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can work, live and move

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to the UK. Let's

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start with the new one. Hello,

0:40

my name is David Runtzman and this

0:42

is Past-President Future. We are

0:44

getting closer to the present in our

0:46

series with the historian Gary Gerstl about

0:49

the ideas behind American presidential

0:51

elections. Today we have

0:53

reached 1980 and the

0:56

election of Ronald Reagan as president of the

0:58

United States. It was

1:00

widely seen then and now as

1:03

a watershed in American history and a

1:05

turning point. Was it?

1:08

And if so, what was

1:10

America turning from and what

1:12

was America turning to? What

1:16

did the president do? Gary,

1:23

I want to ask you as a

1:25

historian before we talk about the details of

1:27

what happened in 1980 just

1:29

to get your sense of the

1:32

man who was president but who would lose the presidency

1:34

that year, Jimmy Carter. So, amazingly,

1:36

as we record this, and I

1:38

say that with reason, he's still alive. He's

1:41

99 years old, an extraordinarily

1:43

long life and an extraordinarily

1:45

long post-presidential life in

1:47

which his reputation has shifted in various

1:49

ways. But for most of my adult

1:52

life, when I started studying politics and

1:55

became interested in American politics,

1:58

Relatively long period after this, The

2:00

following decades or to Carter seem to

2:02

symbolize a failed presidency is one time

2:04

presidents, but he was held out sometimes.

2:07

As a man who was out of

2:09

his death, I think quite a few

2:11

American presidents probably have been out there.

2:13

that's and in the nineteenth century it's

2:15

probably more out of the depth and

2:17

in there that. But

2:20

Carter me had a pretty.

2:22

Poor. Reputation. In.

2:24

The decades after his presidency to when

2:26

you look it. The Cards

2:28

Presidency. Now do you see a

2:30

man who was out of his

2:32

depth? Was he. Over promoted

2:35

by the American people. Yes,

2:38

I. Do not share in. A

2:41

certain carter revisionism that is apparent

2:43

in the Academy among scholars. It

2:45

is true that. He. Arguably

2:48

had one of the most successful post

2:50

presidential lives of any president and one

2:52

of the longest. An honorable man, man

2:54

of ethics who I respect enormously as

2:57

an individual. a principled man, but I

2:59

don't think he had a successful. Presidency.

3:02

Partly due to his own inexperience in

3:05

limitations, and partly due to the moment

3:07

in which he was president. This

3:09

was a moment where I think anyone

3:12

would have had a great deal of

3:14

difficulty. Americans love to fall in love

3:16

with President. To come out of nowhere

3:19

thinking that they're unsullied i politics. There's

3:21

an understanding in America that there's so

3:23

much corruption the summers craft. There's.

3:25

So much distrust of government that

3:28

but the nation needs as someone

3:30

unsullied by all of that said,

3:32

Come in and clean things up. And

3:34

this is a particularly intense feeling in

3:36

the mid seventies in the aftermath of

3:38

Watergate. And. Carter was such

3:41

a man. He was not. A

3:43

corrupt figure he had and

3:45

okay governorship. Of Georgia. But.

3:48

He was pure. He was. He

3:50

was principled, He was

3:52

gonna clean of Washington. The problem with

3:54

falling in love with and someone without

3:56

experience is that they are now immediately

3:59

being asked to. Managed one of

4:01

the biggest enterprises in the world.

4:03

And. They don't have the experience necessary

4:06

to do that. I

4:08

would fault the American people in this

4:10

case for falling in love once again

4:13

with someone not adequate to the task.

4:15

But let me also be clear about

4:17

the situation with which he was dealing.

4:20

He not only has deal with the

4:22

legacy of the sixties civil Rights revolution,

4:24

the angry stand off between whites and

4:26

non and American society, the effects of

4:29

the counterculture, the liberation movements women's movements

4:31

were particularly strong, the New Left at

4:33

fragmented, but out of those fragments come

4:36

powerful new groups that put new. Issues

4:38

on the agenda. Black. Hours

4:40

One feminism is another. Their.

4:43

Lot of new forces that have been

4:45

unleashed in American politics. In addition to

4:47

that, there are major shocks to the.

4:50

American economy that arise from sources

4:52

outside the United States that Carter

4:54

has no control over, but that

4:56

he has to deal with. And

4:58

one is. The. Petroleum

5:00

Crisis. The trigger was the Young

5:02

T Poor war between Israel and

5:04

Arab neighbors and seventy three. Know

5:07

the trigger the Iranian Revolution of the

5:09

late seventies, both of which result. For

5:12

a time and the shut off of

5:14

the flow of cheap oil to the

5:16

west, the global north depends on. Plentiful,

5:19

Supply of very cheap oil, the extraction

5:21

of how much oil from the ground,

5:23

the price at which was going to

5:25

be sold until that point have a

5:27

controlled mostly by Anglo American petroleum companies

5:29

and then Saudi Arabia and it's allies

5:31

in the Middle East and elsewhere say

5:33

we're going to set the terms for

5:35

this and so the global North industrial

5:37

economies accustomed to tremendously t oil. Now.

5:40

Have a major major petroleum crisis

5:42

on their hands and their unprepared

5:44

for. The other element is changing

5:46

relations between the industrial economies of

5:49

the global north. The Us has

5:51

been undertaking to rebuild the country

5:53

said vanquished, and where where to

5:55

Germany, Japan, and. They. Come

5:57

online in a very powerful

5:59

way. In Nineteen Seventy, the

6:01

and are competitive with America

6:03

and key industries and and

6:05

Us is not. prepare for

6:07

their competition automobiles, steel, manufacturing,

6:09

electronics. And so, the Us

6:11

is subjected to these extraordinary

6:13

inflationary sox arising from the

6:16

petroleum crisis. On. One

6:18

hand and industry failing because

6:20

they are not as efficient

6:22

as the industry's. Of.

6:25

Germany and Japan which have much more

6:27

modernized equipment and much more streamlined production

6:29

lines. And so you have a combination

6:31

of mounting inflation, And serious

6:33

unemployment As big American industries

6:36

and Us begin the Crater.

