STUDIES OF THE AMERICAS

Transcription

1 STUDIES OF THE AMERICAS edited by James Dunkerley Institute for the Study of the Americas University of London School of Advanced Study Titles in this series are multidisciplinary studies of aspects of the societies of the hemisphere, particularly in the areas of politics, economics, history, anthropology, sociology, and the environment. The series covers a comparative perspective across the Americas, including Canada and the Caribbean as well as the United States and Latin America. Titles in this series published by Palgrave Macmillan: Cuba s Military : Revolutionary Soldiers during Counter-Revolutionary Times By Hal Klepak The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America Edited by Rachel Sieder, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell Latin America: A New Interpretation By Laurence Whitehead Appropriation as Practice: Art and Identity in Argentina By Arnd Schneider America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism Edited by Gary L. McDowell and Johnathan O Neill Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives Edited by Jens R. Hentschke When Was Latin America Modern? Edited by Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart Debating Cuban Exceptionalism Edited by Laurence Whitehead and Bert Hoffman Caribbean Land and Development Revisited Edited by Jean Besson and Janet Momsen Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic Edited by Nancy Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca and David Treece Democratization, Development, and Legality: Chile, By Julio Faundez The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, By Iván Jaksić The Role of Mexico s Plural in Latin American Literary and Political Culture: From Tlatelolco to the Philanthropic Ogre By John King

2 Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico Edited by Matthew Butler Reinventing Modernity in Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, By Nicola Miller The Republican Party and Immigration Politics: From Proposition 187 to George W. Bush By Andrew Wroe The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the Americas Edited by Kenneth C. Shadlen and Diego Sánchez-Ancochea Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies Edited by Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, By Steven High The Federal Nation: Perspectives on American Federalism Edited by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip J. Davies Wellbeing and Development in Peru: Global and Local Views Confronted Edited by James Copestake Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America?: Societies and Politics at the Crossroads Edited by John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America Edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi Fiction and Documentary Filmmaking in Latin America: Visual Synergies Edited by Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective By Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals John Kirk and Michael Erisman Law and Politics in Latin America: The Difficult Path towards Limited Government and Rights-Based Citizenship By Pilar Domingo

3 RONALD REAGAN AND THE 1980S PERCEPTIONS, POLICIES, LEGACIES Edited by Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies

4 RONALD REAGAN AND THE 1980S Copyright Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies, All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ronald Reagan and the 1980s : perceptions, policies, legacies / Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies [editors]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Reagan, Ronald. 2. Reagan, Ronald Political and social views. 3. Reagan, Ronald Influence. 4. Presidents United States Biography. 5. United States Politics and government Nineteen eighties. I. Hudson, Cheryl. II. Davies, Gareth Bryn. E877.R [B] dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: November ISBN (ebook)

5 For Alan and Liz Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies

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7 Contents Acknowledgments List of Contributors ix xi Introduction: Reagan and the 1980s 1 Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies Part I Perceptions 1 Ronald Reagan: Communicating the America Within 19 Dan Rather 2 Only an Actor: Memories of a Reagan Biopic 29 Godfrey Hodgson 3 Just Say No : Drug Abuse Policy in the Reagan Administration 41 Peter G. Bourne 4 Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War 57 Jack F. Matlock, Jr. Part II Politics and Policies 5 Reagan, Nuclear Weapons, and the End of the Cold War 81 Simon Head 6 Reaganomics and its Legacy 101 Iwan Morgan 7 African American Protest during the Reagan Years: Forging New Agendas, Defending Old Victories 119 Stephen Tuck 8 Reagan s Religious Right: The Unlikely Alliance between Southern Evangelicals and a California Conservative 135 Daniel K. Williams

8 viii CONTENTS 9 Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party: Responses to Realignment 151 Robert Mason Part III Legacies 10 The Baptist and the Messiah: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 175 Dominic Sandbrook 11 Transforming the Presidency: The Administration of Ronald Reagan 191 Joel D. Aberbach 12 The Road to Mount Rushmore: The Conservative Commemoration Crusade for Ronald Reagan 209 Niels Bjerre-Poulsen 13 Toward a Historiography of Reagan and the 1980s: Why Have We Done Such A Lousy Job? 229 Gil Troy Epilogue: Ronald Reagan and the Historians 249 M.J. Heale Index 263

9 Acknowledgments The progenitor for this volume is Hugh Davis Graham, who stimulated an T interest in the public policy of the twentieth century in general, and the Reagan administration in particular for both of us, in different ways. We remember him fondly. We would like to thank the director Paul Giles, the staff, and the benefactors of the Rothermere American Institute for making this book possible. Special thanks to Catherine Morley for originating the idea of a conference on Ronald Reagan and for all of her imaginative inputs. Thanks too to Andrea Beighton, Laura Lauer, and Ruth Parr for helping to execute it so successfully. Ruth s publishing expertise and her enthusiasm for this project encouraged us to make it happen. The librarians at the Vere Harmsworth Library have been extraordinarily helpful. James T. Patterson s contribution to the conference from which this volume springs was enormous; his support is greatly appreciated by us. We are grateful to Iwan Morgan and James Dunkerley for their commitment to this volume from the outset. Everyone at Palgrave Macmillan has been supportive and extremely patient. We would especially like to thank Joanna Mericle and Luba Ostashevsky. We owe a great debt to Michael Heale for all the time and energy he invested in the project and for access to his boundless knowledge of American political history.

