The Reagan Era

December 1, 2014
At the beginning of the 1980s, Reaganism aspired to “liberate the sleeping giants of American wealth and enterprise from the fetters of social obligation, and to make such a flight from obligation unashamed and free from rebuke.” In assessing its success, Rossinow (Visions of Progress), professor of history at Metropolitan State University, delivers a sweeping account of America’s recent past. Central to his sense of Reaganism is economic policy, in which Reagan proved to be most legislatively effective—though Rossinow meticulously enumerates the harm of supply-side economics. He is equally critical of Reagan’s foreign policy, particularly his almost pathological obsession with Central America; the section exposing Reagan’s complicity in the Iran-Contra scandal is one of the book’s most damning portions. In demystifying Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War, Rossinow argues that the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. occurred despite Reagan’s confrontational foreign policy, not because of it. Far from protecting the United States, programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative threatened to derail whatever peace Gorbachev seemed interested in pursuing. Rossinow explains how the hedonist excess of Reaganism led to the cultural traditionalism that defined subsequent generations of the GOP, and though critical of Reagan and his acolytes, he demonstrates the powerful and lasting impact of Reaganism in American politics and values.