This is the third book in what is so far a trilogy for Rick Perlstein, which trace all the trends that make up the hodgepodge that is American conservatism. Though this label is worn proudly, it really is nothing so much as a reaction against the New Deal, Civil Rights, Unions and other programs that expanded the middle class after 1932. There really is no association with Burke and other continental thinkers. It really is little more than a coalition of fears and phobias, which despite being in power for nearly 40 years (1978), has been rather ineffectual in resisting eventual social change.
The story of how all of this happened is both fascinating and horrifying at the same time and not unlike Frankenstein, Barry Goldwater starts out as the beneficiary of New Deal dollars, which he appreciates, although not the way in which they are presented to him and the customers necessary to maintain his family's Arizona Department Stores. In the 60s he finds that by tailoring his message to those opposed to the Civil Rights movement, he can gain support for the Republican Party in the South, although losing it nationwide. Richard Nixon, clearly the Dr. Frankenstein embarks on his Southern Strategy to sharpen the differences in America and to undermine the consensus politics of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. Really if there was ever a time and a moment to marginalize (at long last) racism in America, it was in the late 1960s. Up until this point, racists had no place to go. However Richard Nixon changed all that and really merely for political power, not due to any conviction. However, if Richard Nixon, egged on by the likes Patrick Buchanan (the most prominent of Nixon's hunchbacks), was the mad scientist, blithely creating a poisonous political environment without a thought of the consequences, Ronald Reagan and his various fellow travelers were the monster that would divide America and create the dysfunctional political structure we have today, where idealogical purity, low taxes for the rich and an imaginary world in which America never does a sordid thing when a Republican controls the White House.
Nixon had sought to use the Goldwater/Reagan wing of the party and the old Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond as a means to gain political power, which really was the extent of his ideology. His fall, not unlike that of another president 30 years later, unleashed the barbarian hoards on the nation. Nixon clearly felt that he could control them and did as long as he was in office, distracted by Watergate and Impeachment these various poisons hatched out on the body politic.
Gerald Ford comes off rather well, if somewhat at times politically inept. Even though he was willing, as a believer in consensus politics to accommodate Reagan and his followers, he was held to a higher standard of ideological purity probably for no other reason that he was determined to win election to a term in his own right in 1976. Reagan by this point was an old man in a hurry. It is a pity that a moderate like Ford did not crush Reagan in 1975, it might have made a difference, but as Perlstein points out, people were slow to understand the danger that Reagan and his fellow travelers represented. The vastly greater importance of the primaries, not covered as much as one might like in this volume, also facilitated the rise to prominence of people whose quest for certainty and ideological purity rivaled at the time probably only Mao or Pol Pot.
Reagan himself is heavily featured in this narrative despite losing the contest between himself and Ford, he is the man of the future in our story, yet also of a past that never existed. Few can blame the attraction of nostalgia in the uncertain 1970s. One also cannot blame Jane Wyman for running towards the divorce courts since Reagan really had only three or four narratives which he endlessly reshaped and retold either on the radio or at $5,000 a speaking engagement in the late 70s. Reagan, like Blanche du Bois did not want reality, he wanted magic and the United States triumphant even and especially when it wasn't. It apparently was good enough for 15 minutes or so a day on the radio, but probably tiresome after the first hour or so, certainly unbearable day in and day out. Reagan made some interesting conclusions, pornography apparently caused New York City's debt problem (not an eroding tax base, not Robert Moses, not a recession). The cornerstone of the right wing's magic kingdom of wishful thinking that reached its climax in Iraq was laid by Reagan and his allies, as innocent of the world as any character in Sinclair Lewis or Mark Twain.
Rick Perlstein chronicles the slide into political decadence as a result of decadence in a fashion probably only equaled by Robert Caro's books on Lyndon Johnson. I look forward to reading any and all subsequent works in this series. I must confess I found this work so fascinating that I would stay up until 3:00-4:00 AM. This is an excellent book.
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