When Conservatism Triumphed.

• Author: Smith, Jordan Michael
• Position: BOOKS

Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

By Rick Perlstein

Simon & Schuster, 1,120 pages

Publication date: August 18, 2020

In his new survey of America during the Carter Administration, Rick Perlstein cites Peter Carroll's book about the 1970s, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened. But Reaganland shows that the latter half of the decade, especially, was rife with significant events, movements, and people.

Perlstein provides an exhaustive look at the Carter years, which marked the end of New Deal liberalism and the triumph of the New Right. The book, at 1,000-plus pages covering the four-year period leading up to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, demonstrates Perlstein's signature ability to evoke the surreal nature of postwar American political and social cultures.

Reaganland is Perlstein's fourth and professedly final book devoted to answering one critical question: How did the United States devolve from a country where Barry Goldwater was trounced in the 1964 presidential election to one where Reagan, his ideological heir, triumphed just sixteen years later?

In his previous three books, Perlstein looked for answers through the lenses of Nixon, Goldwater, and Reagan, respectively. The Gipper's life up to 1976 was chronicled in the series' third installment, The Invisible Bridge. Carter s life and presidency, too, were outlined in that book, albeit less exhaustively. Now Perlstein, a Milwaukee-born historian and journalist regarded as one of the nation's best chroniclers of American conservatism, returns to that era with renewed vigor.

Despite its title, Reaganland is not mainly about Reagan but about the forces that finally catapulted the right wing into the White House. Beginning in 1932 with Franklin D. Roosevelt's victory, liberalism prevailed, in Congress and states, if not always in the executive branch. Reagan's 1980 victory marked the end of liberalism's dominance.

Carter's 1976 win wrongly convinced many people that Republicans would need to become more moderate to regain competitiveness. The opposite occurred. "At the same time the nation chose a Democratic President, conservatives were mobilizing with a passion, creativity, and energy never seen before," writes Perlstein.

The first major mobilizer detailed is Richard Viguerie, whom Perlstein calls "the godfather of... the New Right." He pioneered the use of direct mail as a way of fundraising, which allowed rebellious, archconservative activists, leaders, and ideas to generate...