6:38

None of this is of

6:40

Carter's doing. It's not have

6:42

any President's doing really, but

6:44

these are profound changes in

6:46

political economy geopolitics. And

6:49

Carter is the first President to

6:51

have to deal with those socks

6:53

And. There would have been

6:55

better president's but the point is anyone would

6:57

have difficulty. Mastering.

7:00

These new challenges. As

7:02

he described that Gary: you've got president

7:05

who's not to it. And. Then

7:07

the task is probably too big for anyone.

7:09

it sounds like her. Overwhelming

7:11

Talons and therefore this election plot

7:13

spoiler count as gonna lose is

7:15

gonna lose badly. Ronald Reagan is

7:17

a foregone conclusion. These economic shocks.

7:19

We know economic shocks are often

7:21

the single biggest driver of shifts

7:23

in voting patterns and it doesn't

7:25

matter of it's not the President's

7:27

fault has been a huge amount

7:29

of research that shows that boat

7:31

is on interested in finding the

7:33

person to blame that is he

7:35

deserves the blame Them as in

7:37

finding someone to blame. So

7:40

with hindsight, Carter looks doomed.

7:43

And yet. For. long periods

7:45

nineteen eighty people thought the election was

7:48

very close and it seem to turn

7:50

on a range of contingency so that's

7:52

was baked in and was baked him

7:54

looks like is pointing to a defeat

7:56

for jimmy carter but then a number

7:58

of things happen and the thought

8:00

is always with contingencies had they not happened, maybe

8:03

it would have gone a different way. So

8:05

one of them is the Tehran

8:07

hostage crisis. So as a result of

8:09

the revolution in Iran,

8:12

Americans are taken hostage in the

8:14

American embassy in Tehran. This becomes

8:16

a huge issue in American

8:19

politics and it's a driving story on

8:21

the news every night. The number of

8:23

days they've been held tick, thock, tick,

8:25

tick, tick. And Carter launched what

8:28

with hindsight looks like a fairly

8:30

harebrained scheme to rescue the hostages

8:32

in 1980 and it failed. It

8:35

didn't get anywhere near and it was a disaster.

8:38

It cost the lives of some Americans

8:40

who were involved in it. But

8:42

had it worked, would we be telling a

8:44

different story here or was this baked

8:47

in? I mean, there's no way of knowing with that kind of

8:49

counterfactual, but nonetheless, certainly at

8:51

the time it felt like

8:54

Carter had taken a gamble

8:57

trying to rescue the hostages and he

8:59

lost. The implication

9:01

being if it's a real

9:03

gamble, had he won, had

9:05

he affected some miraculous rescue

9:09

operation, history would be different.

9:12

There's no doubt that the failed

9:14

rescue effort sealed the coffin. The

9:16

man can't manage the economy, he

9:18

can't bring inflation down, he can't

9:20

bring the unemployment rate down, and

9:23

he can't even get

9:25

a US military helicopter to its

9:27

destination. It's worth pointing out that

9:29

it's not as though the helicopters

9:32

reached Tehran and they lost the

9:34

battle. They crashed in the

9:36

desert due to a sandstorm. And

9:39

I remember people thinking, didn't they take precautions?

9:41

It's a desert. Didn't they take precautions?

9:43

Didn't they understand the threat of sand

9:46

getting into the motors and ringing these

9:48

aircraft down? It just seemed

9:50

so elementary and it seemed to confirmed people

9:52

in their sense of incompetence.

9:55

I guess the question is, was

9:57

this a reasonable gamble? was

10:00

it already a sign of desperation? Could

10:03

it have succeeded if it had been

10:05

planned better? I think there's no doubt

10:07

that if he had been successful in

10:10

rescuing the hostages, it would

10:12

have given him a huge boost in

10:15

American politics. But let's not underestimate the

10:18

difficulty of pulling this off. The

10:21

number of hostages that had to be

10:23

rescued in a crowded urban space was

10:25

the American military force adequate. There

10:28

could have been a gun battle. Hostages could have been

10:30

killed. It seems to me, looking

10:32

at this then

10:34

and also from a distance, that

10:37

the chances of success of that were never

10:39

very great. And so I judge

10:41

it to be more an act of desperation than

10:43

a shrewd move that

10:45

could have turned the election. On the other hand,

10:47

if it had a 20 to

10:49

25 percent chance of succeeding and

10:51

it had succeeded, there's no doubt it

10:53

would have strengthened Carter

10:55

where he was seen to

10:57

be weak, indecisive, bumbling,

11:00

reluctant to use the US military. It

11:03

would have been a demonstration of power

11:05

in the world and it would have

11:07

demonstrated his ability to strike back at

11:09

those who labeled the US as the

11:11

great Satan. Another

11:13

sign of his weakness was that he faced

11:16

a very strong challenge in the primaries as

11:18

an incumbent president from the

11:20

third of the Kennedy brothers, Teddy Kennedy. Complicated

11:23

figure in American political

11:26

life dogged at

11:28

this period by scandal, the Chappaquiddick scandal

11:30

when he drove a car off a

11:33

bridge and a young woman died and

11:35

he didn't report the death. And

11:38

anyone who's seen all the president's men will know Nixon

11:40

had a file on Chappaquiddick. Nixon's fear was always running

11:42

against the Kennedy. And as he said in 68, that

11:44

was his He

11:47

was relieved of that fear by circumstance and

11:49

tragedy. His fear in 72 was

11:51

that he might run against Teddy Kennedy. Wasn't going

11:53

to run in 76, but Kennedy tried

11:56

to get the nomination from Carter And

11:59

he did.. Come that close.

12:01

But it was pretty hotly contested and

12:03

he got more than a third of

12:05

the total vote are among democratic primary

12:08

voters. It's a sign of caught his

12:10

weakness any one time president who's challenged

12:12

in that way, it tends to be

12:14

one of the signals they really in

12:17

trouble. In the general election, George Hw

12:19

Bush was challenge in nineteen and to

12:21

buy Pat Buchanan's. Pakistan. Was never

12:23

going to win the nomination, but it was a sign

12:25

that Bush was in trouble. peasants,

12:28

Who when two times ten not face

12:30

primer determines. Was.

