The Age of Reagan

I recently finished a marvelous book, Steve Hayward's The Age of Reagan, 1964-1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order. Hayward, an American Enterprise Institute scholar, got a bad break with this book. It was published on or around September 11, 2001. I remember clearly the anticipation in the conservative community prior to its release - we were all waiting for Steve Hayward's Reagan book. Then the 9/11 attacks occurred and the book got lost. It was months after the attacks before I could think of anything else (I was working feverishly and nearly finished with my first screenplay when the attacks occurred but did not actually pick it up again until the following January.) I suspect the same thing occurred for a lot of people, particularly the politically-minded. The book was forgotten.

And it's a shame because it is brilliant. The book opens one week before the 1964 elections where LBJ would swamp Barry Goldwater for president and the Democrats would increase their margins in both houses of Congress to unprecedented levels. Liberalism was at its apex. The Republicans, in a last ditch effort to salvage something out of the election, persuaded Ronald Reagan to make a speech on Goldwater's behalf. He agreed and the speech, A Time For Choosing, was broadcast nationally on October 27. That night a star was born and the conservative order began to take shape. Hayward meticulously details the fall of liberalism, from its heights in 1964-65, when anything seemed possible, to its shameful depths during the Carter years. Along side of that story Hayward traces the rise of Reagan and the conservative coalition that would bring him to power. The book ends with Reagan's victory in the 1980 presidential election. If you are a political junkie such as myself you'll get this book and devour it - it's un-put-down-able. My wife knows by now when I'm totally lost in a book and she realized these past two weekends to simply leave the guy on the couch alone. Thank you baby.

My decision to read the book now has turned out serendipitously for I've just learned the Hayward second volume, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989, will be published at the end of the month. I've already pre-ordered on Amazon. You should too.

Another book I'm eagerly anticipating is John Derbyshire's We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, due out at the end of September. Derb, as he is known on The Corner and elsewhere, is one of my favorites. His writings and Corner posts are a constant reminder that human nature is constant and any program implemented in order to change it is money down the drain. An amateur mathematician and a promoter of scientific evidence over religious or social improvement schemes, he is more and more of the opinion that who we are is determined at birth and there is little the political or social order can do to change that. I have no idea what is contained in the book but he is apparently concerned that conservatives may be falling into the same trap as liberals, what with the "compassionate conservatism" and Huckabee-ism of the past decade. For all I know he may even take some shots at that famous optimist Ronald Reagan (or at least the Reaganists who misunderstand the true source of the great man's optimism: his faith in God and his faith in the individual to prosper, so long as government let him.) I expect the book is an attempt to combat those tendencies, and a call to reclaim the pessimism of the old conservatives who knew that limited government was the best government.

So my reading list for the next few months is all set. What's on your agenda?