It’s an interesting thing to go back and read American popular fiction from the 1970s—especially, in my experience, near-future science fiction of the period—and see the view presented there of America and its future. What you find, or at least what I’ve found, is (to use Jimmy Carter’s least favorite word) a deep malaise, a sense that the US had become (to quote one of Spider Robinson’s characters) a “tired old fraud” whose decline was inevitable. Across various genres, from liberals like SF’s Robinson to conservatives like the political novelist Allen Drury, the theme and tone is the same, varying only between “woe is us” and “good riddance”: America is fading, decaying, declining, its time at the peak of its success near its end.It’s interesting, as I say, because the actual 1980s ended up looking so vastly different from the 1980s envisioned by novelists in the 1970s, the era of Watergate, gasoline rationing, the hostage crisis in Iran, and, yes, the famous “malaise” speech; rather than ongoing economic collapse and a continuing loss of influence abroad, the decade saw the reassertion of American strength and power, both economically and diplomatically/militarily. By 1984, “It’s morning in America” would be a potent campaign theme, and the decade would end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and talk of America as the world’s only superpower.Why? A change in leadership. The election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980, bearing a message of optimism about America’s future and confidence in American strength, combined with economic policies which have set the terms for a quarter-century of economic growth and prosperity, was a major part of this. In Britain, which was having similar problems in the ’70s, it was Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979. And though his authority and influence were largely of a different kind, it’s surely no coincidence that around the same time Bishop Karol Wojtyla took the throne of St. Peter as Pope John Paul II; he made no economic policies and wielded no armies, though he had many wise things to say about both economics and the world scene, yet surely there have been few people in recent decades who have done more to inspire people and give them a sense that there is reason to hope than he did.It is a telling thing that the Democratic Party has now nominated a presidential candidate who gives us the vision of Jimmy Carter in the visionary language of Ronald Reagan. Whether it’s telling because it means that liberalism has changed, or because it means that we’ve forgotten that it hasn’t, remains to be seen.
This definitely depends on how you view Reagan and his legacy. I’m a lot less positive than many seem to be nowadays. For every good thing, I feel like I can list three or four major things about his presidency and the era it represented that were very negative and which have long-term negative consequences.
I would say that Reagan is sort of the figurehead of a way of doing business politically and economically that has to die out if we are not going to become another crumbling empire (which is inevitable in the long-term, but no one wants to be the generation to live through it).
I don’t put forward liberalism as it now exists as the answer, but I do think it is closer to an answer than conservatism as it seems to exist now (that is, not really *conservative* on governmental power or economics or much else…just on abortion and homosexuality, seemingly). I think that in the purply mix there are hopeful bubblings of good ideas and real solutions – if only the two totteringly monolithic parties we have would listen.
I will certainly grant your critique of how far off its moorings the Republican Party, and certain conservative groups, have gotten; that’s why there’s a movement rising to reclaim conservatism from its hijackers and uncouple it as much as possible from the top-down Establishment way of doing things.
That said, I don’t think this really does depend on whether you agree with Reagan or not. Certainly, there were a lot of bad things to come out of his presidency (though I would argue that many if not most of those were continuations of the status quo ante, and things which neither party, for whatever reason, has chosen to address). Even so, the contrast between 1979, when Iran fell, the hostages were taken, and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, is dramatic. Whatever else went wrong during that decade (and there were a great many things that did), and whatever else needs repair as a consequence, there were a few big, critical things that went really right.