12:32

Kennedy. Challenging him from the less

12:34

was Kennedy to this is evidence

12:36

of causes weakness but was is

12:39

also a harbinger. Some of the

12:41

future direction travel of the Democratic

12:43

party was Kennedy. It's closer to

12:45

a politician who stood for. The.

12:48

Future of the party them

12:50

Carter was and awful Kennedy was

12:52

also Massachusetts politicians challenging position

12:54

of the South. Kennedy.

12:56

Stood for the older Democratic party and

12:58

Carter stood for the new Democratic Party.

13:00

That's what's most interesting about that stand

13:02

off. But let me first say that

13:05

I think Kennedy was not equal to

13:07

the challenges. I'm to be fair, my

13:09

judgments. I wouldn't say that Carter was

13:11

not adequate to the challenge of the

13:13

presidency and in Kennedy was not adequate

13:15

to the sounds of being a challenge

13:17

or to him sitting President. Life

13:19

rocked by scandal, Also.

13:21

The burden of being The last

13:23

four brothers. All. Three

13:26

others killed. The. Youngest

13:28

the burden on that are we should say

13:30

did when you say three others killed the

13:32

oldest Kennedy brother of all was killed in

13:35

the Second World War. the one that Joe

13:37

Kennedy the pay to familiarise the was going

13:39

to be the future of the clan died

13:41

really young and the future President of the

13:43

United States vs died really young. He.

13:45

Went for jazz case a second best. Second,

13:48

Best J F K killed Bobby

13:50

Kennedy killed all. Men: In

13:53

their youth and you think of the

13:55

burden that he had to carry. It.

13:58

Was also the youngest. He was. the

14:00

baby, often treated as such. And

14:02

I don't think he had the stature or

14:04

the competence in the late 70s to be

14:06

a strong president of the United States. I

14:08

think he's later going to get that stature

14:10

once he could resist the lure of the

14:12

presidency and simply settle into being a senior

14:14

statesman in the Senate. I think

14:17

he reaches that point and sometime in the

14:19

late 80s and through the 90s he becomes

14:22

a very senior and important figure. There's

14:24

a moment when he is interviewed by Roger

14:27

Mudd on CBS News in

14:29

1980 about why he wants to run for the

14:31

presidency and he has no coherent answer to

14:34

give. Except he's a Kennedy.

14:36

And that's a very revealing moment. It's

14:38

a way of him saying, I don't

14:40

really want to be here, I'm not ready for this,

14:42

but I have an obligation to my dead brothers and

14:45

my father to carry on the Kennedy

14:48

dynasty. That's how I interpreted

14:50

that moment. Now

14:52

having said that, what makes this contest

14:55

interesting is that Kennedy

14:57

represents much more the Democratic

15:00

Party of FDR while

15:02

Carter is beginning to move the Democratic

15:05

Party in a neoliberal direction.

15:07

So Kennedy gets the support

15:10

of unions, he trumpets support

15:12

for full employment policies, he wants

15:15

to expand the regulatory state. Carter's

15:17

most interesting and innovative policies have

15:19

to do with deregulation. He's deregulating

15:22

the airplane industry, he's deregulating

15:25

trucking, he's beginning

15:27

a process of deregulating telecommunications,

15:29

he wants to shrink government,

15:31

he wants to introduce more

15:33

of a market and

15:36

corral the influence of the big state

15:38

on the private economy. So he is

15:42

the first of the new

15:44

Democrats and Kennedy comes to embody one of

15:47

the last of the old Democrats and that

15:50

is a fight that is going on within

15:52

the Democratic Party. Now that the

15:55

Vietnam issue is out of the way, the

15:57

issue that consumes the Democratic Party is to what

15:59

degree will this party continue to be the

16:03

the heir of Franklin Roosevelt in the

16:05

New Deal and to what extent is

16:07

the crisis of the 1970s demanding a

16:09

different set of policies a

16:11

different toolkit. Kennedy says Keynesianism

16:13

has been the toolkit we've used for

16:15

the last 30 years it still works

16:18

I'm with it and Carter is the one

16:20

who's beginning to move away from that. That

16:23

is what makes the contest between those

16:25

two candidates so

16:28

interesting they embody these two

16:30

very different tendencies old

16:33

and new and those are going to continue to divide

16:35

the Democratic Party until the

16:37

Democratic Party sides with the heir of

16:39

Carter a man by the name of

16:41

Bill Clinton. What makes Kennedy

16:43

a complicated figure here is part of what

16:46

you described there is almost a reactionary or

16:48

small c conservative version this worked for us

16:50

in the past let's cling on to it

16:52

but as you

16:54

also say his was the longer career Carter's

16:56

career in electoral politics is

16:59

over when he loses. Kennedy is

17:01

a significant figure in the Democratic

17:03

Party right through to the presidency

17:05

of Barack Obama and he

17:07

is both reactionary but also in some ways

17:09

to the left so he is to the

17:11

left in what you've just described if Carter

17:13

is inching in a neoliberal direction he's still

17:15

holding on to some of the traditional institutions

17:17

of left-ish politics the United

17:20

States trade unionism and so on

17:23

and later on in his career he does represent

17:25

certain other left-ish causes in the Senate

17:27

including around some of the issues of

17:29

identity politics which are going to be

17:31

part of the future of the Democratic

17:33

Party so Teddy Kennedy is a really

17:36

interesting figure he both backward-looking and forward-looking

17:39

and he's also forward-looking almost to the presidency

17:41

of Joe Biden I mean that's the other

17:43

way in which Carter points to Bill Clinton

17:46

but Teddy Kennedy you know almost points to

17:48

the new deal politics that we have today.

17:51

I do agree with you that

17:53

Teddy Kennedy grows into the left

17:56

version of him that you've just described I don't

17:58

think it's fully formed in the 70s,

18:00

which is what makes his presidential run

18:03

premature. But I think he is going to grow

18:05

into it and he becomes a very significant voice,

18:08

counseling against all those other Democrats who

18:10

want to pull the Democratic Party to

18:13

the right. He becomes a very important

18:16

and steadfast advocate of what we

18:18

might call a social democratic strain

18:20

in Democratic Party politics. What makes that

18:22

interesting is that the Kennedy family itself

18:24

was, did not embody that social

18:27

democratic strain. And so he comes to a

18:29

place where he inhabits something distinct from his

18:31

brothers. It's a major achievement on his part.

