"REAGAN, RONALD: THE POLITICS OF SYMBOLISM" (ROBERT DALLEK).   Term Paper ID:22834 Click to get this paper

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Paper Abstract: Critical review of liberal author's biography of conservative president. Paper Introduction: Robert Dallek (1984). Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism. Cambridge: Harvard University. "Reaganism," wites Dallek in the preface of this book (p. vii), "is not merely an aberration that will disappear with the end of the Reagan presidency, it is an important force in the nation's life that cries out for explanation." In combination with the subtitle of the book, this line states both the overall objective of the work and the author's perspective on its subject. Dallek is not concerned simply with writing a political biography of the former president, who was running for re-election at the time of the book's publication, but with examining and explicating what he views as an extraordinary disconnect between reality and popular perception in the Reagan Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Just as this turbulence died down,about 1973-74, it was followed by a different set of unpleasantexperiences: oil crises, high inflation, and the Iranian hostage crisis of1979-8 , which was widely symbolized as "America held hostage." Moreover, beneath the surface was a quiet crisis which has becomefully evident only over time. The policy agenda of Gingrich Republicanism is not unlike that ofReagan Republicanism, but the atmosphere and symbolism are far different.Reaganism was genial; Gingrichism is sharp-edged. This need not be regarded as a weakness; it is obvious that anappropriately selective body of statistics and other data could be found toportray Reagan in either a favorable or an unfavorable light. Robert Dallek (1984). What explains this anti-Soviet evangelism? It is not simply that Reagan himself, now afflicted with Alzheimer'sdisease, has gone into semi-seclusion. Reagan's rhetoric andactions suggest that in some fundamental way it is a symbolic protest against the state of his own nation. What Dallek sees as his reaction tofears of being like his father was thus well-calculated, in the 196 s and197 s, to appeal to suburban Americans' fears of their own helplessness anddependency in a world that seemed to be running out of control. He finds great appeal in self- reliance, and he strongly dislikes dependency, partly, currentpsychological understanding suggests, out of unrecognized fears thathe is like his father (p. 129-3 ). The second half of the 196 s and the early 197 s saw race riots, campusunrest, the hippie subculture, political assassinations, the militarydebacle in Vietnam, and Watergate. How are we to evaluate Dallek's portrayal of Reaganism? Reagan's America would no longer tolerate dependency and disorderwithin; it would "just say no" not only to drugs, but to welfaredependency, crime, and the demands of minority groups for compensatoryspecial treatment. vii), "isnot merely an aberration that will disappear with the end of the Reaganpresidency, it is an important force in the nation's life that cries outfor explanation." In combination with the subtitle of the book, this linestates both the overall objective of the work and the author's perspectiveon its subject. viii-ix). 14) Reagan, at one time an enthusiastic supporter of FDR's New Deal, hadthrough the course of the 195 s drifted steadily to the political right.In effect, he preceded the tendency of the "silent majority" of middle-Americans by about a decade or two. Indeed, in the context of the central question raised by Dallek, therole of Reagan as symbol, the relevant question about Reaganism is perhapsnot its material consequences but its psychological consequences. His father, ifnot precisely a ne'er-do-well, was a man who never achieved success, andwho had a long-term struggle with alcoholism, an alcoholism expressed notviolently, but in relative incapacity and dependency. This isthe language of Reagan's critics. Specific policyinitiatives were almost incidental to Reaganism; as expressed in the"Contract with America" they are central to Gingrichism. In Dallek's view,Reagan's idealization of self-reliance, the success ethic, andentrepreneurial capitalism was a reaction to these elements in hisbackground. The standard of living of most Americans,which had roughly doubled in the postwar generation, ceased to rise, andindeed has remained largely stagnant from that time till the present. Hefinds it unsurprising that Reagan, though Midwestern by background, waspolitically a creation of California: In California, where the modern consumer culture was strikinglyevident, upwardly mobile middle-class suburbanites, who had migrated fromthe South and Midwest objected to high taxes, wasteful government spending,unbalanced budgets, special help to minorities at the expense of the majority, and "indecent" demonstrations on college campuses ... But Dallek's book is not, primarily, a factual examinationof the Reagan record. 31). ContemporaryRepublicanism is nearly a rebuke to Reagan, implicitly acknowledging thatReagan changed very little; that the politics of symbolism was in the longrun not enough.