In his new book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Thomas Frank asks why working-class Americans routinely vote for culturally conservative Republicans and against their own economic interests. It was Reagan who made such votes routine. Cannier than many left-wing intellectuals, he intuitively grasped that people usually vote less for purely rational, material reasons than out of the kind of fears, hopes, dreams and fantasies that many leftists find foolish or reprehensible. As the French philosopher Raymond Aron put it in the mid-1950s, back when Reagan was still a TV pitchman, “It is a denial of the experience of our century to suppose that men will sacrifice their passions to their interests.” Reagan knew this in his bones, and he stirred up visceral passions — wrapping himself in the flag, playing to the yearning for a return to “traditional” values, celebrating the American Dream of hitting it big. “What I want above all,” he once said, “is that this remains a country where someone can always get rich.”
When Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, he radically recast our political iconography, creating a political framework in which the right gets to stand for optimism and fun — it urges you to buy that SUV — while liberals are stuck being defeatist and practical — it scolds you about bad gas mileage. The great exception to this was Bill Clinton, who used the Reagan playbook to become statistically more popular than Reagan himself. No matter. In the grand panorama of history, Reagan is the giant — our most important president since FDR. He tugged our entire political system so far to the right that Richard Nixon now looks like a socialist. Clinton may have been a crack politician, but caught within a post-Reagan political universe, he largely did The Gipper’s unfinished business — balancing the budget, declaring an end to the era of big government, even funding Star Wars missile defense. Where The Man from Hope left precious little legacy beyond a talented wife, we’re still living with the people Reagan put at the center of our national life — all those Gingriches, Santorums, Ashcrofts and DeLays.
Although George H.W. Bush followed Reagan into the Oval Office, George W. Bush is his true successor. He pushes the irresponsible conservative agenda that The Gipper stood for all along, only without the same good grace or pragmatism. Twenty years ago, I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d feel even a moment’s nostalgia for Reagan and his doltish presidency. Thanks to churlish Dubya, I now do. But only a flickering moment. Then all the stupid facts and unpleasant memories start washing over me, and I recall what it actually felt like to live through the Reagan Years.