18:34

As for him prefiguring Biden,

18:38

I didn't think he prefigures Biden,

18:40

but what's interesting is how these

18:43

questions straddle these generational divides.

18:45

In the 70s, looking back

18:48

makes him a relic of the

18:50

past and Carter is looking forward. But

18:53

we're now in a politics where some

18:56

of the more radical policies are the ones that

18:58

are looking back to the earlier New Deal

19:01

settlement for the 21st century. But

19:03

nonetheless, you bridge the Carter

19:05

Clinton years in a politics

19:08

now that has some of its roots in

19:11

the earlier politics of the New Deal era.

19:14

What I see as bringing Biden and

19:16

Kennedy together is that they both end

19:19

up in unexpected places. They

19:22

both come to embody a politics that did not

19:24

animate them in the early years of their career.

19:27

And just as Kennedy comes to embody

19:29

within the Democratic Party, identifiable

19:33

left to center position, Biden

19:35

is going to come to inhabit the same space. But

19:38

that is not the Biden of the 1990s or 1980s.

19:40

And so it's the story of two

19:43

politicians with electoral success

19:46

and long presence in the Senate, but

19:49

in both cases, taking a

19:51

while to find their voice. And

19:53

when they find that voice, it

19:56

is surprisingly Unconventional

19:58

and innovative. One

20:00

would not have predicted. For.

20:02

Either man looking at them earlier in

20:05

their careers. First. Over

20:07

by Ronald Reagan. Another. Extraordinary

20:09

figure with an astonishing lice

20:11

and American politics in Nineteen

20:14

eighty. I was young, I

20:16

was thirteen. I remember the selection and

20:18

and in Europe in Britain or Reagan

20:21

was a joke. He clearly

20:23

was not a joke. He was a

20:25

serious and incredibly skillful politician, but costs

20:27

was a bit of a joke to

20:29

actually says like a joke Isis joke?

20:31

Not. In. Any way, a therapist

20:34

and taste and what was really going on here. But

20:36

the other. Thing. About Reagan is

20:38

that he had a dual reputation

20:40

even beyond that sort of derisive

20:42

european patronizing few, which is on

20:44

the one hand, he was the

20:46

optimist. He. Was

20:48

gonna make America smile again and feel

20:50

good about itself again. And on the

20:53

other hand, he was a scam. Unga.

20:55

The Can. Cold War Scam Unga. He

20:58

wants to frighten people, particularly about

21:00

the threat of the Soviet Union.

21:02

You. Gotta be a really skillful politician to

21:05

be an optimistic scam hunger or a frightening

21:07

optimist. Whatever it was. and I think there

21:09

is something in that he was. both of

21:11

these things was naming put his tendency in

21:13

some ways was built around these two things.

21:17

Genuine. Optimism. He was quite a

21:19

sunny person in the way, but also.

21:22

There. Was an apocalyptic strain to

21:24

his politics. Absolutely.

21:28

And the one hand, the Soviet Union

21:30

and his language was the evil empire

21:32

which was shocking to here in America

21:34

after the period of detente at. Nixon

21:37

inaugurated in that. Carter. Despite

21:39

his. Militants about the

21:41

Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan continued to

21:44

hear this really frank talk about an

21:46

evil empire that could not be allowed

21:48

to exist. Discussion

21:51

of modest nuclear weapons that might

21:53

have to be deployed on battlefields

21:55

in Europe was part of his

21:57

bargain, but if we compare him

21:59

to a scam on your life

22:01

Trump. But Singer says Reagan his

22:03

his belief in the American dream

22:05

and that it would under his

22:07

presidency become morning and America once

22:09

again, and he delivered that message

22:11

with conviction and hope. And.

22:14

Ultimately, persuasion, a tremendous number of

22:16

people in America. Reacted.

22:19

Positively to his vision of America

22:21

as the city on a hill

22:23

that perhaps had lost it's way

22:25

but would soon regain it and

22:27

once again become the last best

22:30

hope for mankind. And he communicated

22:32

both the threats and the optimism

22:34

with conviction and with sincerity. and

22:36

he could pivot from one to

22:38

the other quite quickly. One

22:41

of the most controversial policies that

22:43

he pursued in there were many

22:45

controversial policies he pursued in the

22:48

nineteen eighties was the so called

22:50

Star Wars The Strategic Defense Initiative

22:52

and which he imagined building a

22:55

dumb over America a digital down

22:57

that would protect America from any

23:00

incoming Soviet nuclear missiles or missiles

23:02

from North Korea. The. Us

23:04

would have the technology to intercept every one of

23:06

them no matter how many were coming. And

23:09

this would enable America to abandoned

23:11

it's policy of mutually assured destruction.

23:14

It would change the game in

23:16

terms of. Nuclear. Brinkmanship.

23:20

He was ridiculed for this. and United

23:22

States. The Us doesn't have the technology

23:24

of a thousand missiles are pouring and

23:26

how could this iron Dome of America

23:28

possibly stop them all? But this didn't

23:31

deter. Reagan who pursue this and even

23:33

as he was being ridiculed in the United States.

23:36

The man who felt this thread very

23:38

deeply into me was a man by

23:40

the name of Gorbachev and Soviet Union

23:42

who worried that this could become a

23:44

reality in the Soviet Union could not

23:46

build a similar strategic defense initiative, rendering

23:48

it newly vulnerable. And The

23:50

Cold War. And this leads

23:53

Gorbachev to send out some. Feelers.

23:55

Of peace negotiations to this arts cold

23:58

warrior who sees a Soviet Union. The

24:00

Evil Empire. And.

24:02

Too surprising degree. Reagan.

24:05

Except these piece feelers and

24:07

arranges. Peace. Talks. With.

24:10

Gorbachev in the Nineteen eighties. This is an

24:12

example of him. Pivoting from

24:14

scare mongering. To. Optimism from

24:16

pivoting from position of. Putting.