----------------------- 7 [attitudes which] couldbe summed up as antigovernment, antiminority, and conformist (p. vii). Dallek is not concerned simply with writing a political biography ofthe former president, who was running for re-election at the time of thebook's publication, but with examining and explicating what he views as anextraordinary disconnect between reality and popular perception in theReagan presidency. The election of 198 , inwhich Reagan won his first term, followed a period of about fifteen yearsin which the national life had been by first alarming and then frustrating. The California suburbia of the 195 s through 197 s was, broadlyspeaking, an attempt to reproduce the imagined values of the small-townMidwest, from which so many of its people, including Reagan himself, hadoriginated. Hedoes not hide this perspective; it is clear from the opening page of thepreface, where he asserts that Reaganism stands in policy terms for "largetax cuts for the rich, less government help for the poor, weakerenforcement of civil rights, fewer controls on industry" (p. But conservatives, too, might well view Reagan as having mostsignificant for what he symbolized, and argue that whatever he accomplishedor did not accomplish in specific terms, his greatest accomplishment was toleave America a more confident and serene society than he found it. "Reagan'spolicies are less a response to actual problems at home and abroad than ameans of restoring traditional values to the center of American life andboosting the self-esteem of Reaganites (pp. In some ways, the actual world of the 197 s already prefigured thatof the 199 s. This has not proven to be the case with Reagan. There was, however, a more complicated aspect to Reagan's ownbackground, and to the public sentiments upon which he played. Yet conservative admirers of Reagan and Reaganism might well reachsimilar overall conclusions about the essentially symbolic nature ofReaganism. If Reagan had not existed, Dallek seems to suggest, hewould have had to be invented, so great was the need for Americans in the198 s to project a certain image of themselves. So transient was the the"Reagan Revolution" that, a decade after Dallek wrote, another Republicanrevolution had to come to Washington, this time in the form of acongressional majority embodied by House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Reagan offered the public not so much a program as an expression ofwill. Reagan hadgrown up in modest circumstances, near the edge of poverty. Today, more than a decade later, we are able to consider thatquestion from a perspective of hindsight that was unavailable to Dallek.From that perspective, it may be suggested that Reaganism has proven farless durable than either Reagan's critics, like Dallek, or his admirersmight have supposed in the mid-198 s. About 1973, the nation's long-term rate ofeconomic growth abruptly slowed. Abroad, Reagan's America would no longer allow itselfto be pushed around, but would stand up tall and strong. His anti-Soviet attitude arises as much from inner conservative tensions about government authority and social change as from any realistic understanding ofSoviet aims and capabilities (p. Conservatives would undoubtedly point to facts which in theirview support his policies, just as Dallek points to facts that contradicthis policies. "Reaganism," wites Dallek in the preface of this book (p. FDR, who was at once Reagan's modelof presidential action and the originator of the political culture whichReagan wanted to undo, died in office, yet his shadow extended for decades. But Reagan saw the Soviet Union as thefocus of threat, and in Dallek's view, that threat was in fact a projectionof the nation's internal weaknesses. Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism.Cambridge: Harvard University. What is most striking in the middle199 s is the degree to which Reaganism has evaporated from the nationalcultural and political scene. Moreover,Dallek was writing in Reagan's first term in office, long before theultimate consequences of Reagan policies, good or bad, could yet bediscerned. It should beclear from the material from the text quoted above that Dallek comes toReagan from an unsympathetic, broadly liberal political perspective. The United States had in fact been pushed around mostconspicuously not by the stagnating Soviet Union, but by previously obscuregroups such as Iranian mullahs. Dallek'sargument from the outset is that Reaganism was a state of mind, and onethat in his view might long outlast the Reagan presidency. 129).Reagan's Soviet Union was not the stagnant, essentially conservative andstatus-quo power of the Brezhnev era, but the symbolic essence of what hefeared runaway liberalism and permissiveness would make of America if leftunchecked: In the eyes of Reagan and other conservatives, the communism of the Soviet Union represents the end point, the logical culmination of dangerous currents--big government,atheism, and relaxed moral standards--that they see running so powerfully in America (pp. The retrospective image of this heartland milieu was aptlycaptured by Reagan's own genial, aw-shucks public image. This prolonged experience of alarm and anxiety, in Dallek's view,provided the essential preconditions for the emergence of Reaganism. Reagan's childhood implanted in him powerful feelings about dependence and independence, loss of control, and self-possession. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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