Ronald Reagan In San Luis County
September 22, 2008 – 8:00 am
Ronald Reagan at a fundrasier for assemblywoman Carol Hallett June 9, 1978. She later served in Washington in his administration. Above photo by Thom Halls/The Tribune
His first step onto the national political stage was stumping for Barry Goldwater’s presidential run in 1964. Then two years later Ronald Reagan did what Richard Nixon could not. He unseated Edmund G. “Pat” Brown as governor of California.
It takes a better political carpenter than me to identify what planks are different in the Nixon-Reagan gubernatorial platforms.Their biggest differences were not their ideology but their charisma.
Nixon always seemed to be working the angles, scrabbling for an advantage. Reagan never appeared he was working that hard.
Quoting Nixonland author Rick Perlstein, concluding a chapter on Ronald Reagan:
“He answered a need: he humiliated the liberals. He would tell young people harassing him with signs reading MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR, that the problem was they looked incapable of doing either. To him a hippie was someone “who dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
In the four eventful years since Nixon challenged Brown in 1962, a lot had changed.
President John F. Kennedy had been murdered in 1963; in the aftermath a large number of Democrats won congressional seats. Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson arm-twisted Congress to pass civil rights legislation and anti-poverty programs in the memory of JFK.
This, in addition to rioting in Watts and other black communities across the nation, galvanized suburban voters into a powerful backlash.
Brown had been on vacation in Europe when the riots broke out and the state’s response to the crisis was disjointed. The burning city was televised live via helicopter, a first.
If that weren’t enough to scare suburban voters, hippies were hitching rides along freeways, protesting the Vietnam War and generally making fun of values middle class voters held dear.
College professor Dr. Timothy Leary exhorted people to take LSD and “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”
Leary’s followers did not make it to the polls, Reagan’s did.
Almost 80 percent of the state’s registered voters showed up to turn out Brown.
A measure of the Reagan charisma was California’s single biggest tax increase was passed during his term, yet anti-tax conservatives canonize his political memory.
Pat Brown’s son, Edmund G. Brown Jr. known as Jerry, would follow Reagan after two terms.
9 Responses to “Ronald Reagan In San Luis County”
By SSG David Medzyk on Sep 22, 2008
By Mike Deaver on Sep 23, 2008
He’s one of the few inmates to succesfully escape from the prison.
By Mitch on Sep 23, 2008
BTW, Reaganomics brought about the greatest growth period in American economics history. Reagan made a deal with the Democrat run Congress; Ill cut less taxes, if you stop spending so much. (see…the President doesn’t spend a dime, Congress always holds the bank card)
As to be expected, the liberal Congress failed to slow or stop spending, but Reagan cut taxes anyway. Despite the reversal of honor from Congress, the government took in more money from taxes than ever (funny how that works, huh?). Clinton rode that tax wave all through the 90’s, despite HIS largest ever tax increase in US history….larger even than FDR’s during WWII. Clinton failed to curb his OWN social spending, but made sure to “cook the books” to make it seem as if there was a surplus….which there really wasn’t. The US slid into a real recession before Clinton left office, and we have NOT had a recession since GWB took office.
This stuff is common knowledge, and is right in front of you if you have any desire to know real history.
Hatred of a politic is such an ugly thing.
Mitch….what does a drug fried mind like Tim Leary have anything to do with Ronald Reagan being in SLO?
By SSG David Medzyk on Sep 23, 2008
By SSG David Medzyk on Sep 23, 2008
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
A lot of people give Reagan credit for a strong economy and the fall of the USSR during his presidency.
Pulitzer prize author Thomas L. Friedman argues persuasively that Ronald Reagan owes a deep debt of gratitude to Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Both were the last presidents view energy conservation as an actionable national security issue. When automotive fleet economy standards went up, oil consumption and prices plummeted, and oil dictatorships trembled. Friedman recalls interviewing a Soviet economist who told him that cheap oil didn’t kill the USSR; it was getting rich selling expensive oil then going bust trying to sell cheap oil that broke the USSR.
Reagan’s contribution to energy independence? He ordered the Carter era solar panels removed from the White House.
The Berlin Wall actually fell a year into George H.W. Bush’s term in the White House but Reagan made the dramatic speech in June 1987 and is gets the credit.
Bill Clinton deserves a share of blame for the Wall Street deregulation mess, but will he get much? Probably not. Several administrations and Congresses have long abdicated their oversight responsibility. Clinton has been effectively out of office for 8 years, plenty of time for the current administration to fix what they thought was broken.
If business is too big to fail, is it really still a business? It is looking like the proverbial Reagan welfare Cadillac is parked on Wall Street.
By David Middlecamp on Sep 23, 2008
Certainly the Dems adopted “free market” deregulatory orthodoxy (and are also in the pockets of financial firms), but Reagan invented it. And, as Dick Cheney helpfully reminded us, “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” though I think he meant politically, not economically.
By Mike Deaver on Sep 24, 2008
In 1992, Clinton signed DEMOCRAT legislation that forced banks and lending institutes to lend to unqualified, and unable to pay minorities, and those that lived in the poverty level.
You may notice, that this was long after Reagan.
Oh, and before you say it….McCain had nothing to do with the Keating 5.
By SSG David Medzyk on Sep 24, 2008
By Brenda on Oct 21, 2008