FROM REAGAN TO BUSH:
THE PULL OF THE POLITICAL CENTER
IDEOLOGY IN THE LATER REAGAN PRESIDENCY
Eras of Party Government and Divided Government
Party Strength in Congress: 1976-1992
Budget Deficits and Trade Deficits: 1950-1993
Reagan's Reversal on Arms Control and the Soviet Union
The Composition of the Supreme Court: 1967-1991CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
The 1988 Electoral College VoteCHARACTERIZING THE ECONOMIC AND FOREIGN POLICY SHIFTS SINCE 1981
Economic Policy Positions and Outcomes 1981-1992Links for the Study of Presidents Reagan and Bush
IDEOLOGY IN THE LATER REAGAN PRESIDENCY
The Persistence of Divided Government
From Eisenhower in 1954 through Nixon, Reagan, and now Bush, every Republican president has had to face a Congress controlled at least in part by Democrats. And with the brief exception of the heady days of the early Reagan restoration, when the Republicans captured control of the Senate for the first time since 1954, Republicans presidents have had little reason to think their party would win control of Congress anytime soon.
Republican presidents can use the symbolic props of the ceremonial presidency without the cooperation of congressional Democrats. Republican presidents can skillfully articulate their philosophies and policy positions without the cooperation of Congress. They can go on TV and appeal directly to the American people without the cooperation of Congress. But they cannot pass legislation or appropriate funds without congressional approval. Presidents are limited in their ability to shape public policy unless they can win congressional assent.
The advantages of the majority party in Congress go beyond simply having the most votes on budgets and other legislation. The American political system gives great advantages to the party that holds a majority in a house of Congress. The majority party names the chair of every committee in that house. It controls the flow of legislation to the floor of that house. It takes the lion's share of the staff and other resources.
The dilemma Republican presidents thus face is between conflict and cooperation with Democrats in Congress. If a Republican president is going to have any impact on public policy, he must have the support of at least some congressional Democrats. Yet if the Republican Party is to ever regain control of Congress, it must draw clear lines of conflict between its policy stances and those of congressional Democrats.
All recent Republican presidents have oscillated between these two choices over the course of their administrations. Dwight Eisenhower leaned more toward cooperation with congressional Democrats and bipartisan policy-making. Ronald Reagan favored ideological confrontation more often. But all Republican presidents have had to find ways to work with Congress and yet to draw distinctions between their party and its philosophy and that of congressional Democrats.
In his first two years in office Ronald Reagan largely opted for the strategy of ideological polarization and confrontation with the Democrats in Congress. He passed his economic and budget policies by putting together a coalition of Republicans and a handful of conservative southern Democrats.
After this coalition lost the votes to control the House of Representatives, in the 1982 midterm election, Reagan continued to articulate his conservative philosophy but showed some willingness to move toward the political center, particularly in his opening toward the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration showed some willingness to compromise on budgetary policy as well, although generally it was congressional Republicans who took the lead in working out agreements with congressional Democrats on budgetary matters.
However, at the same time the Reagan administration moved more toward the political center in foreign and economic policy, it continued to pursue a strategy of ideological polarization with regard to many aspects of social policy, particularly in its judicial appointments. Like Nixon before him, while abandoning the cold war policies favored by the Republican right, Reagan covered his right flank by taking a confrontational stance toward congressional Democrats on key domestic issues.
The Reagan Restoration had peaked as a political phenomenon by the middle of Reagan's first term. Several developments in domestic politics, the economy, and world affairs put the ideological conservatives in the administration increasingly on the defensive in the later Reagan presidency, particularly in the second term. While Reagan remained one of the most personally popular presidents in a generation, the ability of his administration to chart a consistent conservative direction in public policy lessened considerably over the course of his incumbency. The Reagan presidency prospered, but the Reagan restoration increasingly stalled.
The Loss of the Ideological Majority in Congress
Probably most important in checking the Reagan restoration were the congressional elections of 1982, 1984, and 1986. The election of 1980 had given the impression of a broad mandate for Reagan's conservative policies. The Republicans won control of the Senate for the first time in 26 years and had one of their largest House delegations since the 1950s.
