collapsedsquid:

Reagan’s victory was supposed to mark a turning point for Republicans, toward a conservatism that was “optimistic and popular,” Hemmer writes. Sure enough, Republicans still like to invoke Reagan’s name. But Hemmer shows that Reaganism as an ideology and an attitude collapsed almost as soon as he left office; his name became a mantra without actual meaning. What happened, and why did it happen so quickly?

When Reagan first ascended to the White House in 1981, what made his approach distinct wasn’t his conservatism, with its hodgepodge of small-government libertarianism (less money for education) and big-government anti-communism (more money for the military). Hemmer locates Reaganism’s core in his particular style: flexible, pragmatic, relentlessly cheerful.

Reagan hated to be associated with any policy that was unpopular, retroactively trying to pin the blame for slashing the funding for school lunches on a bureaucracy that was out to get him (“none of this was true,” Hemmer writes). He was open to immigration reforms and liked free trade. His faith in the revenue-generating magic of tax cuts was a reflection of his sunny outlook — tides would rise, boats would lift (only they didn’t, and after cutting taxes inflated a ballooning deficit, he raised them again).

While some Republicans found the Reagan presidency winning, others found it infuriating. Hemmer reminds us that despite the mythology that has flourished since, Reagan got castigated by plenty of conservatives. In 1984, Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia railed against the president for being too focused on “governing” and too enamored of unity, when he should have been “forcing a polarization of the country.” A decade later, as the House minority whip, Gingrich would engineer a landslide victory for Republicans that would elevate him to speaker of the House.

Morning in America to Kill America to save it