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queenluaWhen I saw the press hype over this new Reaganland book, I thought to myself, what wonderfully serendipitous timing—I've had this nagging urge to learn more about the history of the Reagan era, and everyone says this book is really good, so I'll pick it up and find out more!
The book starts off in 1976, which is sensible enough—gotta establish the background before getting to Reagan!—and then I kept reading, and reading, and... then somehow I was still in 1976, even though my ereader told me I was 20% of the way into the book, and I thought, what the hell.
...so, yeah, that was the first time I clicked back to notice (1) the book's subtitle, which makes it abundantly clear this is about the run-up to Reagan's election, not Reagan's presidency, and (2) dear GOD this thing is over a thousand pages long.
("Lua do you just download ebooks compulsively without even checking the most basic information about them—" YES, OKAY, I KNOW I HAVE A PROBLEM)
Anyway, at that point I felt kinda committed, and was having a good enough time, so I finished reading the thing anyway. I still have no idea what the 80s were like, but learning all about the Carter administration (like... the entire Carter administration... this history is narrow in scope but incredibly comprehensive; I feel like it covered literally every national politics thing within that four-year timespan), and Reagan's rise to prominence, was plenty interesting all on its own.
The first half, in particular, was full of really interesting and new-to-me-stuff—I didn't really know much about Carter outside of "kinda unpopular president," so it was really fascinating to see such the Obama-esque energy and enthusiasm when the guy got elected, the dude's lovably-weird approach to the presidency, and the beginnings of the US's neoliberal economic turn (which Reagan accelerated, but like, Carter's the one who put Volcker in as chair of the fed, etc).
The latter half of the book starts getting into the nitty-gritty of Carter and Reagan's respective campaign trails, and thus starts to drag, with endless recountings of "and then the Reagan campaign did this one political gaffe, and then the Carter campaign did this other political gaffe, and then the Reagan campaign did a different gaffe," on and on and oh my God maybe this sort of thing is unavoidable in a political history but it's just so boring.
ANYWAY. It's been a few months since I finished reading this one, so my memory's probably fuzzy on some of the finer details, but here's some high-level highlights:
* It is very fucking annoying how good Reagan was at speeches and clever turns of phrase. Perlstein gives us multiple examples of "here's the speech his aides gave him, now here's the speech he actually gave after making his own changes," and it is so much better every single time. Like this dude just exuded charisma. Near the end of the book, when Carter just opts to not practice for the presidential debates, I was doing this absolute pterodactyl screech of horror, because holy shit dude this guy is going to destroy you if you don't do something—but Carter just had this benighted confidence that the American public would see through his campaign's lies (the Reagan campaign, uh, kinda lied a lot). After all, when asked about Carter's platform versus Reagan's (without names attached), they liked Carter's more!
....siiiiiigh...
Carter seems like an incredibly nice and trying-hard dude, and he really did have a lot of technical competence, but goddamn the guy was bad at being a politician when it could've mattered.
* Speaking of which: I've always heard that the Iran hostage crisis was the big reason Carter lost his reelection, but the book says the facts don't really bear that out—his approval rating was still pretty high even after that disastrous rescue attempt. His debate performance, however... ouch.
* I had no idea about this age-old beef between the Reagans and the Bushes??? Goddamn did these two hate each other; book has plenty of spicy deets on Times When They Were Catty Bitches To Each Other
* Other minor personality detail: it's super weird to me how conflict-averse Reagan was? There's multiple instances where he clearly just needs to fire some guy, but he hates firing people or saying mean things to their faces, so he just, like... waffles for several months and tries to make their lives miserable or sends Nancy to do his dirty work or w/e instead of just having A Single Honest Conversation? I guess the history of weird west coast wimpy passive-aggression runs deep lollollol
* In general, I really appreciated the book's deep and detailed treatment of the public opinion and culture around both unions and the feminist movement in the late 1970s. It's... painful reading, in a lot of ways. I grew up long after the feminist movement had splintered hopelessly, and seeing this glittering moment when a lot of feminist policy was considered good bipartisan common sense... before it all gets crushed by Phyllis Schlafly and other right-wing agitators... well, ouch. And wrt unions, it was interesting to see how much unions of an earlier time were seen as synonymous with participation in democratic society itself. Not that unions didn't have problems, but, they were a live and crucial option in a way that they just haven't been for a long time (though the various unionization movements I've seen even in the handful of months since I finished this book have been very encouraging; hell yeah).
* related to the above point: this Bella Abzug chick sounds so badass:
* but yeah in general this book is just hugely informative if you want to know about a whole host of forces that came together to boost the New Right, and still play a big role today. The first formation of huge, influential PACs? Check. The first big national panic/reaction against gay rights (hi, Anita Bryant)? Check. The importance of data-harvesting and mailing lists for coordinating national campaigns? Check. The origins of Protestantism's about-face on the issue of abortion, and the subsequent explosion of the pro-life movement? Check. The "boardroom Jacobins" that broke from the previous government-business cozy alliance and started demanding drastic concessions? It's all here, baby.