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11 Contributors Joel D. Aberbach is Distinguished Professor of political science and public policy and director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. His latest book Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch (Oxford University Press, 2005), coedited with Mark A. Peterson, won the 2006 Neustadt Award for the best reference work on the American presidency. He was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in In he was the John G. Winant visiting professor of American government at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Balliol College. Niels Bjerre-Poulsen is an associate professor of American history and director of the Center for the Study of the Americas, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He has published widely in both Danish and English and his recent works include Right Face: Organizing the Conservative Movement, (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002) and Bush s Amerika (People s Press, 2006). Peter G. Bourne is visiting scholar at Green College, Oxford University, and vice chancellor emeritus of St. George s University in Grenada, West Indies. Serving as special assistant to the president for health issues in Carter s White House, he simultaneously held the job of director of the Office of Drug Abuse Policy (ODAP), responsible for coordinating the law enforcement, treatment, and foreign policy aspects of America s drug policy. He has published extensively, including two political biographies Fidel: A Biography of Fidel Castro (Dodd, Mead, 1986) and Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to Post Presidency (Simon and Schuster/Scribner, 1996). His official website is Gareth Davies is a university lecturer in American history at St. Anne s College, Oxford University. He is the author of From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Kansas, 1996), which won the Ellis Hawley Prize, and of See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan (Kansas, 2007). Simon Head is an associate fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. He has been a contributor to the New York Review of

12 xii CONTRIBUTO RS Books since His most recent book is The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age (Oxford, 2005). M.J. Heale is emeritus professor of American History at Lancaster University and associate fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Among his many publications are Twentieth-Century America: Politics and Power in the United States, (Arnold, 2004); The Sixties in America: History, Politics and Protest (Edinburgh, 2001); and McCarthy s Americans: Red Scare Politics in State and Nation, (Macmillan, 1998). Godfrey Hodgson is an associate fellow of the Rothermere American Institute and former director of the Reuter s Foundation Programme at Oxford University. Previously, he was the Observer s correspondent in the United States, insight editor at the Sunday Times, presenter of Channel Four News, and foreign editor of the Independent. Among his books are More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century (Princeton, 2004); The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America (Houghton Mifflin, 1996); The Gentleman from New York: Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Houghton Mifflin, 2000); and America in Our Time (Knopf, 1978). Cheryl Hudson is a doctoral candidate in history at Vanderbilt University and an associate fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. As the assistant director of academic programmes at the RAI, she coordinated the 2005 conference Ronald Reagan and the 1980s. Robert Mason is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority (University of North Carolina Press, 2004). He is currently working on a book about the history of the Republican Party during the twentieth century. Jack F. Matlock, Jr. is former George F. Kennan professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He served as ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for European and Soviet affairs on the National Security Council staff from 1983 to 1986, and ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to He is the author of numerous articles and books on Russian literature and history and U.S. Russian relations, including Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Random House, 1995). His latest book is Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended d (Random House, 2004). Iwan Morgan is professor of U.S. studies and deputy director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. His publications include Nixon (Oxford, 2002); Eisenhower versus the Spenders : The Eisenhower Administration, the Democrats and the Budget, (St Martin s Press, 1990); and Beyond the Liberal Consensus: A Political History of the United

13 CONTRIBUTO RS xiii States since 1965 (St. Martin s Press, 1994). He is currently writing a book on presidents and the budget deficit from Jimmy Carter to George Bush Jr. Dan Rather is anchor and managing editor of Dan Rather Reports on HDNet. His many publications include The American Dream (Harper, 2002); The Camera Never Blinks (William Morrow & Co., 1977); and The Camera Never Blinks Twice (William Morrow & Co., 1994). Dominic Sandbrook is a member of the Oxford University history faculty and a columnist for the London Evening Standard. Formerly a lecturer in history at Sheffield University, he is a prolific writer and broadcaster. His books include a biography of Senator Eugene McCarthy (Knopf, 2004), two bestselling histories of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, Never Had It So Good (Little, Brown, 2005) and White Heat (Little, Brown, 2006), and a forthcoming history of the United States in the 1970s, Spirit of 76 (Knopf, 2009). Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University in Canada. He specializes in modern U.S. political history and is the author of Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents s (Basic Books, 2008); Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady (Kansas, 2006); Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980 s (Princeton, 2005); Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons (Kansas, 2000); and See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (Harvard, rev. ed. 1996). Stephen Tuck is university lecturer in American history at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He has published on American race relations, racial protest, and white supremacy from the Civil War to the present, including Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, (Athens, 2003). He is currently writing an overview of the struggle for racial equality in the United States from emancipation to Hurricane Katrina. Daniel K. Williams received his PhD from Brown University and is an assistant professor of history at the University of West Georgia. His published articles examine the history of American evangelicalism and the rise of the contemporary conservative movement. His book Republican Faith: The Making of America s Christian Right will be published by Oxford University Press in 2009.