The Reagan years

THE EIGHTIES:

AMERICA IN THE AGE OF REAGAN

By John Ehrman

Yale, $27.50, 289 pages

REVIEWED BY ROBERT M. SMALLEY

Not often does any nation of great stature experience virtually a complete make-over within a period of eight years. Yet in John Ehrman’s new book, “The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan,” this is precisely what happened with the United States in the eight-year span between the 1981 departure of Jimmy Carter from the White House to the 1989 departure of Ronald Reagan from the presidency.

Mr. Carter’s four-year term had been marked by political ineptitude, deteriorating economic conditions, with inflation apparently out of control, and the loss of public confidence in the federal government’s ability to deal with the nation’s problems. As a prelude to what came next, Mr. Ehrman begins by reciting the familiar Ronald Reagan biography: Illinois to baseball to Hollywood to movies to California governor to president.

That told, Mr. Ehrman strikes out on his own with carefully researched and extensive accounts not just of what Ronald Reagan did but of what happened because of what he did, reflecting his leadership. The only thing Mr. Ehrman might have missed here was Reagan’s great public appeal as a man to whom confidence came easily, and whose energy and purpose were quickly in play.

That notwithstanding, this is where his book becomes a worthy addition to the nation’s expanding library of books about Ronald Reagan and his presidency. In the unfolding Reagan years, Mr. Ehrman sees a new America, engaged in major technological advances, sweeping revisions of the Tax Code, deregulation of major industries and a whirlwind of other achievements, many of them directly touching the entire nation.

Being a historian, economist and political analyst all together, Mr. Ehrman has engaged his subject with intellectual honesty and produced a fascinating tableau of the Reagan era, weaving a vast canvas of change throughout the Reagan years. In doing so, he underscores the changes and modernizations of America that took place during the Reagan years.

Mr. Ehrman defines Reagan as neither an intellectual nor a man given to deep reflection, although his handwritten letters and speeches showed that he had a fixed view on minimal government and liberal democracy as good, communism as bad, and he never lost his faith that a unique sense of destiny and optimism always made American different from any other country in the world.

Mr. Ehrman is able to take us through the undergrounds of the American economy during those years of America expanding, but he does not credit Reagan or the economy alone for the nation’s transformation.

As a skilled analyst of its workings, the American political process fascinates him and in scanning the political landscape, Mr. Ehrman delves back as far as Barry Goldwater’s 1964 loss, noting the impact of conservative “hard rhetoric” on secular and religious conservatives. His depiction of the Age of Reagan points to the errors of subsequent presidents who failed to recognize the impact of various Reagan successes, (bringing tax cuts into the political picture, for one).

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