The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980, by Steven Hayward

The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980 by Stephen Hayward is an excellent book. It is subtitled "The Fall of the Old Liberal Order" which is the main reason I read it. Reagan is in the background for most of the book--this story is more about the conditions that occurred in the 15 years before Reagan was elected which paved the way for the "Reagan Revolution."

I turned 12 in 1980 so I don't remember anything political of the sixties or seventies. I didn't have any experience with gas lines and I was only vaguely aware of the Iranian hostage crisis. My first political memory is an assignment by our teacher to find out whom our parents supported in the 1980 election. I remember my teacher was for Anderson and my mother supported Reagan, explaining that "since he's an actor, his speeches won't be boring."

The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980 was an excellent history lesson for me. I read it mostly on my Nexus 7 Android tablet which was great for looking up additional material as I was reading, such as Nelson Rockefeller flipping the bird to the media, Reagan's debate with Buckley over the Panama Canal, and Jimmy Carter's famous "malaise speech," among many, many others. Seeing many of the events described in the book first-hand also allowed me to confirm that Hayward is an honest observer of the events, even though he is biased toward Reagan and his ideas (as am I).

The years 1964-1980 are important because, according to my father who was 23 in 1964, those were the years when things in America took a turn for the worse. After the years of the great depression and World War II (1930-1945), the fifties and early sixties were a return to normalcy. The economy was growing, and there was a great sense of optimism in the country. It was just that optimism and prosperity that got the liberals into trouble once Johnson was elected president in 1964.

LBJ used the power of government to declare a "War on Poverty" at home and to expand the war in Vietnam abroad. The failure of both of these wars was an early indictment of liberal ideas and allowed Nixon to be elected in 1968. However, Nixon was one of the worst offenders against free markets, implementing price-and-wage controls and taking the dollar off of the gold standard. Nixon also did great harm to the Republican party by lying about Watergate. This allowed the Democrats to reclaim the presidency with Carter, who introduced more regulations on energy production and had a disastrous appeasement strategy in foreign policy highlighted by the Iranian hostage crisis.

The extreme government interference in the economy and weak stand against communism by LBJ, Nixon and Carter paved the way for Reagan to easily win the election in 1980 on a campaign of free-market reforms and a strong, moral opposition to the Soviet Union. I plan to read the second volume from Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989, and I hope it's as good as the first volume. LBJ, Nixon and Carter demonstrated over 15 years that government manipulation of the economy doesn't work. But it wasn't until Reagan demonstrated that free-markets work that the rest of the world took notice and started their own reforms toward capitalism. This, I believe, is a big part of "What Went Right."