VI.

Reagan’s Legacy

Many historians regard Reagan’s chief legacy to be his resurrection of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and its political agenda. In doing so Reagan redefined the parameters of American political debate. After U.S. voters soundly rejected Goldwater’s conservatism in the 1964 election by electing Johnson with the largest popular majority ever at 61 percent, conservatives appeared to occupy the far-right extreme of the U.S. political spectrum. Republican presidents Nixon and Ford were largely moderates who did not challenge the social policies and government economic regulation put in place by the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson. At one point in his presidency, Nixon even proposed a guaranteed income for all Americans.

Reagan made conservatism mainstream. He reversed the trend toward greater government spending on social welfare programs by cutting spending on many of those programs, with the exception of Social Security and Medicare. He also freed businesses of government restraints through deregulation.

Reagan succeeded in convincing many Americans that “government is the problem,” as he stated in his first inaugural address. Both deregulation and cuts in social spending continued in subsequent administrations, including the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton who seemed to echo Reagan when he proclaimed the end of “big government.”

In achieving this aspect of the conservative agenda, however, Reagan abandoned one of the chief components of the Republican Party’s traditional political philosophy—namely, fiscal conservatism. In reducing tax rates while doubling military spending, Reagan produced record deficits and nearly tripled the national debt from $995 billion to $2.9 trillion.

On issues of foreign policy, some historians believe Reagan’s chief contribution was his forceful stand against the Soviet Union, which he called the “evil empire.” These historians credit Reagan with helping bring about the dissolution of the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War by putting strains on the Soviet economy, which was unable to match the increased U.S. military spending. Other historians, however, argue that the Soviet Union fell apart mainly due to its own internal contradictions and that the U.S. role only strengthened hardliners within the Soviet Union, thereby delaying the Gorbachev reforms that ultimately led to the Soviet collapse.

Some critics of the Reagan era argue that his administration may be judged more harshly by future historians in light of the current U.S. war against terrorism. By agreeing to swap arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan indirectly rewarded the terrorists who seized the hostages and may have thereby encouraged future terrorist attacks against the United States. By attempting to keep the arms deal secret, these critics say he undermined democratic procedures and the credibility of the executive branch.

At the time of his death, however, Reagan was widely agreed to have been one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history, who made conservatism mainstream and whose legacy continued long after his years in the White House.