Introduction Reagan and the 1980s

  • Cheryl Hudson
  • Gareth Davies
Chapter
Part of the Studies of the Americas book series (STAM)

Abstract

Decades and presidencies provide convenient ways of making rough sense of American historical time, of dividing it into manageable chunks and imparting to each chunk a distinct character, and a particular role in the broader sweep of the nation’s development. A number of twentieth-century decades lend themselves to both approaches: Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge nicely embody some dominant images of the Roaring Twenties; Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership and response to the Great Depression are a key theme of the 1930s; Dwight Eisenhower is as good a symbol as any for the Cold War Consensus of the 1950s; and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson aptly convey the restlessness and reform ferment of the 1960s.

Keywords

Republican Party Great Society Policy Legacy Cordless Phone Republican Convention 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    See Martin Anderson, Revolution (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).Google Scholar
  2. Dinesh D’Souza, Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (New York: Free Press, 1999).Google Scholar
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  5. 2.
    See Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years (New York: Norton, 1992).Google Scholar
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  10. 3.
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  14. 4.
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  15. 6.
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  16. 7.
    This argument animates many of the essays in W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham, eds., The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and its Legacies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003).Google Scholar
  17. 9.
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  18. 10.
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  20. 11.
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  21. 15.
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  22. 18.
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  23. 23.
    On the debate, see Lou Cannon, Reagan (New York: Putnams, 1982), 295–298. For its political impact, see Gallup Poll: 1980, 242.Google Scholar
  24. 26.
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  25. 27.
    Quoted in Gareth Davies, See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 253.Google Scholar
  26. 31.
    Robert Samuelson, The Good Life and Its Discontents, 1945–1995 (New York: Random House, 1997), 88–204, 263–264. See also “How Much Do Americans Trust Government” at http://mwhodges.home.att.net/trust. htm, which contains a very instructive graph. See also poll data at: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/poll0120115.html.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  • Cheryl Hudson
  • Gareth Davies

There are no affiliations available

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