24:18

The U S. in the position of being

24:21

the unilateral power in the Cold War. To.

24:24

Dominate the world for the sake of safety.

24:27

To. Talking with Gorbachev in the late eighties

24:29

about massive nuclear disarmament to the point

24:31

where he's scaring some of his advisors

24:33

that he's giving up too much too

24:35

quickly. I think this illustrates. The.

24:37

To Reagan's and it also. Reveals.

24:41

A side of him that escapes

24:43

the attention of a lot of

24:45

people that he had a strategic

24:48

sense that is pivoting from scaremongering

24:50

to negotiation. Optimism was not just

24:52

because he didn't know who he

24:54

was, but he was using the

24:56

threats to good effect. And.

24:59

It suggests that he was a

25:01

far more sophisticated thinker and strategist

25:03

that he's usually being given credit

25:06

for. My memories of the Nineteen

25:08

eighties are mans not equipped to

25:10

be president, is an entertainer, not

25:12

a politician. He can't remember the

25:15

last book he rarely can't separate

25:17

section from truth. He tells stories

25:19

and parables that are populated by

25:22

Hollywood characters who. Never.

25:25

Existed in real life is scary to

25:27

have in a position of that kind

25:29

of leadership. I've. Had a revise. My.

25:31

View of. Rag.

25:34

I now taken much more seriously as

25:36

a serious man, a consequential president with

25:38

certain views and visions of how the

25:40

world ought to be ordered. That.

25:43

He had consistently developed. Since.

25:46

The late forties and early fifties. So.

25:49

it's wrong to see him as a

25:51

war stuff hollywood star simply looking for

25:53

another vocation for a few years he

25:55

had a vision for how to reorganize

25:57

the world and how to reorganize the

25:59

email economy, which

26:01

makes him in my view one of the

26:04

most consequential presidents of the 20th century, probably

26:06

second only to Franklin Roosevelt. Well,

26:08

I'm struck by some of the things

26:10

that he said, some of his speeches. So,

26:12

like you say, he has a reputation as

26:14

a folksy storyteller. He actually gave quite a

26:16

lot of very serious speeches

26:19

that did try and lay out a

26:22

really broad intellectual

26:25

ambition for how he saw the world.

26:27

I'm guessing he didn't write these speeches

26:29

himself, but he delivered them with conviction.

26:31

And some of them are the kinds

26:33

of speeches that are more serious and

26:35

actually in their way more

26:38

intellectual than any politician

26:40

would make today. There's

26:43

one example here. So I'm going to read

26:45

this one, not because I'm going to do

26:47

an American accent, because he gave this one

26:49

in Britain. But in 1982, probably peak mockery

26:51

of Reagan, Reagan comes to give a address

26:53

in 1982 to the houses

26:56

of parliament, as presidents occasionally do.

26:59

I'm just going to read a bit of this speech. It's really

27:01

hard to imagine any contemporary politician

27:03

talking like this. So

27:06

this is Ronald Reagan. I think if I didn't

27:09

say who it was, people wouldn't guess that this

27:11

was Ronald Reagan. He said to

27:13

the British parliament, in an

27:15

ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We

27:18

are witnessing today a great revolutionary

27:20

crisis, a crisis where the

27:22

demands of the economic order are

27:24

conflicting directly with those of the

27:26

political order. But the crisis is

27:28

happening not in the free non-Marxist

27:30

West, but in the home of

27:32

Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It

27:35

is the Soviet Union that runs against

27:37

the tide of history. By denying human

27:39

freedom and human dignity to its citizens,

27:41

it is also in deep economic difficulty.

27:43

The rate of growth in the national

27:45

product has been declining steadily since the

27:48

1950s and is less

27:50

than half of what it was then. And then

27:52

he goes on to say, we are seeing in

27:54

Europe the growth of what he calls new schools

27:56

of economics in England and America and the appearance

27:59

of the so-called new philosophers in France,

28:01

all of whom have come to

28:03

the conclusion, the realisation, that collectivism

28:05

stifles all the best human impulses.

28:08

So he didn't write that himself,

28:10

but he believed it. I mean, I

28:12

think what's striking about that speech is

28:14

it sounds authentic. It's a pretty serious

28:16

message. And also, in

28:18

some respects, he was right. I mean, it's a pretty

28:21

powerful combination. He sounds like he means it. There's

28:24

real ambition to the speech. And

28:26

he was right in a way that

28:29

many people had not yet perceived. There was a

28:31

serious crisis in the Soviet

28:33

Union, and it was a failure

28:35

both of economics and

28:37

of legitimacy. To

28:39

use another paraphrase from Karl Marx, the

28:42

Soviet Union was on the edge of being swept

28:44

into the dustbin of history. That's

28:47

what Reagan believed. And you asked

28:49

earlier, can we imagine other presidents giving

28:52

it with that sincerity and with

28:54

that level of authority in the

28:56

speech to invoke Marxism, Leninism, and

28:59

to, in a sense, reverse the frame

29:01

of analysis for the purposes of making

29:04

his point? This is a man who began

29:06

as a devotee of the New Deal. He's

29:09

the only president to have been president of

29:11

a labor union, the Screen Actors Guild in

29:13

the late 40s. This

29:16

is where he encounters communists, because there

29:18

are many communists in Hollywood at the

29:20

time, and this is where he develops

29:22

his deep antagonism to everything communistic. And

29:25

when his movie career is over and he

29:27

leaves the union, he doesn't want any more

29:30

union business anymore, he's employed by General Electric

29:32

to go around to its 120 plants in

29:35

the US and to give four-minute

29:37

free enterprise speeches, celebrating

29:40

the virtues of capitalism, free enterprise,

29:42

free markets. And because the man

29:44

was scared of flying, he

29:47

would go from one General Electric plant to another

29:49

by train, so he had a lot of time

29:51

on his hands, and he did a lot of

29:53

reading. And among the books he was reading in

29:55

the early 50s was Friedrich

29:58

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. And

30:01

one of the schools of new economic thinking

30:03

that is being referred to in that speech

30:06

is the Chicago School of Economics, which

30:08

is where Hayek landed, where Milton Friedman

30:11

landed, where a

30:13

new school of neoliberal economics is

30:15

being developed to free the economy

30:17

from its fetters, to

30:20

burst it free and to allow

30:22

economic growth and prosperity and affluence

30:24

to spread as only

30:26

free market capitalism can spread it.

