I could list all the bad things Reagan did as President, or all the corrosive impacts he’s had in the years since, but I think that would be missing the ultimate point as to why I think he was such an HP.
The Reagan political playbook (utilised to immense success) was ultimately based off demonising the vulnerable: poor people, black people, unions, industrial workers, and gay people, to name some of his favourite groups to pick on. I would contend that choosing easy targets such as these to appease the middle class majority who felt somehow threatened by and/or jealous of them is the epitome of cowardice, and why Reagan completely lacked the qualities required to be a truly great leader.
As much as people bemoan the the current culture war alignment (and I think Elliott County, KY, voting for the right-wing candidate while Darien, CT, votes for the more left-wing one is just as insane as anyone), I think it is better than the Reagan-era class alignment. Reagan very successfully, using the above strategy, gathered up the affluent suburbanites (ranging from the merely centre-right in the burbs of places such as Philadelphia and Chicago, to his rabidly right-wing base in Orange County and the Sunbelt), as well as the legendary Reagan Democrats, who had got a bit of money, and desperately wanted to feel middle class, which they did by joining in with the bashing of marginalised groups. I think this gets at some of the irony that MT Treasurer hints at in the link to the article in his excellent post above (although Youngstown was never really representative of that group in the same way as Macomb was), as well as the obvious future echoes to the Trump era.
But this is why the Reagan coalition was so toxic; it was, in essence, like a completely rigged game, with the confident and upwardly mobile majority against the voiceless, marginalised, substantial minority. It was like high school bullying, and, somewhat perversely, this was apparently manifested in the high school culture and politics (especially in middle-class and affluent suburbia) of the 1980s (I have heard a number of people talk about this, ranging from 90s indie rockers talking about going to high school in the 80s in interviews to Badger on this forum), a reflection of the stifling conformity of the decade in which outsiders were relentlessly picked on. I have often thought that being a liberal or a poor kid or other social outcast in a well-off section of 80s Orange County* as a teenager must have ranked as among the most hellish social experiences possible. Fortunately, that suburban world is now dead as these places have greatly diversified. In his book
Which Side Are You On?, Thomas Geoghegan talks about organised labour as being the counterculture of the 80s. I think there is a certain forlorn beauty in these macho middle-aged men in a dying subculture being the #Resistance of their day, but at the same time it captures the hopelessness of being on the wrong side in Reagan’s America.
FF and much better President than everyone since.
I’m surprised that you think so highly of Reagan, considering how you’ve spelt out your vision of a Republican Party which is a sensible check on the more outlandish currents within the Democratic (a vision which I have a lot of sympathy for, even if I think it is a bit optimistic given the party’s current state). It was Reagan after all, who destroyed any hope for this kind of GOP; while the Rockefeller faction had passed its sell-by date at that point, it was by no means inevitable that the GOP had to end up as a coalition of the various particularly toxic elements Reagan worked to bring together, including the Religious Right (whom, remember, Goldwater hated with a passion) and the white resentment/ex-segregationist Southern crowd; there was of course frequent overlap between the two. Not to mention, of course, Reagan being the first to pursue (again, very successfully) the kind of fact-free, responsibility-free rhetoric which has come to define the modern GOP, to again reference MT Treasurer. I think it is a stretch to say that Trump is Reagan’s spiritual successor, but by no means inaccurate to say that, without Reagan, the kind of GOP which gave rise to Trump would not have been possible.
*The irony is that movement conservatism, which ultimately succeeded in mostly overturning the New Deal Order, would have never have existed without the Sun Belt suburbs, which never would have existed without the massive investment and development the New Deal brought to the South and West. Similarly, the Reagan Democrats, in their desperate quest to be truly middle class, voted for a man who helped destroyed the ladder from working class to middle class.
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