Reagans Election Flashcards
Reagan
Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election owed much to the perceived inadequacies of President Carter, but also a great deal to his own personality and to the support of social conservatives.
Can Carter cope
Carter was weakened by a challenge from the liberal Democrat Edward
Kennedy during the 1980 presidential election campaign. Liberal Democrats were displeased by Carter’s words in his second State of the Union address:
Government cannot solve our problems. It cannot eliminate poverty, or provide a bountiful economy, or reduce inflation, or save our cities, or cure illiteracy or provide energy. Carter was a fiscal conservative, while liberal Democrats unrealistically sought greater government expenditure on social problems. However, the main reason For Carter’s defeat was that he frequently seemed incapable of handling the economic and international problems that faced him. By 1980, only 18 per cent rated Carter ‘a very strong leader’. The economy seemed to be spinning out of control and Reagan made great political capital out of Carter’s apparent inability to solve economic problems. In 1980, 47 per cent of registered voters simply stayed at home: many were poor and/or unemployed and would normally have voted Democrat but were disillusioned with politics and with the leadership of Jimmy Carter.
The great communicator
Ronald Reagan’s previous career as broadcaster and film star had helped make him a genial and inspirational speaker, who over the years had perfected his attacks on big government and high taxes. Despite Reagan’s reputation as the
‘great communicator’, Carter felt that he had to debate with him (October 1980)
Unusually, Reagan made no gaffes, and came across as warmer than Carter with his frequent ‘aw shucks and ‘there you go again’ interjections. Reagan asked Americans whether they felt anything was better after four years of Carter.
That was highly effective and polls suggested that Reagan had won the debate.
The ‘great communicator’ had come across as a warm personality, optimistic about American international and domestic capacities, in contrast to the earnest moralistic Carter who told Americans they they were suffering crises of confidence and spirit
Socially conservative vote
Reagan’s electoral victory owed much to the support of social conservatives, who rejected the more liberal social attitudes of the 1960s and envisioned a return to ‘traditional family values’. Reagan had clearly aligned himself with them by
1980. He emphasised his disgust at 1960s’ excesses and permissiveness and his opposition to feminism and the ERA. Despite his divorce in 1952 and his difficult relationships with two of his four children, Reagan was the apostle of the nuclear family. Although he rarely attended church, he supported school prayer (the Supreme Court had ruled against it in 1962) and criticised the federal courts for not allowing creationism to be taught (some extreme religious conservatives believed in creationism and opposed the teaching of Darwinism in schools). He told an audience of evangelical ministers that he was a born-again Christian.
Such social issues mobilised conservative voters. The well-organised New Right Or’Religious Right’ was already one of America’s most visible and powerful Political forces, and it backed Reagan. An estimated 5 million evangelical Christians who had never voted before now voted for Reagan.
What did the religious right oppose
feminism, which they blamed for damaging paternal authority and weakening the family
• divorce (divorce rates doubled between 1965 and 1985 from 25 to 50 per cent of all marriages)
• mothers going out to work (the Religious Right lamented that fewer than 50 per cent of women were full-time homemakers, believing this adversely affected family life) and drug taking
abortion and Roe v. Wade (see page 237) (there were four abortions for every ten live births between 1974 and 1977)
• sexual liberalisation (roughly 500,000 unmarried couples lived together in
1970, around 1 million by 1980)
• premarital sex and sexual promiscuity
• unmarried mothers, many of whom relied on welfare payments (the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers rose from 11 per cent in 1970 to 18 per cent in 1980 and 28 per cent in 1990)
• homosexuality
• popular culture’s preoccupation with sex
• pornography
• the teaching of sex education in schools.
Results and significance of the 1980 election
Greatly assisted by Reagan’s coattails and the Religious Right, the Republicans took control of Congress as well as the White House in 1980. However, Reagan’s was not a decisive victory. Only 28 per cent of the potential electorate voted for him (25 per cent voted for Carter). The 47 per cent of voters who stayed at home constituted the biggest group in American politics. Most were poor and/or unemployed and were the traditional Democratic constituency. These statistics suggest disillusionment with politics in general, Democrat disillusionment with Carter in particular, and resurgent social conservatism. Among the many divisions that the 1980 elections illustrated were the divisions over the American Dream. By 1980, fewer Americans believed in it or thought it had been achieved.
Key failures of Reagan
Key Failures of Reagan during the Election
● Claimed that Carter had links back to the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia
● In a speech to veterans said that Vietnam had been a ‘noble cause.’
● Believed that creationism vs Darwinism could be taught side by side in
schools
● Fed into idea that Reagan was an ‘extremist’- helped Carter campaign
● Stuart Spencer employed as Reagan’s political consultant- this put focus on
back on Carter’s failures
Stuart Spencer
Reagan regrouped, bringing in Stuart Spencer as his political consultant who
refocused thecampaign onto Carter’s record, but bymid-October the race
was too close to cal. Carter wasmaking headway in portraying Reagan as
adangerously belligerent war-monger when ti cameto foreign policy, but
Reagan’s attackson Carter’s domestic record were becomingincreasingly
stinging. Thetwo candidates also differed on domestic issues. Carter promised
further environmental regulations, Reagan contended that environmental
regulations were hurting the economy. Carter stood upfor therights of
women tohave an abortion, Reagan outlined his opposition to abortion and
hischoice GeorgeHW Bush as vice president made an about turn on theissue
fromhisspeechesni theRepublicanprimaries,switchingtoapro-lifestance
more in line with Reagan.
Carter and the economy
Carter repeatedly claimed that the economy was on itsway back to health
but Reagan’s promises to cut taxes, shrink the size of the federal government,
and balance thefederal budget seemed more concrete than Carter’s. In
addition, his consistent claimsthat theeconomy was in a recession, despite
the fact that this wasn’t strictly true, hit a chord with the public. Reagan also
benefitted from being a Washington outsider, as Carter had been in 1976; the
legacy of mistrust of Washington from theNixon experience was still powerful.
In the eyesof many Americans, Carter had promised much but delivered little
and Reagan’s optimism (whichsome alleged to comefrom thefact that hewas
partly deaf andhad adopted smiling as a response to thingshe couldn’tfully
hear) seemedmore clearly aligned with the perception that many had, of what
America should be like. In t h e Reagan- Carter debate of 28 October, a week
before the election, there was little tochoose between the content of the two
Effects of carters setbacks
Thecumulative effect of these economic, social, and military setbacks was
a sense ofmalaisethat Carter had tried to address head on but lacked the
political capital toput right. The reverence for Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ policies
had been eroded. As in Britain, the post-war consensus seemed to have broken
down and Americans werewilling to try something radically different which
was sold to themas commensurate with the vision of the founding fathers.
In many ways, the American children of today are the children of Ronald
Reagan. Since 1980, free market capitalism, apowerful military, asmall federal
bureaucracyand significant influence for the religious right have been the
norm in American politics.
Impact of the religious right
The Religious Right had great political and social importance. First, it increased the polarisation of American politics and society when it campaigned to promote traditional values in what some called ‘culture wars’. Second, it affected the outcome of elections, as in 1980.
Election results
Carter - 41% of votes
Reagan - 51%