30:29

What's not included in that speech about

30:31

the tyranny of collectivism is

30:34

Reagan's belief that there was a

30:36

continuum between communist tyranny and

30:38

what he called New Deal tyranny.

30:40

There was no distinction in his mind

30:42

between social democracy and communism.

30:45

There was no distinction in his mind between

30:47

the politics of the Labor Party and the

30:49

politics of communism. There was a

30:51

distinction, but they were on a single continuum, and

30:53

one was going to lead to another. His ambition

30:55

in the United States is

30:57

to upend the New Deal settlement,

31:00

to eliminate the regulatory state, to

31:02

restore America to a time of

31:04

the 1880s, the 1890s, where

31:07

there were no serious regulatory force

31:10

on capitalist development. So it was quite

31:12

radical in that sense. And

31:15

the scary part of what he

31:18

was proposing and recommending was his

31:20

insistence that what many

31:22

Americans regarded as settled, whether

31:24

that be Social Security, a

31:26

strong regulatory state, Keynesian

31:29

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to the UK. I

33:13

want to ask you one more question about the campaign

33:15

and then something more about the

33:17

legacy of this election. Reagan

33:20

was an actor and again the

33:22

cliche of the time we absolutely

33:24

unequivocally moved into the age of

33:26

TV politics. Reagan

33:29

came across pretty well on TV actually. I think Carter

33:31

often came across quite well on TV. He

33:34

was in a different way in the way that

33:36

you described him in a different kind of folksy

33:38

way. He was quite telegenic.

33:41

This is also the era of the presidential debates.

33:44

They weren't a novelty. They had been going

33:46

for a while and in 1960 there was

33:48

a significant debate between Kennedy and Nixon. So

33:50

we're 20 years on from that, but they

33:53

were important and in this campaign there was

33:55

one two way debater face off between the

33:57

two candidates. Not that long

33:59

before. day that was thought to have

34:01

been very significant. People argue

34:03

about this all the time. With hindsight, you

34:05

can read significance into these events and

34:08

see that in the fact that Reagan was

34:10

thought to have done well in that debate,

34:13

the sign of the landslide to come

34:15

is possible. It actually, the landslide makes

34:17

people with hindsight think that the debate

34:19

was decisive. Was it decisive?

34:22

Was this an era, this is an era

34:24

of not many TV channels and big audiences

34:26

for these events, you know, sort of Super

34:28

Bowl, not quite, but Super

34:30

Bowl style audiences for these events. Did

34:35

they shape electoral outcomes? Carter

34:37

had a bad debate and Reagan had a few

34:39

lines in that debate which

34:42

made it into discourse in

34:45

the days and weeks after and shape

34:47

the discussion in the final days leading

34:50

up to the election. One

34:52

of those lines was, are you better off today than you

34:54

were four years ago?

34:57

And then on another occasion, Carter

35:00

was engaged in a quite

35:02

serious discussion. He was

35:04

an engineer by training, so he was masterful

35:06

with the details, but could sometimes lose the

35:08

big picture. And Reagan's

35:11

only response was, there

35:13

you go again. And that landed

35:15

with really powerful effect.

35:19

Carter made one mistake of his own

35:21

in terms of talking about the threat of nuclear weapons.

35:24

He talked about taking advice on nuclear

35:27

weapons policy from his 12-year-old

35:29

daughter. And

35:31

this went over very, very poorly in the

35:34

discussion that ensued. As

35:37

we all know, the effort to

35:39

spin debates goes

35:41

on very intensely. And so there

35:43

are armies of pundits ready to

35:45

launch into action. This

35:48

is a case where I think if

35:50

we judge the success of a debate

35:53

by the perception of one

35:55

candidate clearly having had the superior evening,

35:57

I think this is a case where

35:59

Reagan clearly came out on top.

36:02

And if Carter had a stupendous

36:04

debate, could he have changed

36:06

the outcome of the election? It's hard

36:08

to imagine. It's hard to imagine. And

36:11

then, of course, the Iranians were trying

36:13

to humiliate America. They

36:15

didn't really care whether Carter or Reagan would

36:17

be president. But there

36:19

were negotiations to free the hostages going

36:22

on urgently. This is where Carter had put a

36:24

lot of his hope, going on urgently until the

36:27

very last moment. And the

36:29

interest of the Iranians was just an

36:31

embarrassing Great Satan as much as possible.

36:33

The deal was done, basically, but they

36:35

held off actually releasing

36:38

the hostages until after

36:40

the election had been decided and

36:42

Reagan was coming into office. And it was

36:45

a way of humiliating

36:47

Carter even further. I don't think they

36:49

thought that Iran would benefit over the

36:51

long term from having Reagan as president.

36:53

I just think it was an effort

36:55

to humiliate this great power as much

36:58

as possible and to have an influence

37:00

on the election as

37:02

much as they could just to embarrass

37:04

the evil empire of the United States.

37:08

The 1980 election has gone

37:10

down in history as a watershed. It signals for

37:12

many people the end of one era, particularly

37:15

an era of political economy, New

37:18

Deal and post-New Deal political

37:20

economy, and the dawn of an era that's

37:22

sometimes named after the winner of the election,

37:24

Reaganomics. And it's partly

37:26

because it doesn't exactly, but it

37:28

close enough coincides with a similar

37:30

shift in Britain. 1979, the election

37:33

of Margaret Thatcher, again, an era named after her

37:35

Thatcherism or an idea named

37:38

after her Thatcherism. And

37:40

it can be tempting to think of these

37:43

elections as the decisive event. So the election

37:45

is the thing that signals the shift. But

37:48

when you look at it, a lot

37:50

of the shift has happened before the elections.

