Introduction

On January 6, 2021, first-term United States President Donald J. Trump inveighed against the country’s election system and workers and his recent loss in an election for a second term, and implored crowds of supporters that had gathered to hear him speak to march on the U.S. Congress and ‘fight like hell’, to presumably overturn by force the election results.  Over a hundred people would be injured in the insurrection that ensued at the Capitol building, with several fatalities among capitol police and insurrectionists.  Forever seared into the national memory, this dark day portends and ominous future for the U.S., as it fitfully navigates the rocky waters created by decades of uncertainty and mistrust of the federal government.  The history of this unfolding tragedy is carefully traced in Professor Sean Wilentz’s monograph The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008 (2008), in which the author outlines factual biographies of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton and employs these biographies as a lens through which the reader can examine the political affectations and policy initiatives of a New Right, providing insight into the events of January 6, 2021 and informing future leaders of the importance of this history as applied to their endeavors in the future.  The book serves as a fact-based window into the New Right conservative Republican mindset of the 1980’s and political machine that gave rise to the Age of Reagan and champions much of its dogma today.

Argument

Wilentz describes Nixon’s presidency as a catastrophic event in contemporary American history, appropriately singling out Watergate and the distrust of ‘big government’ that resulted.  Had Nixon been successful in his challenges to the law in regard to Congress, the Washington establishment, and society at large, “he would have fundamentally changed the character of the federal government, vaunting the White House over Congress and the courts, and permitting presidents to violate citizens’ privacy at will,” he notes.  Echoes of the distrust this generate among the American public are heard in events such as the Waco, Texas, anti-government protest that ended in disaster, and the bombing of the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah federal building by disaffected anti-government citizens.  A fundamental distrust of the federal government is the legacy of the Nixon presidency. This distrust, coupled with a new, intellectually infused pro-family values sentiment would gain visibility as a prime motivator among conservative New Right partisans, and see liberal Democratic positions loose purchase among the electorate.

Gerald Ford, the next President of the U.S. then pardoned Nixon, to heal political wounds inflicted by the partisan culture wars of the past decade and the bitter arguments surrounding Watergate.  Wilentz is dismissive of Ford’s time in office, and critical of his successor Jimmy Carter.  Ford’s presidency saw a drop in Republican-controlled seats in Congress, losing forty-eight seats, and his popularity decline by almost 30 percent to the low forties.  Carter, according to Wilentz, fared no better as his moderate Democrat political inclinations and indecisiveness saw ‘stagflation’ on the rise, disaster in the Middle East, and repudiation of his policies by the Congress and American people, especially with respect to liberal Democrat demands for universal income and other unpopular welfare ideas. 

By the 1980’s Americans were ready for a change, and they overwhelmingly voted for Ronald Reagan, an actor and politician for U.S. President in an environment conducive to the rise of a New Right and its policies, In 1984, capitalizing on the gains that conservative New Right Republicans had experienced with the rise of Reagan-ism, the Federalist Society took shape and a year later introduced its doctrine of originalism, or textualism, as a method of analysis and interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. “Originalism is a theory about interpretive method and argumentation for constitutional texts. In its various guises, originalism seeks to provide a framework of principles to guide judges and other constitutional interpreters in interpreting the constitutional text,” notes Keith Whittington in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.  Originalism asks questions about the function of government in civil society, and its ability to make broad policy and administrative decisions that affect people’s everyday lives.  With a racist and nationalist bent, it hammers away at the liberal order that lawmakers and jurists have constructed, in consultation with a majority constituency, since the 1960’s.

“Reagan-ism was its own distinctive blend of dogma, pragmatism, and, above all, mythology,” Wilentz asserts, and, indeed, Reagan himself was an affable president, and the standard bearer for the New Right.  His policies and other efforts drastically changed America in the 1980’s, transforming society in diverse ways including the deregulation of industry, tax breaks for wealthy citizens, reigning in spending on social services at the federal level, and ending détente with the USSR.  Reagan was re-elected in a landslide win after campaigning for a second term in 1984 and would become embroiled in such disastrous fumbles as the Iran-contra Affair, the Savings and Loan crises, and the AIDS epidemic.  Working together with the Federalist Society, Reagan installed conservative New Right republicans into federal judicial roles, including onto the Supreme Court, where policies including affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act have been slowly denuded because of his appointments.  His lack of attention to the AIDS crises and the impact of violence and AIDS on marginalized women saw many more deaths than a coordinate, and timely Federal response might have seen.

Conclusion

As we approach the New Year in 2023, the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection will unfold as Americans reflect on the makeup of a newly elected House and Senate majority that could verry well determine the fate of Reagan-ism, where America could fall victim to a semi-autocracy and experiences the transformation of national government into an effective form of theocracy.  Wilentz makes the point in the epilogue to his monograph that “a much earlier Republican president…thought long and hard about the past and how his actions would touch the future.  ‘Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history,’ Abraham Lincoln said. ‘We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves…The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."  As one reflects on the text, one may wonder whether anyone is listening to this opprobrium, to heed history and understand it in its honest form, as the Western world crumbles under the weight of its own history, and the fear and distrust of its many citizens.

References

Whittington, Keith E. “Is Originalism Too Conservative?” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Vol. 34, no. 1. Winter 2011.

Wilentz, Sean. The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008. 2008.