But in 1982 the Democrats recaptured 24 House seats, and thus effective control of the House of Representatives, although they failed to recapture the Senate. The ideological coalition between Republicans and a handful of conservative southern Democrats, which had provided the votes to pass Reagan's first-year budget plan in the House, was rendered ineffective. Now the Reagan administration would have to bargain with the Democratic leadership in the House to pass legislation and get funds appropriated for programs.
The Cycle of Presidential Power
The congressional elections of 1984 and 1986 reinforced this reality. In 1984, even as Reagan won a landslide reelection, the Democrats held onto their House majority, losing only 15 seats. In the midst of the Reagan landslide the Democrats picked up two Senate seats, although control of the Senate remained in Republican hands.
From 1985 on, Reagan faced the fate of all presidents since the passage of the Twenty-second Amendment, which limits the president to two terms. After 1984 Reagan's name would never be on a national ballot. Democratic members of Congress would never fear his active opposition, and Republican members of Congress would never seek his favor to the same degree that they did when he was the likely standard-bearer of his party in the next presidential election. Second-term presidents are increasingly irrelevant to the electoral calculations of members of Congress, "lame ducks" in the electoral competition.
Reagan was now further on the downhill slide of the cycle of presidential power. Most presidents have the most influence on Congress and domestic policy in their first year or two, when they are still in their "honeymoon" period with Congress and the public. By the first midterm election presidents usually have lost some of their popularity with voters, and their party usually loses some seats in Congress.
While most incumbent presidents win reelection, they rarely get a second honeymoon. Instead, as lame ducks, their influence wanes and usually their popularity fades considerably. The second midterm election of a president's administration generally brings more serious losses for his party in Congress and the final blow to a president's ability to influence domestic policy. Often presidents have long since turned to foreign affairs as their most likely arena for policy success.
Reagan was surprisingly immune to the usual decline in a president's personal popularity, but this did not spare him the loss of influence over policy in the second term. The midterm election of 1986 was a further blow to both Reagan and congressional Republicans, as the Democrats regained control of the Senate for the first time in the Reagan years. Like Eisenhower before him, Reagan found that his personal popularity could not be translated into permanent gains for his party in Congress. Also like Eisenhower, Reagan would have to compromise with Democrats in Congress in order to govern.
The Chronic Fiscal Crisis
However, political factors were not the only problems the Reagan restoration faced. The very success that Reagan had in getting his economic policies adopted in his first years in office meant that his administration was held responsible for the costs and benefits of these policies. When some of the costs of the policies of the Reagan restoration became apparent, resistance to administration policy leadership stiffened in Congress and the broader political system.
Reaganomics had some immediate adverse consequences. The tight money policies adopted to check the inflation of the later Carter years pushed the country into a deep recession, the worst since the Great Depression. The annual rate of unemployment for 1982 and 1983 neared 10 percent, the highest level in over 40 years. Reagan was partially successful in blaming these conditions on the "mess" he had inherited from the Carter administration, particularly when the country began to recover in 1982, in time for the congressional elections. But the losses of congressional Republicans in 1982 were largely due to the country's skepticism about Reaganomics.
However, the recession of 1981-1982 was followed by a strong recovery and several years of sustained economic growth. Reagan's personal popularity recovered along with the economy. Yet economic growth did not solve all the problems of Reaganomics. The 25 percent cut in income taxes and the other tax cuts of Reaganomics were never matched by spending cuts of the same magnitude, creating a permanent budget deficit. The supply-side theory that lower tax rates would spur such rapid economic growth that in the long run greater total tax revenues would be reaped proved incorrect. The combined effects of the Reagan tax cuts and the recession pushed the deficit to over $200 billion in 1983. Even the rapid economic growth of the mid-1980s did not ease the problem. Budget deficits remained in the hundreds of billions of dollars throughout the Reagan presidency and into the Bush administration.