37:52

And you've mentioned it already in Carter's administration,

37:54

some of the things that we come to

37:56

associate with what people, including you and your

37:59

writings, have called The neoliberal

38:01

era. Where. They're ready to

38:03

embrace into that the Callahan administration

38:05

that came before. But. Of

38:07

that administration under pressure of

38:09

what was happening in the

38:11

world of international economics and

38:13

Finance had already moved in

38:15

a much tighter direction in

38:17

terms of monetary policy, but

38:19

also looking at ways in

38:21

which it could rain in

38:23

some of the expenditure on

38:25

social security and other things

38:27

tougher with the unions.shift was

38:29

already underway. And it

38:31

could be that these elections less. The

38:34

cause of the change were a

38:36

symptom of a change that was

38:38

already underway and United States Jimmy

38:40

Carter had already empowered the Federal

38:42

Reserve to raise interest rates in

38:44

a way that was going to

38:46

lead eventually to very high unemployment,

38:48

but also to will tend to

38:50

be associated with the revolution in

38:53

economic policy. The. Russian

38:55

invasion of Afghanistan. Carter was already

38:57

talking much more toughly about Not

38:59

Evil Empire as he cool lip

39:01

the Soviet Union and the base

39:03

in Afghanistan. So I really do

39:05

remember that. I mean, if there's

39:07

one event from my childhood where

39:09

I think I remember watching the

39:11

news and being properly scared. It

39:14

was when the Russians invaded Afghanistan and

39:16

there was something reassuring about the thought

39:18

that they were politicians who are talking

39:20

tough. But there's also something terrifying about

39:22

it because the threat of nuclear war

39:24

was real. but that's casa that's not

39:26

Reagan. Some. Of

39:28

this was already under way. You can't take

39:30

elections as signaling. The. Turning point.

39:34

They. Matter. But do we overstate the extent

39:36

to which Seventy Nine and Person Eighty

39:38

in America is the dawn of the

39:40

new era? Rather than maybe it is

39:42

one of the things that signals of

39:44

a new era has already. Don't. One.

39:47

Of the challenges of combining

39:49

economic and political history is

39:51

that the time periods under

39:53

which processes unfold are not

39:55

the same. We. define political

39:57

time and sort through spurts

39:59

defined by elections. The movement out of the

40:01

New Deal order into the neoliberal order is mammoth

40:05

tectonic shift in political economy

40:08

that cannot occur through one election. So the

40:12

challenge is to understand what is the relationship of

40:14

the manifest politics to the latent economic

40:16

changes that are going on. And it's

40:18

certainly true that I would say the

40:20

death of the New Deal and the

40:23

birth of the neoliberal order occurs

40:25

in the 70s out of the

40:27

economic crisis and out of necessity.

40:30

And that Carter is thrust into a situation for

40:32

which he's not really prepared but is on

40:36

the one hand experimental, on the other hand uncertain.

40:38

And so part of our

40:40

verdict on the Carter administration is that

40:42

he doesn't really know in which direction

40:44

he's heading. So the forces

40:47

for neoliberalism have been unleashed. The

40:49

economic toolkit that had sustained the

40:51

New Deal is no longer working.

40:54

Lots of people are actively searching. There

40:56

are all kinds of

40:58

new policy think tanks in Washington in

41:00

the 1970s. There are new schools of

41:02

economics like the Chicago School of Economics

41:05

that are developing new ways of thinking.

41:07

There are donors

41:09

who are willing to

41:11

invest in this new political economy

41:14

and in this new politics. So

41:16

the ground by 1980 has been laid. But you also

41:19

need a general to take command of the forces

41:22

and to orchestrate the advance

41:24

and execute the battle plan.

41:26

And Reagan was that general

41:28

in the US and I would

41:30

say Thatcher was that general in the UK.

41:33

And yes, Reagan is continuing

41:35

policies that Carter would occasionally

41:38

embrace and implement. And there are forces

41:40

propelling Reagan to embrace the kind of

41:42

economics that he's going to embrace.

41:46

But he also has a vision

41:49

for transformation that he

41:51

unfurls across a very broad terrain. And

41:54

if you imagine a different president with less of a vision,

41:56

it may

41:59

have happened much more haphazardly and uncertainty.

42:01

And also we cannot

42:03

ignore the fact that throughout this process

42:05

there are forces of opposition. The

42:08

Teddy Kennedy Democratic Party doesn't disappear

42:10

in the 1980s. It's present

42:13

in Congress. They are capable of mounting

42:15

an opposition. They are capable of obstructing

42:18

some of the things that Reagan is doing.

42:20

But if you look at the comprehensiveness of

42:23

the Reagan project, the radical slashing of tax

42:25

rates on the

42:27

wealthy, the hard line against organized

42:29

labor and the desire to break

42:32

unions, the effort to deregulate

42:34

mass media in a country that had

42:37

a robust history

42:39

of public regulation, the effort

42:41

to develop a new jurisprudence

42:43

that would undercut the very

42:45

constitutional legitimacy of the New

42:47

Deal, the effort to attack

42:50

affirmative action at its root as

42:53

a project of social engineering that in

42:55

America and the land of freedom in

42:57

a small state was considered illegitimate. If

42:59

you consider the breadth of

43:01

the Reagan project, I conclude

43:04

that this is part of the vision that

43:06

has been developing for a long time. And that

43:09

Reagan was a person with such a

43:11

vision and took critical

43:14

steps toward implementing it in the 1980s in a

43:16

comprehensive manner

43:19

that might not have been executed to

43:21

the same degree if we can imagine

43:23

another president being in place. I

43:26

think if Carter had won, we would see

43:28

the neoliberal order unfold, but

43:30

in a much less comprehensive and authoritative

43:32

way. There's a counterfactual

43:34

that British historians are sometimes obsessed with,

43:36

which is if Callaghan

43:38

had called an election, as he was tempted

43:41

at one point to do, in

43:43

the later months

43:45

of 1978, he would

43:47

probably have won it. He waited

43:49

too long. He lost decisively in

43:51

the election in 79. Had Callaghan

43:53

called that election in 78 and won it,

43:55

that would have been the end of Margaret

43:57

Thatcher, probably, and it would have been exactly the same.