* Speaking of which: how's this for an early example of elite capture of identity politics?
* Most based Carter moment: dude overcoming impossible odds to successfully forge the Camp David accords, when literally no one thought any such peace agreement in the Middle East would be possible. Least-based but also kind of hilarious Carter moment: dude convening to Camp David with a bunch of randos in 1979 to discuss the nation's "crisis of confidence," I guess as some way to kinda workshop the nation's spiritual problems or something, and then gave a totally bizarre speech afterwards. Fuck, is Carter my new favorite president? I cannot understate how WEIRD this dude is, and he flubbed a lot of economic calls—but also, no one really knew a good way to handle inflation at that time, so presumably anyone in his position would've been screwed, and he was very sincerely opposed to corruption and in favor of sensible thrift—which made him hugely popular at the beginning of his term, but uh, also earned the ire of a lot of elites who were relying on certain corruption-y things to pad their salaries... whups :D;;;
* he also had a radio show for a while where rando Americans could just phone in with questions, which led to this charming SNL skit
* it's extremely funny to me that this one BYU president refused to let economics professors teach Keynesianism during his tenure. such heresy!
* trivia: apparently noted lua-favorite poet James Dickey did a reading the night before Carter's inauguration
so yeah, good book, would actually try to read the subtitle first in the future tho
The book starts off in 1976, which is sensible enough—gotta establish the background before getting to Reagan!—and then I kept reading, and reading, and... then somehow I was still in 1976, even though my ereader told me I was 20% of the way into the book, and I thought, what the hell.
...so, yeah, that was the first time I clicked back to notice (1) the book's subtitle, which makes it abundantly clear this is about the run-up to Reagan's election, not Reagan's presidency, and (2) dear GOD this thing is over a thousand pages long.
("Lua do you just download ebooks compulsively without even checking the most basic information about them—" YES, OKAY, I KNOW I HAVE A PROBLEM)
Anyway, at that point I felt kinda committed, and was having a good enough time, so I finished reading the thing anyway. I still have no idea what the 80s were like, but learning all about the Carter administration (like... the entire Carter administration... this history is narrow in scope but incredibly comprehensive; I feel like it covered literally every national politics thing within that four-year timespan), and Reagan's rise to prominence, was plenty interesting all on its own.
The first half, in particular, was full of really interesting and new-to-me-stuff—I didn't really know much about Carter outside of "kinda unpopular president," so it was really fascinating to see such the Obama-esque energy and enthusiasm when the guy got elected, the dude's lovably-weird approach to the presidency, and the beginnings of the US's neoliberal economic turn (which Reagan accelerated, but like, Carter's the one who put Volcker in as chair of the fed, etc).
The latter half of the book starts getting into the nitty-gritty of Carter and Reagan's respective campaign trails, and thus starts to drag, with endless recountings of "and then the Reagan campaign did this one political gaffe, and then the Carter campaign did this other political gaffe, and then the Reagan campaign did a different gaffe," on and on and oh my God maybe this sort of thing is unavoidable in a political history but it's just so boring.
ANYWAY. It's been a few months since I finished reading this one, so my memory's probably fuzzy on some of the finer details, but here's some high-level highlights:
* It is very fucking annoying how good Reagan was at speeches and clever turns of phrase. Perlstein gives us multiple examples of "here's the speech his aides gave him, now here's the speech he actually gave after making his own changes," and it is so much better every single time. Like this dude just exuded charisma. Near the end of the book, when Carter just opts to not practice for the presidential debates, I was doing this absolute pterodactyl screech of horror, because holy shit dude this guy is going to destroy you if you don't do something—but Carter just had this benighted confidence that the American public would see through his campaign's lies (the Reagan campaign, uh, kinda lied a lot). After all, when asked about Carter's platform versus Reagan's (without names attached), they liked Carter's more!
....siiiiiigh...
Carter seems like an incredibly nice and trying-hard dude, and he really did have a lot of technical competence, but goddamn the guy was bad at being a politician when it could've mattered.
* Speaking of which: I've always heard that the Iran hostage crisis was the big reason Carter lost his reelection, but the book says the facts don't really bear that out—his approval rating was still pretty high even after that disastrous rescue attempt. His debate performance, however... ouch.
