Reagan & Madonna The 1980s were defined by conservative president and envelope-pushing culture

By DAVID TURNER, Correspondent - THE (RALEIGH, NC) NEWS AND OBSERVER, March 13, 2005.

Political historians have developed a winner-take-all approach in evaluating presidencies. Grand eras, such as "the age of Roosevelt" (FDR) or "the age of Reagan," suggest that one ideology totally eclipsed the other. However, the diffuse nature of American society does not allow for a sweeping change of everything.

This understanding informs Gil Troy's masterly study of Ronald Reagan's presidency -- the best single book we have on his administration to date. In "Morning in America," Troy, a professor of history at McGill University, describes Reagan as a conservative ideologue who recognized the limitations of his office. Rather than try -- and fail -- to force his worldview down the national throat, Reagan increasingly accommodated himself to the culture at large. He picked his spots, using "vivid and accessible" rhetoric based on traditional conservative themes of patriotism and personal probity to challenge the anti-authority and anti-capitalist trends of the late 1960s and 1970s.

At the outset of Reagan's presidency, his critics (and admirers) tended to overestimate his powers. They feared (or hoped) that he would attempt to roll the clock back to the 1920s, repealing the social safety nets woven by New Deal and the Great Society. Critics warned that he would endanger world peace with a bellicose policy toward the Soviet Union. Even as they overhyped his ability to force change, Reagan's critics simultaneously underestimated him, describing him, in the words of Democratic fixer Clark Clifford, as an "amiable dunce."


In fact, Reagan followed the path of the idol of his youth, FDR, whose light touch and good-natured approach made him a highly popular and effective president. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' appraisal of FDR was equally true of Reagan -- both men had "a second-class intellect but a first-rate temperament."

Though committed to ideological reform, Reagan understood the limitations of the American presidency. As conservative economist Milton Friedman brilliantly observed while admonishing right-wingers who pressed Reagan to go further, "You want a principled man, which Reagan is. But he is not a rigidly principled man, which you don't want."

As Troy reminds us, the 1980s demanded such flexibility from a conservative president. Cultural trends tended to highlight bizarre and less than conventional lifestyles. It was, after all, the age of Michael Jackson, Prince, Boy George and Madonna. Those who feared a jeremiad against feminists, gays and minorities soon had their concerns allayed. On the other hand, in the consumer-driven '80s, even the perverse was incorporated in such a fashion to make libertinism seem comic and nonthreatening. This "culture" was so artfully packaged that it was as if Don Juan, the Marquis de Sade and Charles Bukowski were transformed into the boys next door.

What Troy hints at is that Reagan accepted that the country was different from the America he grew up in. And he was more in tune with this new America than many of his critics. While many liberals depicted the nation as divided between the haves and have-nots, Reagan saw that the country was becoming ever more prosperous as class divisions became ever more attenuated.

While Reagan espoused homespun values, he understood that consumerism and celebrity-worshipping had been vibrant staples of American culture since the end of World War II. Reagan, an actor and master pitchman for General Electric before entering politics, understood the boundaries of hard-right ideology.

Moreover, Reagan adjusted to the world of the "Big Chill" with its former radicals turned "yuppie" and to the multicultural normality of Bill Cosby. During his first years, Reagan, indeed, had tried to push some hard-edged conservative views on such issues as abortion and the environment. After a recession in 1982, Troy concedes that "on so many levels, Reagan lost his war to undo the 1960s."

By 1984, Reagan preferred to ride the good feeling of the economic upsurge back into the White House with scarcely a mention of reforming American society. Preferring a more libertarian approach which stressed economic growth nurtured by a benign state, Reagan nicely made common cause with consumerist American culture. By the end of his administration, it was less about a grand vision than grand openings.

But this does not suggest he was a failure -- not even close to it, Troy argues. Reagan restored the confidence of Americans in the presidency by embracing commonly held perceptions. Even though computer technology and VCRs would have come to market even if Jimmy Carter had been re-elected, it was Reagan who rejoiced in them. Carter, no less than Herbert Hoover, lost the respect -- even the tolerance -- of the American public because of his inability to inspire or lead in times of crisis. Moreover, Reagan, in foreign policy, instinctively knew that Americans appreciated an assertion of strength while hoping for an avoidance of war. In 1983 and 1984, he fulminated against terrorists in Lebanon while wisely deciding to cash in his chips before the involvement got deeper.

Troy asserts that Reagan was able to make headway in persuading Americans to abandon notions of the ever-expanding "nanny" state. True the size of government has only grown since he left office. But Reagan derailed liberal dreams that once seemed inevitable -- especially universal health care. And it is hard to imagine welfare reform taking place without his legacy.

Troy counters Reagan's critics by pointing out that the so-called "era of greed" of the 1980s was more than equaled by Democrats "narcotized by Clinton, corrupted by power, dazzled by the Dow" in the 1990s. As well, he produces the most brilliant analysis of George H.W. Bush's administration in print when he points out the directionless nature of his presidency. It is instructive that Reagan is remembered as the man "who won the Cold War" even if the Berlin Wall came down on Bush I's watch.

Indeed, Reagan's broad-brush approach gained vindication in the Republican Congressional landslide of 1994 and the Clinton co-optation. Troy argues that no president since has been able to hit with a master's touch the collective aspirations of Americans as Reagan did.

He has a point. Since 1988, presidential elections have resembled overly large high school student body races with their emphasis on personality and tactics. If changing the tone of the debate and restoring national confidence was a requirement for greatness, then Reagan more than fulfills it. The modesty and the political acumen and instincts of Reagan hit the spot. He also recognized what government could do and what was not possible or desirable. As Evita Peron, in the opera "Evita," admonishes Che Guevara: "there is evil ever around, fundamental, system of government quite incidental." Reagan was able to achieve so much because he understood his limited ability to master postmodern America.

David Turner is a professor of history at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va.