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.
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Such a wonderful man. America is better and stronger thanks to Ronald Reagan.
The timing of this photo couldn’t be better: Reaganomics just died the most ignominious death possible with the collapse of the investment banks. Admittedly, only part of the national debt can be directly attributed to Reagan, and dependency on foreign oil isn’t entirely his fault, but his cut-taxes-and-spend philosophy has reached its apotheosis during the Bush years and with the $1 trillion bailout of the hopelessly corrupt Wall Streeters.
Let’s not forget Timothy Leary’s SLO connection: While serving time on drug charges, he dranatically escaped from CMC, then fled to Europe.
He’s one of the few inmates to succesfully escape from the prison.
Mike…better read up on your recent US History. Clinton signed legislation that allowed lenders to loan money to people that couldn’t afford it. Nothing at all to do with Reaganomics.
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?
Oh, and at the time, CMC had a minimum security wing, from which he simply walked away. Hardly “dramatic”.
Hi SSG David, Mike and Mitch,
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.
Why did everyone suddenly get deja vu and feel like they were reliving the S&L crisis? Because it was another instance where Reaganesque deregulation was combined with government guarantees (though implicit or after-the-fact in this case), with predictable results.
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.
Mike…wrong again buddy!
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.
R.I.P Ronald Reagan
SSG David Medzyk needs to read more, but I doubt he will. Once an actor, always an actor, and Reagan’s greatest accomplishment was the role he played during the 1980s. Thinking that he was behind the good *or* the bad aspects of his presidency is laughable, since he probably had little idea about where his ship was sailing.
His two terms gave us unaffordable debt, Iran-contra, and a final coat of permanent corruption on a branch of government that was previously only *mostly* corrupt. I give him credit for a great acting job, however. It was better than any of his films.
If you are out there Tom, thanks for posting a comment. Opinions are welcome and encouraged here but I have asked that commentators be civil to each other.
I’d rather read an argument than an insult.