44:00

the scenario you described, those early

44:02

neoliberal, sort of felt-out,

44:04

tentative, pragmatic forms of

44:07

political economic reform would have continued,

44:09

but without the stridency, without the

44:11

ideological vision, without knitting in an

44:14

international vision with a domestic vision,

44:16

including a Cold War vision, with

44:18

a domestic vision, assuming Carter hadn't

44:20

won without the alliance across the Atlantic. A

44:23

version of this happened in France, right under

44:25

a socialist president, who

44:28

eventually had to abandon that for

44:30

something that was more pragmatically attuned

44:33

to the new reality of an

44:35

emerging neoliberal order. So

44:37

I completely agree with you,

44:39

actually. It's sort of half and half. A lot

44:41

of this would have happened, but it makes a

44:43

massive difference when it happens under the leadership and

44:45

in the name of politicians

44:47

who fully embrace it, as

44:50

opposed to the ones, I'm not saying it's better or worse,

44:53

but the ones who do it either

44:55

reluctantly or by necessity give you

44:57

a very different politics, even if

45:00

the political economy has links. One

45:02

last question. So you mentioned

45:04

the new jurisprudence. We talked about

45:06

this in relation to FDR and the

45:08

New Deal, that some of the enduring

45:10

significance is in the politics

45:13

of the Supreme Court. And as

45:15

you say, one of the challenges of

45:18

understanding political history is these electoral cycles

45:20

don't map on to economic, nevermind cycles,

45:22

not shifts. But

45:24

a challenge, particularly in the United States,

45:26

is electoral cycles do not map on

45:28

to shifts in the Supreme Court. That's

45:30

the whole point of the Supreme Court.

45:32

It doesn't change in accordance with each

45:34

new president, but it does change generationally.

45:38

If you look at the politics of America now, a

45:41

large part of the legacy of

45:43

this era, the new era of

45:46

Reagan politics, is

45:48

the jurisprudential shift. But

45:50

that takes a long time to play out

45:53

in a reconstituted Supreme Court. And

45:55

maybe it's the anti-regulatory version of

45:57

this, the really radical. anti-regulatory

46:00

version, dismantling the whole of

46:02

Nixon's environmental regulation order, for

46:04

instance. This is only

46:06

really happening now with

46:09

this Supreme Court. I mean, it's a

46:11

Generation Plus effort. Yes. And

46:15

I was having a discussion with someone whose name

46:17

I can't remember right now, trying

46:19

to give a name to this court, the

46:21

current court in the United States. And

46:25

he said it's no longer the Roberts Court, the

46:27

Chief Justice of the United States, because he doesn't

46:29

control it. And I think the

46:31

recent decisions have given a lie to

46:33

the originalist

46:35

philosophy that's closely associated

46:37

with Antonin Scalia. And

46:40

this person said to me, maybe we should call it

46:42

the Robert Bork Court. Robert

46:44

Bork was someone nominated

46:47

by Reagan for the Supreme Court. And this

46:49

was a huge battle in Congress. And

46:52

Bork was defeated by Teddy Kennedy,

46:54

who led the opposition mostly over

46:56

issues of civil rights. But

46:59

Bork's greatest radicalism was his desire to

47:01

upend the entire regulatory state

47:04

that was put in place by

47:06

the New Deal. And we

47:09

may now be seeing the court

47:11

that Bork had imagined, that he could never

47:13

shape himself through his presence because he was

47:15

denied a seat, but

47:17

that his philosophy now guides

47:21

this Supreme Court majority. And

47:23

it may be that we are

47:26

seeing a Reaganite jurisprudence being

47:29

enacted in the 2020s, more

47:32

than 30 years after the Reagan presidency

47:35

came to an end. In

47:37

one of the many ironies of history, to go back to

47:39

what we were saying earlier, it's

47:42

being enacted in the face of Joe

47:45

Biden's agenda and what

47:47

his administration would like to do, which has

47:49

echoes of a much, much earlier politics.

47:51

You can see history doesn't repeat, but it

47:54

rhymes. And you can see some of

47:56

the things that we've talked about FDR and the court. As

47:59

he said, it was Teddy Kennedy. who blocks Bork

48:01

getting on the Supreme Court. We now have a

48:03

Bork court and a weirdly,

48:05

newly in his way, radical president

48:08

in Joe Biden and these two

48:10

versions of a future

48:12

for America competing with each other in ways

48:15

that are very now, very 2024, and

48:18

really do have echoes of

48:20

earlier generational conflicts. And

48:23

it takes us back to the early

48:25

20th century when progressives could not get

48:27

their legislative packages through because

48:31

of Bork-like courts, which

48:33

were perpetually obstructing

48:36

what Congress was trying to do. Now the situation

48:38

in Congress is not quite the same now

48:42

because Congress is paralyzed in ways in which it

48:44

was not in the early 20th

48:46

century. But we can see echoes of

48:48

a standoff between a majoritarian

48:52

politics that imagines

48:55

a certain kind of politics for America and

48:58

a Supreme Court that says what this

49:00

majority wants is constitutionally

49:02

illegal and thus

49:04

cannot stand. And

49:07

so we can expect, I think,

49:09

fights between the Supreme Court and

49:11

the presidency and the legislature for

49:14

years to come in ways that echo

49:18

the struggles of the early 20th century and

49:20

remind me of the very critical

49:22

stance that two earlier presidents, one

49:24

Theodore Roosevelt, the other Franklin Roosevelt,

49:26

one Republican, one Democrat, took

49:29

against the court itself. And for those listening

49:31

to this who are despairing of the current

49:34

court, it's useful to remind us that eventually

49:37

the Rooseveltian attack on the legitimacy

49:39

of the court produced a court

49:42

more amenable to majoritarian

49:44

politics in the United States. If

49:54

you would like to sign up for

49:56

the free fortnightly newsletter that now accompanies

49:58

this series, just call Click on the link

50:00

in the show description and you will see how. Also,

50:03

do follow us on Twitter to find out more

50:05

about what's coming up. We're

50:08

at PPF Ideas. Next

50:11

time in this series, we have reached the

50:13

end, not the present, but

50:16

the election of 2008, our last

50:18

episode, the election

50:20

of Barack Obama. It was another

50:22

watershed in American history. I'm

50:25

going to be talking to Gary about how it

50:27

happened, but also about how we

50:29

got from there to now. This

50:34

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