Tributes to Ronald Reagan overlook a large down side of his legacy

Much of the commentary on Ronald Reagan since his death has emphasised his optimism and the renewed sense of belief he gave to America. These legacy boosters write as though Reagan's presidency cast Californian sunshine all the way across America in the 1980s. For such supporters, Reagan revitalised the nation, bringing about the new "Morning in America" promised by his 1984 election campaign.

My memories from the 1980s, however, are of a frightening politician who cast a black cloud over my political youth. As a political science student, I was perplexed by Reagan's electoral success and troubled by his foreign policies.

For many students who closely followed American and British politics just as I did, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were the enemies who we blamed for the greed of the age. Reagan's America was one of flag-waving, white-picket fences, Jerry Falwell, Rambo, Alex P. Keaton and Huey Lewis and the News. It ushered in the age of the yuppie, pastel shirts and boat shoes.

The "alternative" scene to this Reaganite culture and politics was often dour and far less hopeful than the fabled campus life of the baby-boomers. Gone was the Day-Glo counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and it was replaced, among my Reagan-bashing friends, by the depressive combination of black on black fashion, gothic bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Mike Leigh films. This was a youth culture with suicidal tendencies totally disenchanted by a Golden Oldies American President.

My university lecturers from America had all worked for Robert Kennedy and had left in disgust after his assassination. At least they had smelt political idealism. The new Goth and punk culture, to which I was drawn, was deeply pessimistic. Politically, this reflected a view that the victories of a hokey actor like Reagan signalled the end of politics and the dominance of public relations; with Reagan the master of the sound-bite and the not-so-wise-crack. This was a style that he had crafted not just as a B-grade actor, but also as a company spokesperson for General Electric.

And then there was "Reaganomics", with its call for smaller government, deregulation, lower taxes and welfare cuts. For me, Reaganomics was more than just tight-fisted economics; it represented a bourgeoning new selfishness among the more wealthy members of society. The excesses of this culture of narcissism were best captured by Oliver Stone in Wall Street, with his lament against rampant greed, and by P. J. O'Rourke in Republican Party Reptile, with his celebration of being young and self-centred. Wall Street is well remembered for the line uttered by Michael Douglas: "greed is good". For my part, I can't seem to forget the title of an essay in O'Rourke's book which says it all: "How to drive fast on drugs while getting your wing-wang squeezed and not spill your drink."

The 1980s saw America once again release the capitalist brute of the 19th century and the roaring 1920s, with Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's "war on poverty" under conservative attack. Reagan famously called poverty the victor in the "war on poverty", while arguing that less government assistance to the poor was the best solution.

But wasn't Reagan a Christian, you might ask? And what did his conservative Christian supporters make of the hedonistic promotion of wealth? Being a Christian in America in the 1980s increasingly meant you believed in personal responsibility and that charity began and ended at home. Reagan was famous for rallying these conservative Christian voters behind him and his legacy is intertwined with the emergence of evangelical Christians as a major force in American electoral politics.

Reagan's Christianity saw him advocate a return to "traditional American values". In the domain of foreign affairs, Reagan also made a number of utterances about how the arms race could lead to Armageddon - statements that added to my own fear and loathing of the man.

It has often been asked: how could Ronnie appeal both to culturally conservative Southern born-again Christians and to young Wall Street stockbrokers? For the wealthy, Reagan delivered on his promised tax cuts. Reagan's attempts to legislate moral reform were famously more difficult with his moral rhetoric often not converted into policy because of a reluctant US Congress and Supreme Court. As a result, Reagan was unable to oversee the outlawing of abortion in America, which he once described as the greatest disappointment of his presidency.

Looking back on Reagan two decades later from my position now as a lecturer in American politics, there are three questions that still fascinate me. First, how bright was Reagan? Second, was he crucial to ending the Cold War? And third, what is his political legacy in America?

Like the current US president, Reagan said some rather stupid things. On the environment: "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." On South Africa in 1985: "They have eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country." And on returning from Latin America in 1982: "Well, I learned a lot. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries." Like George W. Bush, Reagan wasn't a details man. However, he had strong opinions, which he voiced in numerous radio speeches in the 1970s, delivered rather in the style of our own John Laws.

Reagan and Bush alike have proved that politicians don't have to be Rhodes scholars to appeal to voters. The American columnist William F. Buckley once remarked he would prefer to be governed by the first 100 names in the phonebook than by 100 Harvard professors, and there is probably a fair degree of wisdom in this comment. However, politicians who don't read their briefs or a variety of opinions are open to manipulation and grave stupidity, as has been shown by Reagan with the Iran/Contra scandal and by Bush during the occupation of Iraq.

Did Ronald Reagan hasten the end of the Cold War? In 50 years time, this will probably be the single most asked question about the Reagan presidency. Reagan made a difference in two rather paradoxical ways. For the earlier part of his presidency, he put the Soviets on the back foot as they struggled to keep up with renewed American military spending and efforts to frustrate Soviet military adventures abroad. This weakened the Soviet economy at a time when Western capitalist economies were rebounding from the recessions of the 1970s. A new type of Soviet leader, General Secretary Gorbachev, faced up to the unsustainable nature of the old Soviet economic model, recognising that it was highly unlikely to triumph over Western capitalism and that internal reform was required.

In the later part of his presidency, Reagan developed a relationship with Gorbachev that facilitated arms negotiations and stopped the Soviets from backing into a hard-line corner. Reagan's tactics at times worked because they were brazen and rather unconventional. The big question, according to the conservative historian John Gaddis, is: did Reagan resist conventional Cold War wisdom "because he was sophisticated enough to see how absurd it was - or because he was so dumb he didn't know what the conventional wisdom was?"

Whatever Reagan's faults or weaknesses, one legacy that is undeniable is his profound impact on the course of late 20th century American conservatism. Before Reagan, American conservatism was far darker and less optimistic, following the European tradition. Reagan offered Californian conservatism: a politics that was sold on its benefits rather than on the need to sacrifice or lower one's expectations. This sunny economic conservatism coupled with unapologetic patriotism and moralistic flourishes brought many life-long Democrats into Reagan's Republican Party, so many in fact that a new term was coined to describe them: the Reagan-Democrats. These new voters enabled the Republicans to cement their dominance in the American South and compete handsomely in the industrial Midwest.

Just as significantly, Reagan's policies, unlike Nixon's, became the enduring policy agenda of the Republican Party. Issues which he promoted, such as significant cuts to welfare entitlements, tax cuts, missile defence, and abortion abolition, have gone on to become the bread-and-butter politics of a generation of Reaganite Republicans, including such crucial figures as Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush. Reaganomics remains alluring to governments near and far because of its encouragement of enterprise and individual effort, and its simple family-budget analogies. It is nonetheless a formula that often widens the gap between the rich and the poor. 

To balance the glowing praise of Reagan that has characterised commentary after his death, I would suggest that any detailed look at his record in the areas of drug policy, race relations, the environment, foreign aid, financial deregulation, the minimum wage, and mental health will reveal a lamentable legacy. With these failings in mind, I may well have ground my teeth at Baroness Thatcher's eulogy at Ronald Reagan's state funeral.  I have, however, planned my own send-off. It will be a simple song - "Monkey Gone to Heaven" - from the alternative music kings of the 1980s, the Pixies.