Reagan era
The Reagan Era or Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a permanent impact. In Wilentz's (2008) view, Reagan dominated this stretch of American history in the same way that President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal legacy dominated the four decades that preceded it. The Reagan Era included ideas and personalities beyond Reagan himself; he is usually characterized as the leader of a broadly based conservative movement whose ideas, whether good or bad, dominated national policy making in areas such as taxes, welfare, defense, the federal judiciary and the Cold War. Liberals generally lament the Reagan Era, while conservatives generally praise it and call for its revival in the 21st century.
Campaigning for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Obama interpreted how Reagan changed the nation's trajectory:
- I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.[1]
Dates
Most historians begin the era in 1980, when Reagan was elected president; usually they look into the 1970s for the origins of the Reagan Era. The ending point is usually either 1993 (when Bill Clinton took office), or 2008, with the election of Barack Obama.[2] The Clinton presidency (1993-2001) is often treated as an extension of the Reagan Era, as is the Bush presidency (2001-2009).[3] Historian Eric Foner noted that the Obama candidacy in 2008 "aroused a great deal of wishful thinking among those yearning for a change after nearly thirty years of Reaganism."[4]
International
Some scholars take an international perspective, linking the Reagan Era with the Thatcher Era in Britain. As socialist scholar explained,
- Throughout many of the capitalist democracies in Western Europe and in North America, the recession that began with the sharp rise in petroleum prices in 1973-74 signaled an epochal shift in the patchwork of growth- based economic and social policies....The demise of Keynesianism which followed, meant far more than the obsolescence of an economic doctrine that had been used to justify a broad range of economic policies. It represented a significant retreat from a vision of society-the Keynesian welfare state-that had motivated state strategies to harmonise interests through social policy, to politically regulate the market economy and thereby reduce class and diverse social conflicts, and to promulgate for the state a tutelary role in securing business and trade union acquiescence (and less commonly approval) for a limited set of important economic policies.[5]
Historiography
Historian Doug Rossinow reported in 2007, "As of this writing, among academic historians, the Reagan revisionists—who view the 1980s as an era of mixed blessings at worst, and of great forward strides in some renditions—hold the field."[6] Other scholars agree on the importance of the Reagan Era.[7]
See also
Further reading
- Carlisle, Rodney P. and J. Geoffrey Golson. Turning Points - Actual and Alternate Histories: The Reagan Era from the Iran Crisis to Kosovo (2007)
- Conlin, Joseph R. "ch 50 "Morning in America: The Age of Reagan 1980-1993", in Conlin, The American Past: A Survey of American History (2008)
- Ehrman, John. The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (2005),
- Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order: 1964-1980 (2007); The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989 (2009)
- Troy, Gil. The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (2009)
- Wilentz, Sean. The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (2008)
- Woods, Randall B. "Chapter 13: The Culture of Narcissism: The Reagan Era," in Woods, Quest for Identity: The U.S. Since 1945 (2005)
References
- ^ Quoted in "In Their Own Words: Obama on Reagan," New York Times
- ^ John Kenneth White, Barack Obama's America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era (2009); Marjorie Williams and Timothy Noah, Reputation: portraits in power (2008) Page xiv
- ^ Jack Godwin, Clintonomics: How Bill Clinton Reengineered the Reagan Revolution (2009)
- ^ Eric Foner, "Obama the Professional," The Nation Jan. 14, 2010
- ^ J. Krieger, "Social policy in the age of Reagan and Thatchers," Socialist Register 1987
- ^ Doug Rossinow, "Talking Points Memo," in American Quarterly 59.4 (2007) p. 1279.
- ^ See Troy (2009); Hayward (2009); Wilentz (2008); Charles L. Ponce de Leon, "The New Historiography of the 1980s", Reviews in American History, Volume 36, Number 2, June 2008, pp. 303-314; Whitney Strub, "Further into the Right: The Ever-Expanding Historiography of the U.S. New Right," Journal of Social History, Volume 42, Number 1, Fall 2008, pp. 183-194; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and Making of History," Enterprise & Society, Volume 8, Number 4, December 2007, pp. 986-988.