Related to the budget deficits were the trade deficits. Until the 1980s, in almost every year since the end of World War II, the United States had run a trade surplus with the rest of the world. That is, it sold more goods abroad than it bought from abroad. But this changed dramatically in the Reagan years as the United States began to run a chronic trade deficit of more than $100 billion a year. The causes and effects of the budget deficit and the trade deficit will be explored more completely in succeeding chapters. But it is clear that the chronic trade and budget deficits undermined the ability of the Reagan administration to exercise leadership in economic policy. In the later Reagan years Congress increasingly took control of economic policy away from the administration.
In 1983 it was a coalition of congressional Republicans and Democrats who engineered the reform of the Social Security system and a small increase in excise taxes. In 1985 its was another coalition of congressional forces that developed and passed the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act, the most serious attempt to control the budget deficits of the Reagan years, and the tax reform package that attempted to make the tax system fairer by closing some of its loopholes. As the trade deficit grew along with the budget deficit, congressional leaders, particularly Democrats, also tried to exercise leadership in foreign economic policy.
If the Reagan tax cuts had brought the national books into balance, the supply-side advocates in the administration would have been in the position to continue to direct national economic policy. But as the red ink mounted and the administration continued to prove unable or unwilling to meet the challenge, control of budgetary policy shifted to Congress.
In contrast with the first economic messages of the Reagan administration in 1981, which had charted the course of national policy, the running joke on Capitol Hill was that later Reagan budgets were "dead on arrival," lifeless exercises that had little real impact on congressional decisions. The Reagan administration could block any new taxes with its veto threats, but it provided little positive leadership out of the deficit quagmire.
The Iran-Contra Scandal
The Iran-contra scandal was another political and policy failure that reduced the Reagan administration's ability to influence public policy in its later years. Early in Reagan's second term, news began to leak of secret deals and arms shipments to Iran in order to obtain the release of American hostages held by pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon.
These deals were in direct contradiction of the official White House policy of never negotiating with terrorists and probably violated laws forbidding certain forms of assistance to terrorist nations. Ronald Reagan had made Jimmy Carter's lack of toughness is dealing with the Iranians who held American hostages a major campaign issue in 1980. But now it was revealed that the Reagan administration had sent American arms to Iran to obtain the release of hostages.The Ayatollah Khomeni led the Islamic Revolution in 1979 which held dozens of Americans hostage for over a year. In the1980s the Reagan administration sold arms to the Khomeni government in exchange for hostages held by Islamic Revolutionaries under Iranian influence.It was soon also revealed that some of the profits from the arms deals had been diverted to aid the contra rebels fighting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. This was clearly in direct violation of laws passed by Congress cutting off U.S. aid to the contras. The Reagan administration's attempts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua had always been controversial in Congress, and in 1983 Congress had forbidden the use of any more government funds to support the contra rebels. Once the diversion of some of the profits of the Iran arms sales to the contras became known, congressional investigators discovered a series of secret government actions to fund the war in Nicaragua despite the congressional ban on aid.
The Iran-contra situation was potentially the Reagan administration's Watergate. The parallels were many. Once again a Republican administration, frustrated with political opposition in a Democratic Congress, resorted to secret government, secret slush funds, and even secret war to pursue policies rejected by Congress. Once again an administration had unilaterally made war and conducted foreign policy without regard to Congress' war powers. Once again a president had espoused one set of values in public but had acted in exactly the opposite manner in policy-making. Once again the misdeeds of the executive branch were paraded into Americans' living rooms through marathon televised congressional hearings.
However, there were some important differences between Watergate and Iran-contra. The Reagan administration had used secret government against foreign, not domestic, opponents. It had not made the same kind of direct attack on political opponents and directly subverted the electoral process as had the Nixon White House. Reagan was an immensely popular president who still enjoyed strong support throughout the country, while Nixon had never really enjoyed the trust or affection of large segments of the American population.
Colonel Oliver North, a leading figure in the Iran-contra scandal, testifying before CongressPerhaps most important, there was no convincing evidence linking Ronald Reagan personally to the misdeeds of his advisers. There was no "smoking gun," no record of the president's involvement in illegal activities on tape. Instead, the Tower Commission, which the president appointed to investigate the controversy, concluded that Reagan did not have any personal knowledge of the misdeeds of his administration. The congressional committee investigating the scandal was also unable to prove any direct involvement of Reagan in illegal activities.
