Summary
The Reagan years, he says, "defy easy definition as 'conservative,' 'hawkish' or 'pro-business,' let alone 'Republican.'" Indeed, to the extent that Reagan is still seen as a success in foreign affairs, it may have to do not just with his military buildup and condemnation of the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire but also with his willingness to recognize the opening created by the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev. Since 1980, Bill Clinton was the one and only Democrat to reach the White House (even if Al Gore would have gotten there absent ballot snafus in Florida and the intervention of conservative Supreme Court justices).
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Extract
The Right in the Rearview Mirror
FLYING HIGH: REMEMBERING BARRY GOLDWATER BY WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., Basic Books, 208 pages, $25.95
NIXONLAND: THE RISE OF A PRESIDENT AND THE FRACTURING OF AMERICA BY RICK PERLSTEIN, Scribner, 881 pages, $37.50THE AGE OF REAGAN: A HISTORY, 1974-2008 BY SEAN WILENTZ HarperCollins, 564 pages, $27.95RIGHTWARD BOUND: MAKING AMERICA CONSERVATIVE IN THE 1970S EDITED BY BRUCE J. SCHULMAN AND JULIAN E. ZELIZER, Harvard University Press, 384 pages, $49.95THE LEFT FIRST IGNORED THE American right, then imitated it, and then became obsessed with it.That pattern is likely to reproduce itself in reverse, even if conservatives are currently stuck in the first stage: They are so persuaded that ours is a "center-right country," to use a phrase Karl Rove is fond of, that they cannot take the center-left seriously. Just as a legion of liberals initially dismissed the resurrection of Richard Nixon and the rise of Ronald Reagan as aberrations, so many conservatives are now dismissing the parlous state of their creed and the Obama phenomenon as an accident of George W. Bush's presidency.The parallels between 1980 and 2008 are extraordinary. Liberals once asked: How could Jimmy Carter's presidency be held against us, since Carter was no liberal? Conservatives are asking why George W. Bush, whom they now see as a big-government big-spender, should be held against conservatism. Our...See the full content of this document
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