The false memory of an immaculate Ronald Reagan


Is Donald Trump a continuation of the postwar conservative movement — or its executioner? A year after his electoral defeat, scholars, journalists, and pundits continue to debate the former president's place in a lineage that extends back to Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and beyond.
In a recent essay for The Atlantic, David Brooks makes the case that Trump broke the conservative mold. Reporting from the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Brooks argues Trump "destroyed the Reagan Republican paradigm in 2016." He doesn't define the phrase, but "Reagan Republican" seems to mean the combination of avuncular manners, optimistic rhetoric, and free-market policy with which Reagan is associated.
Brooks deplores that break but shares his interpretation of Reagan with many who celebrate it. Yet Reagan nostalgics would do well to remember that he was a far more complicated politician than his popular reputation today might have you believe.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In recent years, nationalists, populists, and other dissidents on the right have attacked Reagan as, at best, a temporizer who failed to halt the country's lurch toward the left. Where Brooks sees optimistic patriotism, these critics see a soulless indifference to tradition and virtue that was unable to sustain conservative influence on the economy and culture.
But despite his reputation for laissez-faire, Reagan imposed tariffs on Japanese imports. Far from embracing moral neutrality, he made opposition to abortion a job requirement for national Republicans and directed his Justice Department to crack down on pornography. In foreign policy, Reagan deployed the Marines to Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force, then removed them after a car bomb killed 241 U.S. personnel. Whatever their specific merits, these decisions reflect a more politically and economically flexible approach than accounts of libertarian-dominated "fusionism" admit.
The coalition that brought Reagan to power was also more diverse than its caricature as the revenge of Goldwater. Composed partly of movement veterans, it also drew on the post-Nixon "New Right." Figures like Jerry Falwell and Richard Viguerie were more religious, demotic, and media-savvy than most Goldwater-era conservatives. As a result, they were to mobilize larger cohorts of voters, including many who hadn't previously supported Republicans.
The replacement of the real Reagan with a two-dimensional caricature isn't a recent development. For years, conservative institutions promoted a kind of hero-worship that obscured Reagan's contradictions and reduced his agenda to tax cuts and deregulation. Lacking personal memories of the period and reared on social media polemics rather than more judicious assessments, a new generation of conservatives is reacting against that caricature. As Brooks notes, the audience at the conference skewed very young and very online.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
History doesn't repeat itself, and there are differences as well as similarities between Trump and his predecessors. But the "Reagan paradigm" that disillusioned ex-Republicans like Brooks lament and national conservatives reject is more of a retrospective construction than either want to admit. For admirers, the false memory of an immaculate Reagan is a way of ignoring currents of populist rage that have been necessary to carry conservative mandarins into positions of influence. At the same time, the myth of libertarian indifference allows critics to avoid thinking about why Reagan's legions lost many of the culture wars they fought.
Conservatives will finally be past Reagan when both factions can recognize the successes as well as the failures of his career.
Samuel Goldman is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow in Religion, Ethics, & Politics at Princeton University. His books include God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and After Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). In addition to academic research, Goldman's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.
-
Gavin Newsom's Trump-style trolling roils critics while thrilling fans
TALKING POINTS The California governor has turned his X account into a cutting parody of Trump's digital cadence, angering Fox News conservatives
-
Texas OKs gerrymander sought by Trump
Speed Read The House approved a new congressional map aimed at flipping Democratic-held seats to Republican control
-
Costco is at the center of an abortion debate
Talking Points The decision to no longer stock the abortion pill came following a pressure campaign by conservatives
-
The census: Why Trump wants a new one
Feature Donald Trump is pushing for a 'Trumpified census' that excludes undocumented immigrants
-
The red state push to join the DC occupation
IN THE SPOTLIGHT Republican governors are increasingly eager to volunteer their state's National Guard troops for Trump's ostensibly anti-crime siege of the nation's capital
-
It is 'beyond time for us to seek bipartisan solutions' for Afghanistan
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Israel: Losing the American public
Feature A recent poll finds American support for Israel's military action in Gaza has fallen from 50% to 32%
-
Texas gerrymander battle spreads to other states
Feature If Texas adopts its new electoral map, blue states plan to retaliate with Democrat-favored districts