Ronald Reagan: Conservative Visionary

PHOTO BYPH1 SAMMY PIERCE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

By: Surajreet Singh

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”

The race was between a former actor turned Republican icon against an unpopular Democratic nominee during a time of economic struggle, major foreign policy challenges in the Middle East and Asia and domestic strife at home. What comes to mind would be the 2016 contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but instead, the year is 1980. Ronald Reagan, the popular Republican governor and staunch conservative, is facing off against Democrat President Jimmy Carter. Gallup polling in the week prior to the election had Reagan trailing Carter by 9 points, a seemingly insurmountable lead. However, on Election Day, the results were stunning. Reagan and the Republicans swept into power, carrying 44 states and 43 million votes against Carter’s 35 million, a dominating performance against the incumbent and the beginning of modern American conservatism. But how long before his name is torn down from buildings and his legacy expunged? Will history consider him a visionary or a villain?

His entry in politics occurred when he was still an actor, testifying before Congress about the presence of communist sympathizers in the film industry and serving as an FBI informant in the mid 1940s. While initially a Democrat and supportive of left-wing causes, he began a shift to the right in the 50s onward, supporting Republicans Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon in their presidential runs. When hired by General Electric in 1954 to host a weekly drama series, Reagan began speaking on issues that would form the foundation of modern American conservatism: support for the free market, limited government, lower taxes and the defense of values. He soon quit and registered as a Republican.

After a strong speech in support of Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican Convention, Reagan’s political career had launched. He was tapped to be the Republican candidate for the governorship in California and won the race in the 1966 election. Reagan’s time as a governor was a preview of things to come, as he championed pro-life policies, lower taxes, limited government, gun rights and other issues. During this time, he stood as a bulwark against the infamous Berkeley campus protests that resulted in the death of a student, sending in the national guard to quell the protests. Instead of apologizing, he doubled down and laid the blame at the hands of university administrators and those who “let young people think they had the right to choose the laws they would obey, as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.” This won him support among the more right-wing members of the Republican Party and set him up for his presidential runs.

Reagan fell just short of becoming the Republican nominee in the 1976 election. This did not deter him, running again in 1980 on the same platform but with newer political circumstances. He came into office after the economic devastation wrought by the oil crises in the 1970s and at a critical moment internationally, as the Iranian Revolution and the new regime became prosecuting Americans while the Soviet problem remained. Domestically, Reagan’s solution could be summed up by one phrase: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He believed if taxes were lowered and government spending were reduced, economic growth would occur through more investment and lead to higher employment and wages. This new policy position, known as “Reaganomics” became a critical feature of the new Republican Party and led to one of the largest peacetime economic expansions in American history. During Reagan’s administration, the unemployment rate declined 7.5 percent to 5.4 percent amid a recession in 1982-83 and GDP growth averaged over 3 percent with a high of 8.6 percent in 1983.

On foreign policy, the United States adopted what would become known as the Reagan Doctrine, aggressively combatting communist movements around the world through covert/overt aid to anti-communist factions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, often supporting regime change. For Reagan, the Soviet Union’s downfall was of utmost importance. On this, he was vindicated. Fostering a strong relationship with Soviet leader Mikael Gorbachev and calling upon him to “tear down this wall” in West Berlin in 1987, Reagan’s approach set the stage for the USSR’s collapse in 1989 and cemented his legacy as one of America’s greatest presidents.

The strength of Reagan’s success in his 1984 re-election, winning 49 states against Democratic nominee Walter Mondale despite worries about his age, forced a period of soul searching for the opposing Democratic Party. His free market policies through deregulation and lowering the impact of government was a critical part of his immense popularity, forcing the Democrats to abandon their prior commitments to labour and embrace neoliberalism under Bill Clinton in the 1990s. His nickname, the Teflon President, speaks to his political might. No matter what his opponents tried, nothing could take him down.

For all his success, it is critical not to cover his faults. Economically, the country was becoming a powerhouse, but Reagan’s promises of balanced budgets never occurred. His White House continually sent budgets to Congress that helped to grow the deficit and by the time Reagan left office in 1989, the federal debt had gone from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion. The increase in wealth for American families had been focused primarily in the upper sector of income earners and, critics argue, predominantly among white families. Additionally, the 1981 tax cuts instituted by Reagan were gradually reversed with tax increases in the years after to slowly make up for the increasing deficits.

Where Reagan is credited with taking down the Soviet Union, the Reagan Doctrine had pushed the United States into the support of movements or regimes that were the antithesis of American values, such as the UNITA movement in Angola or the mujahideen in Afghanistan that were involved in considerable human rights abuses. Additionally, his administration struggled to deal with the fallout from the Iran-Contra affair, a mechanism through which the US had sold arms to the Iranians to fund the Nicaraguan contra rebels, which had been outlawed by Congress. Many top officials resigned while the Teflon President survived relatively unscathed.

However, such faults should not take away from the strength of Reagan’s legacy. As we enter the third decade since Reagan’s years as president, he has cast a long shadow as successive politicians often invoke his ideas and policies in their own runs for the White House. Republicans and Democrats alike have struggled to break free from Reagan’s economic platform and often ran on them with great success. It was only until the Obama and Trump years that the limited government approach favoured by Reagan was challenged, first through Obama’s health reform and Trump’s trade policy. Despite that, Reagan can be credited for allowing for the voices of conservatives to be more mainstream in the political sphere. His impact on modern conservatism has remained strong and deservedly so.