However, the congressional and Tower Commission reports painted a picture of a president uninvolved in the daily decision making of his own administration. Even though they cleared Reagan of any direct responsibility, it damaged the president severely to be seen as a hands-off executive, not really in charge of his own house. The separation of Reagan's personality from the difficult decisions of governing had proven politically useful in insulating the president from damage when policy failed, in creating the "teflon presidency" where no policy failure stuck to the president himself. But it was almost as damaging for Reagan to be seen as unaware of crucial decisions of the administration he was supposed to be leading.
The Iran-contra affair undermined the credibility of the Reagan administration and further reduced the president's power to affect public policy. For much of the second term the White House had to spend a large proportion of its staff resources putting out the political fires the scandal had caused, diverting attention from other issues. Like most presidents before him, Reagan found his ability to influence events fading ever faster as his second term progressed.
New Directions in Foreign Policy
However, even as the Reagan presidency felt its influence on events in Washington slipping away, it was able to turn to foreign affairs to score policy successes. Like many prior presidents facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles in domestic politics, in his second term Reagan turned more and more to summitry to repair his sagging public image.
Gorbachev and Reagan sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement in 1986Perhaps the most dramatic changes in the policies of the Reagan administration in its second term were the changes in its attitudes toward the Soviet Union. In his first term Reagan had rejected the detente of the 1970s and returned the country to the hard-line cold war policies of the national security state. The one major exception to Reagan's budget cuts was the Pentagon, which was flooded with funds to pursue weapons projects from MX missiles to Star Wars space defenses.
The new cold war met with resistance both in the United States and in western Europe. Peace movements mobilized hundreds of thousands to demonstrate against the deployment of a new generation of missiles in Europe and other escalations of the arms race.
But probably the most significant development that led to the reversal of the cold war policies of the early Reagan administration was the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev as the leader of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was a new kind of Soviet leader who charted bold new courses in both the internal and international policies of the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachev's leadership the Soviet communists made radical reforms in their economy, dramatically democratized their political system, significantly loosened their control over eastern Europe, and made sweeping and sincere initiatives for arms control and reduction of tensions between East and West.
Under these conditions it became increasingly difficult for the Reagan administration to portray the Soviet Union as the "evil empire." Instead, the Reagan administration showed the flexibility to deal with the new Soviet leadership. Reagan and Gorbachev met at four summits in Reagan's second term, and in 1987 they concluded an arms control treaty that reduced the level of nuclear forces in Europe. Like Nixon before him, Reagan, the career cold warrior, found that new international and domestic realities meant that military power was not the only effective means of dealing with the Soviet Union, that political and diplomatic tools were sometimes better means of achieving U.S. objectives.
Reagan's Reversal on Arms Control and the Soviet Union
The Evil Empire
Reagan's First Press Conference: So far detente's been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims. . . .
The only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that. . . . I think when you do business with them, even as in detente, you keep that in mind.
Speech to Evangelical Ministers:I urge you [not] to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. . . . While they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all people on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.
For Arms Control
Reykjavik Summit: We proposed the most sweeping and generous arms control proposal in history. We offered the complete elimination of all ballistic missiles—Soviet and American—from the face of the Earth by 1996. While we parted company with the American offer still on the table, we are closer than ever before to agreements that could lead to a safer world without nuclear weapons. . . . We proposed a 10-year period in which we began with the reduction of all strategic nuclear arms . . . [by] 50 percent in the first five years. During the next five years, we would continue by eliminating all remaining offensive ballistic missiles, of all ranges.
The INF Treaty: This treaty represents a landmark in post-war history because it is not just an arms control, but an arms reduction, agreement. Unlike treaties of the past, this agreement does not simply establish ceilings for new weapons; it actually reduces the number of such weapons. In fact, it altogether abolishes an entire class of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles. . . . I believe this treaty will not only lessen the threat of war but can also speed along a process that may someday remove that threat entirely. Indeed, this treaty . . . signals a broader understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union. back to top
Partisan Polarization over the Future of the JudiciaryWhile the second Reagan term saw a dramatic reversal of his conservative stance in international relations and the reassertion of the political center in congressional leadership in budgetary policy, there was one significant exception to the general drift toward the political center in the later Reagan years: the continuing attempt of the administration to achieve its social agenda through transforming the federal judiciary.
