Ronald Reagan had his eye on the Oval Office well before he was elected president in 1980. The sixteen years prior to his election were some of the most tumultuous in American history, and that era made his election and highly successful presidency possible. In this first of two volumes, author Steven F. Hayward chronicles how liberalism's inability to address the problems America was facing in the Sixties and Seventies led to Reagan's election. "The Age of Reagan" examines the political, social, foreign policy, and economic history of the 1964-80 era and sets it beside Reagan's biography of those years.
Reagan voted for Franklin Roosevelt in his young adulthood but became more conservative in the 1950s, and Hayward notes what led this conversion. Conservatism was viewed as a dour philosophy at mid-century, but in the course of his political career Reagan helped make American conservatism a more optimistic, uplifting philosophy.
The country lost faith in its institutions in the sixteen years following 1964, and Hayward's history of the era of the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter presidencies is superb and well-researched, with many little-known anecdotes that bring home what life in the country was like then. America had just suffered the trauma of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the next decade-and-a-half saw a social revolution, excessive spending and regulation, inflation, defeat in Vietnam, recessions, an energy crisis, a rough patch in the Cold War, and the Iranian hostage crisis.
America came to see that liberalism not only did not solve the problems the country was facing but created new ones as well, and this era saw Reagan's long road to the White House. Hayward recalls Reagan's political career and critique of liberalism during this time, including his governorship of California, his brief try for the presidency in 1968, and his serious challenge to President Ford for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976. Hayward occasionally makes smart, deft comparisons between this era and others.
Hayward explores the personal characteristics of Reagan that led him to the presidency and why 1981 was the right time for him to become president. The pessimism of the Seventies and the increasing conservatism of the country in the years leading up to 1980 was a true case of the right candidate appearing at the right time. Reagan was seen as an implausible president in many quarters, and there were several places in the book that led one naturally to think of Trump during the last few years, despite the differences between the two—while history does not repeat, it does rhyme. The author recalls Reagan's successful march to the 1980 GOP nomination and his huge win over Jimmy Carter in the fall.
"The Age of Reagan" would be a great read for anyone interested in postwar American history, but it would especially benefit young conservatives who want to learn about the history of their movement and how the stage was set for the election of an iconic conservative and one of America's greatest presidents.
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