* I had no idea about this age-old beef between the Reagans and the Bushes??? Goddamn did these two hate each other; book has plenty of spicy deets on Times When They Were Catty Bitches To Each Other
* Other minor personality detail: it's super weird to me how conflict-averse Reagan was? There's multiple instances where he clearly just needs to fire some guy, but he hates firing people or saying mean things to their faces, so he just, like... waffles for several months and tries to make their lives miserable or sends Nancy to do his dirty work or w/e instead of just having A Single Honest Conversation? I guess the history of weird west coast wimpy passive-aggression runs deep lollollol
* In general, I really appreciated the book's deep and detailed treatment of the public opinion and culture around both unions and the feminist movement in the late 1970s. It's... painful reading, in a lot of ways. I grew up long after the feminist movement had splintered hopelessly, and seeing this glittering moment when a lot of feminist policy was considered good bipartisan common sense... before it all gets crushed by Phyllis Schlafly and other right-wing agitators... well, ouch. And wrt unions, it was interesting to see how much unions of an earlier time were seen as synonymous with participation in democratic society itself. Not that unions didn't have problems, but, they were a live and crucial option in a way that they just haven't been for a long time (though the various unionization movements I've seen even in the handful of months since I finished this book have been very encouraging; hell yeah).
* related to the above point: this Bella Abzug chick sounds so badass:
Bella Abzug shed support day by day. Her cool, too. At a meeting of Hasidic men, she was asked how she could support perverts. "You want to talk about perverts?" she asked. "Look at all these men wearing fur hats and ear curls." At a beach club in Canarsie, a cardplayer called her a "bigot." She yelled back: "Hitler spread the big lie, too." She got in another screaming match with someone who said cops should have shot looters, then with an old lady who said she didn't care about people like her. "Then go vote for that schmuck we have now" [...]
* but yeah in general this book is just hugely informative if you want to know about a whole host of forces that came together to boost the New Right, and still play a big role today. The first formation of huge, influential PACs? Check. The first big national panic/reaction against gay rights (hi, Anita Bryant)? Check. The importance of data-harvesting and mailing lists for coordinating national campaigns? Check. The origins of Protestantism's about-face on the issue of abortion, and the subsequent explosion of the pro-life movement? Check. The "boardroom Jacobins" that broke from the previous government-business cozy alliance and started demanding drastic concessions? It's all here, baby.
* Speaking of which: how's this for an early example of elite capture of identity politics?
As two radical journalists discovered, the NAACP had originally convened two energy task forces. One, chaired by a consumer activist and made up of civil rights figures, concentrated on energy demand and made liberal recommendations. The other, on energy supply, was chaired by a lobbyist for Mobil Oil, and was stuffed with energy executives. The full NAACP energy conference voted to endorse the liberal group's recommendation. Then, the board of directors overruled them, propounding the other task force's preference for energy deregulation as the all-but-official will of Black America. The NAACP's chairman,
Margaret Bush Wilson, also a board member of the agribusiness giant Monsanto, had stacked the board with people like a retired natural gas executive and the first Black member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who opposed the minimum wage. Following her successful coup, she released a statement averring that the Carter energy policy had been "put together by a lily-white coterie of White House advisors who subscribe to a limits-to-growth philosophy." Replied Representative John Conyers of the Congressional Black Caucus in frustration, "How on earth could deregulation be in the interests of black people?"
* Most based Carter moment: dude overcoming impossible odds to successfully forge the Camp David accords, when literally no one thought any such peace agreement in the Middle East would be possible. Least-based but also kind of hilarious Carter moment: dude convening to Camp David with a bunch of randos in 1979 to discuss the nation's "crisis of confidence," I guess as some way to kinda workshop the nation's spiritual problems or something, and then gave a totally bizarre speech afterwards. Fuck, is Carter my new favorite president? I cannot understate how WEIRD this dude is, and he flubbed a lot of economic calls—but also, no one really knew a good way to handle inflation at that time, so presumably anyone in his position would've been screwed, and he was very sincerely opposed to corruption and in favor of sensible thrift—which made him hugely popular at the beginning of his term, but uh, also earned the ire of a lot of elites who were relying on certain corruption-y things to pad their salaries... whups :D;;;
* he also had a radio show for a while where rando Americans could just phone in with questions, which led to this charming SNL skit
* it's extremely funny to me that this one BYU president refused to let economics professors teach Keynesianism during his tenure. such heresy!
* trivia: apparently noted lua-favorite poet James Dickey did a reading the night before Carter's inauguration
so yeah, good book, would actually try to read the subtitle first in the future tho
no subject
Date: 2022-12-09 02:47 pm (UTC)Loved your summary! Man, you read two particularly dense ones right with this one and the last review. x)
no subject
Date: 2022-12-13 07:30 am (UTC)and yeah i did not really PLAN to writeup two huge doorstoppers one after another but, life finds a way, etc :P
Carter
Date: 2022-12-12 11:58 pm (UTC)Re: Carter
Date: 2022-12-13 07:33 am (UTC)