In the early Reagan years, the conservative social agenda of the Christian right had been deferred as economic and foreign policy initiatives were given highest priority. However, as the Reagan administration abandoned ideologically conservative positions in foreign policy and gradually lost control of economic policy, it returned to the social agenda that had been postponed in the early days of the Reagan restoration.
Perhaps the most lasting legacy a president leaves is his judicial appointments, who serve on the federal bench for life. Over the course of his term Reagan appointed a majority of federal judges and three of the nine Supreme Court justices.
All presidents have chosen almost all their judicial appointees from their own political party. But the Reagan administration departed from precedent in the degree to which it used not only political party but also political ideology as a litmus test of judicial candidates. All of Reagan's appointments to the federal judiciary were ideological conservatives, and the vast majority were affluent white males. In his first term Reagan made 167 judicial appointments. Of these only 17, or just 10 percent, were women, and only 2, or just 1 percent, were black.
blue=Democratic liberal, purple=Republican moderate, light red=Republican conservative, dark red=Strong ideological conservative back to top
1968 1968 1977 1977 1991 1991 Appointed by Democrat Appointed by Republican Appointed by Democrat Appointed by Republican Appointed by Democrat Appointed by Republican Black
(F. Roosevelt)Warren
(Eisenhower)White
(Kennedy)Brennan
appointed by Ike, but liberal DemocratWhite
(Kennedy)Rehnquist
(Nixon)Douglas
(F. Roosevelt)Harlan
(Eisenhower)Marshall
(Johnson)Stewart
(Eisenhower)Marshall
(Johnson)Stevens
(Ford)White
(Kennedy)Brennan
appointed by Ike, but liberal DemocratBurger
(Nixon)O'Connor
(Reagan)Fortas
(Johnson)Stewart
(Eisenhower)Blackmun
(Nixon)Scalia
(Reagan)Marshall
(Johnson)Powell
(Nixon)Kennedy
(Reagan)Rehnquist
(Nixon)Souter
(Bush, Sr.)Stevens
(Ford)Thomas
(Bush, Sr)Reagan's first two appointments to the Supreme Court were relatively uncontroversial. Going against the pattern that he showed in lower court appointments, Reagan skillfully defused possible opposition to an ideologically conservative appointment in his first selection by choosing a woman, Sandra Day O'Connor, thus muting feminist opposition. His second appointment was to replace Chief Justice Warren Burger, a strong conservative force on the court. Picking another conservative to take Burger's seat and elevating another conservative to the largely symbolic role of Chief Justice would have little immediate impact on the balance of votes on the court. Therefore, Reagan's choice of Antonin Scalia to join the court and the promotion of William Rehnquist to Chief Justice drew little fire.
But when moderate Republican Lewis Powell resigned, the situation was different. Powell had been a swing vote on the court and had written key opinions in support of civil rights and affirmative action. Now another conservative appointment would shift the ideological balance of the court, giving the hard-line conservative faction a decisive majority.
The struggle over the confirmation of Robert Bork highlighted the issues at stake in the ideological composition of the federal judiciary. Bork was a law professor before he became a judge. It was as a professor that Bork stated most clearly an activist conservative theory for systematically reversing the direction of the Supreme Court.
Bork consistently followed the conservative line on all major issues. He espoused the Christian right's principles on abortion and religion in schools. He advocated the economic theory of laissez-faire in his writings on antitrust. He espoused the national security state's view of executive power in foreign affairs. His writings provided the philosophical justification for the positions a new militantly conservative majority in the judicial branch would pursue.
Bork did moderate his positions in his confirmation hearings, trying to dispel the image that he was an activist who wanted to radically reformulate legal doctrine. But most supporters as well as opponents took Bork's writings before being nominated as a better gauge of his philosophy and probable behavior than his testimony before a committee controlled by the political opposition.
The nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court signalled Reagan's intent to transform
the judiciary. Bork's nomination was rejected by Democratically controlled Senate.At the heart of Bork's judicial philosophy was the doctrine of original intent, which argues that issues of constitutional law should be decided almost solely on the basis of what the framers of the Constitution intended. The doctrine of original intent is ostensibly a theory of limited government. It has been used to argue that the framers never intended to grant Congress or the courts the power to deeply regulate economic activity and political life. For example, in his writings on antitrust he was highly critical of government overregulation of business, espousing a laissez-faire preference for market decision making.
Bork also favored restricting court scrutiny of racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, schools, and other institutions. Bork had opposed the civil rights acts of the 1960s. He was very critical of court decisions implementing these acts, repeatedly arguing that the courts had overstepped their bounds and had become too interventionist in interpreting the Constitution and civil rights statutes.
On the other hand, since Bork's doctrine of original intent meant he did not recognize rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, original intent was used as a theory of virtually unlimited government regarding reproductive behavior, police powers, the actions of the military and national security agencies, and the rights of political dissent. Perhaps the thorniest issue the doctrine of original intent raised was the issue of the right to privacy, which was the legal basis of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The Constitution never specifically addresses a right to privacy. But prevailing legal doctrine inferred from the Bill of Rights protections of person and property that the Constitution provides a general protection of an individual's right to privacy. From this the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade ruled that government could not interfere with a woman's private decision whether to have a child.
But the theory of original intent does not recognize rights that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Bork's position was that the courts should not invent an unenumerated right to privacy. By this reasoning Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and thus, presumably, should be overturned.
Bork also sided with big government on national security issues. He argued that legislation to put some nominal legislative and judicial controls on the behavior of the CIA and other intelligence agencies was unconstitutional interference in the prerogative of the executive to conduct foreign policy. Bork also had a very restricted view of Congress' right to limit presidential warmaking. About President Nixon's decision in 1971 to invade Cambodia without consulting Congress, Bork wrote that the attempts by Congress to limit the president's conduct of the war "constitutes a trespass upon the powers of the Constitution reposes exclusively in the President."
After a bitter battle, the Senate refused to confirm the Bork nomination. Reagan's next choice had to withdraw because of personal indiscretions. Only when Reagan selected a relatively unknown quantity, Anthony Kennedy, did the Senate finally confirm a new justice.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION back to top
In 1988 George Bush won the presidential election with 54 percent of the popular vote, carrying 41 states, the fifth presidential victory for Republicans in the last six elections. The Republican presidential majority first put together by Richard Nixon and solidified by Ronald Reagan survived one of the toughest tests of American politics. The Republicans won a third consecutive presidential election, the first time either party had done so since the 1940s.
Yet as had been their pattern for most of the last 40 years, the same voters elected a majority of Democrats to Congress. So George Bush faced the same dilemma as all Republican presidents since Eisenhower. Like his predecessors, in his first term Bush exhibited a mix of partisan polarization and bipartisan cooperation. Budgetary policy and social issues such as abortion continued to divide Congress and the president. But on the other hand, on foreign policy and in certain cases of domestic policy, bipartisan cooperation was possible. Later chapters will detail the policy struggles of the first Bush term. This section provides a general overview that puts the Bush presidency in comparative perspective.
In his campaign and in his early administration, Bush distanced himself somewhat from the Reagan approach and endorsed the principle of the activist state in such areas as the environment, education, child care, and the minimum wage. Once in office he worked with congressional Democrats to put together a package to bail out the ailing savings and loan industry. The "war on drugs" also generally received support from congressional Democrats, whose response was mainly to try to outbid the president on how tough they could be and how much more they could spend than the administration recommended.
However, any significant movement to a more activist approach to other domestic problems remained checked by the deficit. Bush and the congressional Democrats were able to reach compromise budget agreements. Ideological conservatives flayed him for the budget agreements he entered that included tax increases, hoping to retain the Republican image as tax cutters while painting the Democrats as the "tax and spend" party.
