Gil Troy: Legacy of Ronald Reagan

Gil Troy, in the Montreal Gazette (6-4-05)

[Gil Troy teaches history at McGill University and is author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan invented the 1980s.]

The Ronald Reagan mourning rites last June continue to mystify a year later. In the 1980s, who would have predicted such a send-off for such a controversial president?

In fact, the week-long eulogies showed two competing stereotypes shape public discussion of the 1980s. When politicians and pop-culture impresarios refer to "the '80s," they usually mean the vapid, hedonistic, amoral years of America's new gilded age, when yuppies reigned and greed was good.

Perpetuated today in 1980s parties and in movies such as Adam Sandler's The Wedding Singer, the 1980s stereotype recalls Wall St. excess and political selfishness, an era when junk bonds and trashy values created deficits "as far as the eye could see" and triggered the multi-billion-dollar savings and loan crisis.

Rogues who defined the times include jailed moguls such as Ivan Boesky and Leona Helmsley; disgraced ministers such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. In 1992, Bill Clinton ran for president against this version of the 1980s. "The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligations, special interests over common good, wealth and fame over work and family," Clinton charged when launching his campaign. "The 1980s ushered in a gilded age of greed, selfishness, irresponsibility, excess and neglect."

Yet when Ronald Reagan died one year ago tomorrow, most of the press and public defined the same era as one of renewal and idealism, of national unity and glory. A collective act of U.S. national amnesia ignored how reporters mocked Reagan, how Democrats like Senator Edward Kennedy blasted his "unilateral," militaristic, reckless and divisive foreign policy, how hundreds of thousands of Europeans protested against the president repeatedly.

Instead, two decades later, one letter the New York Times printed recalled "a simpler time... when all things seemed possible and Americans felt good about their country."

In eulogizing Reagan, President George W. Bush endorsed the "great man" theory of history, calling the Reaganized 1980s "one of the decisive decades of the century as the convictions that shaped the president began to shape the times."...

...Surprisingly, Reagan's moderate traditionalism provided cover both for the decadence of the age and for the vitality of many 1960s-style revolutions. Progressives mourned the death of the 1960s even as the 1980s consolidated many of the most dramatic lifestyle transformations. Yes, the civil rights movement seemed to falter, but Jesse Jackson ran for president, Michael Jackson dominated the music world, Bill Cosby revived the TV sitcom, Oprah Winfrey became an American icon, and, most important, millions of African-Americans entered the professions, moved into good neighbourhoods, received better educations, and progressed.

The 2004 election - and the prolonged red vs. blue hangover - proved the debates of the 1980s - and about the 1980s' legacy - continue. As with the 1960s, false nostalgia and reductionist stereotypes will help boost records sales and television ratings. True understanding of the decade's historical legacy, and Reagan's, however, will only come from careful consideration of the mixed messages, the complex compote that shaped this decade - like all others.