top of that, he spoke in the same right-wing tone that supposedly cost Barry Goldwater the 1964 Presidential Election. A few conservative businessmen thought differently. They liked the speech Reagan gave in the last days of the Goldwater campaign. They thought that Reagan was the right mix of personality, intelligence and political persuasion, and could pull a big upset in the 1966 election versus the 2-term Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown.

We all know that Reagan pulled that upset, but unlike the other histories, Mr. Dallek shows us how he pulled it off. He also provides a look into the Brown campaign, and the many misfortunes Brown suffered in the two years prior to his defeat. Nothing could go right for the seasoned Brown, while nothing went wrong for the neophyte Reagan. It would seem that destiny produced Ronald Reagan. In this book, you'll see how Reagan and destiny took care of Edmund "Pat" Brown.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'd give it a sixth star if I could, November 28, 2000

By 

Patrick Ruffini - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics (Hardcover)

Matthew Dallek's The Right Moment was a highly enjoyable, well-written and insightful view of the turmoil in California politics in the mid-60s. Dallek's effort is a great work of historical scholarship, synthesizing different topics like the John Birch movement, the student uprisings at Berkeley, the Watts riots and the internal rifts in the Democratic Party into a coherent and compelling narrative of "what went wrong" with 1960's liberalism. The Right Moment also gives us a taste of what is to come with the rise of Ronald Reagan, and as such, it builds an important bridge between two very different eras, the 1960s and the 1980s. The only thing that can be said against the book is that the cover dramatically oversells the Reagan aspect -- at least two thirds of the book deals with Pat Brown and his struggle with liberalism's internal demons. Nonetheless, it is a joy to read, and even contains gems on Reagan you won't find anywhere else.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Started Here, October 23, 2002

By 

Nikos A. Leverenz (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics (Hardcover)

This account of Ronald Reagan's first electoral triumph is rather remarkable for its evenhanded approach to Reagan and his opponent in the 1966 California gubernatorial election, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown. Reagan is a polarizing figure for most authors --- from the Leftist chorus that maintains the untenable assertion that he was an "amiable dunce" who got lucky, to those who have penned recent volumes that are more like hagiographies than serious pieces of non-fiction. Titles like Dinesh D'Souza's "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became and Extraordinary Leader" and Peggy Noonan's "When Character was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan" speak for themselves.

Dallek does a superb job of profiling lesser-known political characters like Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty and Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet." His narrative of Watts and Berkeley is succinct and dispassionate, two characteristics that defy the usual cant readers can expect from accounts of the 1960's tumult. The introduction and the epilogue seem hurried; they do not adequately address Reagan's signature impact on the conservative movement or the larger civic debate.

"The Right Moment" stands alongside the works of Lou Cannon in the Reagan literature in terms of its readability, use of primary sources, and latent objectivity.