But the man who campaigned to be the "education president" offered few resources for education in his budgets. The man who called himself the "environmental president" compromised with congressional Democrats on a new Clean Air Act, but refused to sign an international treaty on gases polluting the environment. Despite the Republicans' rhetorical commitment to family issues, no significant new funding for child care or parental leave from work was forthcoming. As the election of 1992 approached, both Bush and congressional Democrats were less inclined to compromise. In 1991 Bush twice vetoed legislation that would have extended unemployment benefits before acquiescing on a third such bill. Bush also twice vetoed bills that would have required employers to offer unpaid leave for workers who had young children or family emergencies.
On abortion and other social issues the Bush administration also preferred polarization over bipartisanship. Bush continued the Reagan strategy of pursuing the conservative social agenda through court appointments. In his first term Bush was able to nominate two Supreme Court justices, David Souter and Clarence Thomas. Souter was a relative unknown with little public record, but he was known to be philosophically conservative. Although his opponents tagged him the "stealth" nominee, Congress had little basis for rejecting him and he was confirmed easily.
When the first black on the Supreme Court, civil rights stalwart Thurgood Marshall, resigned, Bush made a much more controversial choice. He nominated Clarence Thomas. Thomas, like Marshall, is black, but as Ronald Reagan's choice to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he had bitterly attacked affirmative action and other components of the historic black political agenda. Thomas appeared to be headed for a close confirmation when one of his former staffers accused him of sexual harassment on the job. However, lacking convincing evidence of such wrongdoing, opponents could not block Senate confirmation.
Clarence Thomas became only the second
African-American Supreme Court JusticeThomas made the fifth of the nine Supreme Court justices named by either Reagan or Bush. With Marshall gone, only one historic liberal remained on the court. The cumulative impact of these appointments can be seen in recent court decisions in abortion, affirmative, and other cases. The court began to back away from the strong guarantees of access to abortion it had established in Roe v. Wade. A judicial revolution like the one spurred by the liberal Warren Court in the 1950s and 1960s was not yet in sight, but the direction of the court had clearly been changed.
While partisan polarization was the rule in social policy, bipartisanship was strongest in foreign policy. More than at any time in the last twenty years, the development of a new bipartisan consensus on foreign policy seemed like a realistic possibility. There remained considerable uncertainty about what should guide U.S. policy as the cold war, which had defined the nation's international position for half a century, was coming to an end. But in the short term, the reduction of tensions with the Soviet Union received broad political support from both parties.
President Bush also generally garnered bipartisan support for his military interventions in the Third World. The invasion of Panama drew little criticism and much support from congressional Democrats. Bush's decision to send troops to the Persian Gulf also won broad support. Most congressional Democrats did oppose the resolution authorizing the president to begin the war with Iraq, but Bush won enough Democratic votes to pass it through both houses of Congress. Once the war began, virtually all congressional Democrats declared their support for the troops and the president's policy. Since the policy was so painless and successful, congressional criticism was largely silenced.
CHARACTERIZING THE ECONOMIC AND FOREIGN POLICY SHIFTS SINCE 1981
back to topThe 1980s began with the conservative ideological offensive of the Reagan restoration. The Reagan restoration did have a significant impact on public policy, but it was never as dramatic as the bold rhetoric of the great communicator. Democrats in Congress were able to blunt many of the policy initiatives of the Reagan restoration. As the decade wore on, first Reagan and then his successor, George Bush, moved more toward the political center on certain key issues, although both men also took staunch conservative positions on other important issues. The ideological dynamics of economic and budgetary and foreign policy in the 1980s are shown in Figures 11.1 and 11.2. These are very rough generalization about a complex set of issues, but they serves to clarify the overall movement of policy.
Ronald Reagan carried on a sustained rhetorical campaign against big government throughout his presidency, propounding the themes of laissez-faire and the free market. But even his own policy proposals were less harsh on government spending than was his rhetoric. Reagan's first two budget proposals had a significant impact on the kinds of programs the government spent its money on, and did slow the growth of government spending characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s. But from 1983 on congressional Democrats and more moderate Republicans had greater control over budgetary policy than did the Reagan administration, so policy outcomes were more a continuation of the status quo than a revolution in public policy.
