Tributes to Ronald Reagan overlook a large down side of his legacy

Reagan and Bush alike have proved that politicians don't have to be Rhodes scholars to appeal to voters. The American columnist William F. Buckley once remarked he would prefer to be governed by the first 100 names in the phonebook than by 100 Harvard professors, and there is probably a fair degree of wisdom in this comment. However, politicians who don't read their briefs or a variety of opinions are open to manipulation and grave stupidity, as has been shown by Reagan with the Iran/Contra scandal and by Bush during the occupation of Iraq.

Did Ronald Reagan hasten the end of the Cold War? In 50 years time, this will probably be the single most asked question about the Reagan presidency. Reagan made a difference in two rather paradoxical ways. For the earlier part of his presidency, he put the Soviets on the back foot as they struggled to keep up with renewed American military spending and efforts to frustrate Soviet military adventures abroad. This weakened the Soviet economy at a time when Western capitalist economies were rebounding from the recessions of the 1970s. A new type of Soviet leader, General Secretary Gorbachev, faced up to the unsustainable nature of the old Soviet economic model, recognising that it was highly unlikely to triumph over Western capitalism and that internal reform was required.

In the later part of his presidency, Reagan developed a relationship with Gorbachev that facilitated arms negotiations and stopped the Soviets from backing into a hard-line corner. Reagan's tactics at times worked because they were brazen and rather unconventional. The big question, according to the conservative historian John Gaddis, is: did Reagan resist conventional Cold War wisdom "because he was sophisticated enough to see how absurd it was - or because he was so dumb he didn't know what the conventional wisdom was?"

Whatever Reagan's faults or weaknesses, one legacy that is undeniable is his profound impact on the course of late 20th century American conservatism. Before Reagan, American conservatism was far darker and less optimistic, following the European tradition. Reagan offered Californian conservatism: a politics that was sold on its benefits rather than on the need to sacrifice or lower one's expectations. This sunny economic conservatism coupled with unapologetic patriotism and moralistic flourishes brought many life-long Democrats into Reagan's Republican Party, so many in fact that a new term was coined to describe them: the Reagan-Democrats. These new voters enabled the Republicans to cement their dominance in the American South and compete handsomely in the industrial Midwest.

Just as significantly, Reagan's policies, unlike Nixon's, became the enduring policy agenda of the Republican Party. Issues which he promoted, such as significant cuts to welfare entitlements, tax cuts, missile defence, and abortion abolition, have gone on to become the bread-and-butter politics of a generation of Reaganite Republicans, including such crucial figures as Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush. Reaganomics remains alluring to governments near and far because of its encouragement of enterprise and individual effort, and its simple family-budget analogies. It is nonetheless a formula that often widens the gap between the rich and the poor. 

To balance the glowing praise of Reagan that has characterised commentary after his death, I would suggest that any detailed look at his record in the areas of drug policy, race relations, the environment, foreign aid, financial deregulation, the minimum wage, and mental health will reveal a lamentable legacy. With these failings in mind, I may well have ground my teeth at Baroness Thatcher's eulogy at Ronald Reagan's state funeral.  I have, however, planned my own send-off. It will be a simple song - "Monkey Gone to Heaven" - from the alternative music kings of the 1980s, the Pixies.