In the 1988 election and his first term in office, George Bush sent more mixed messages about the role of government than had Reagan. On the philosophical level Bush endorsed such activist government programs as an increase in the minimum wage, expansion of child care and education programs, and toughening of the Clean Air Act. However, like Republicans Nixon and Eisenhower before him, at the same time Bush endorsed particular expansions of government programs, he still talked about limited government and was reluctant to provide funds for new programs.
In foreign policy the changes between the early Reagan restoration and the later Reagan and early Bush years were even more dramatic. The Reagan restoration attempted to return to the practices of the national security state that had dominated American foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s. In his first term Reagan's rhetoric was even more hard-line than that of most of his cold war predecessors. Again, some of his policies were blocked by congressional Democrats, but because the president has more constitutional and political powers in foreign policy-making, the Reagan restoration had more impact on foreign policy than on budgetary policy.
But in his second term, faced with the Gorbachev phenomenon, Reagan reversed course. From the Reykjavik summit on, he adopted the stance of hegemonic flexibility, increasingly sounding more like Jimmy Carter than the earlier Ronald Reagan. Swept along by the dramatic changes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, George Bush went further than any previous president in contemplating the end of the cold war and a new U.S. foreign policy. The world system has changed so much in recent years that foreign policy in the 1990s is unlikely to fit the categories of thought that have dominated policy-making for more than 40 years.
Links for the Study of Presidents Reagan and Bush (Sr.) back to topWeb sites marked with * provided images for this chapter. Many images also are linked to the web site from which they originated.
White House links to all former presidents' official libraries a good linking point if you want to study the official documents of several different presidents
The National Archives links to all former presidents' official libraries Another route to the presidential libraries
*NAIL Digital Images Search Search the National Archives and Records Administration for online presidential documents
*The George Bush Presidential Library
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Ronald Reagan.com an unofficial Reagan site. I have linked to the index of key speechesThe Ronald Reagan Home Page another unofficial Reagan site. I have linked to the index of key speeches
Ronald Reagan Legacy Project another unofficial Reagan site. I have linked to defenses of the Reagan Record
Ronald Reagan and the Soviets an unofficial Reagan site, focused on foreign policy. I have linked to the SDI page (SDI was Reagan's term for what is now called missile defense)
God Bless Ronald Reagan click a link quickly to avoid irritating music
Ronald Reagan: Insane Anglo Warlord anit-Reagan site. you are traveling through time and space...you're on a strange planet
Ronald Reagan: The Bonzo Years Bonzo the chimpanzee was Reagan's co-star in one of his early movies
Documents of the Iran-Contra Affair government documents related to the biggest scandal of the Reagan presidency
A Pictoral History of Ronald Reagan An unofficial photo album of Ronald Reagan. Site may no longer be active
*C-SPAN State of the Union files watch State of the Union messages of presidents back to 1989. Transcripts of State of the Union messages available back to 1945
Inaugural Addresses The Inaugural Address is a key speech made when presidents are sworn into office. This site has them all
Speeches of the Presidents Inaugural Addresses, State of the Union Messages, and selected nomination acceptance speeches and war messages
The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden Highly recommended. Prepared by The Center for the Study of the Presidency, a leading group of scholars who study the presidency
Presidents of the United States Links to info on all American presidents. For each president it gives a brief biography, election results, cabinet members, chronology of major events, links to other internet biographies, links to key historical documents of the era, and other related links
The American President Biographies of each president and several essays on the presidency. Links to historical documents and other web resources. Each biography includes many links, including definitions of key terms
The American Presidency links to encyclopedia articles on each president and related subjects
Biographies of the American Presidents Biographies of each president. If the music file irritates you as much as it does me, click on the upper left to stop it
The Yale Law School Avalon Project Large collection of official papers on several presidential administrations. You can also find many international and congressional documents at their Major Collections page
Presidents' Day Links to resources on several key presidencies
Leadership Links on several presidents and articles on the presidency
The Political Resources Page Provides links for each president
University of Colorado Presidents Online Page links and explanations of many presidency web sites but too many dead links
