"Reaganism" after Reagan

Abstract

The 1988 elections in the US herald the end of the Age of Reagan. By January 1989 the President should be safely retired to Southern California. There he will spend his declining years in familiar pursuits: retelling favourite stories to wealthy friends, posing-like Mao in the Yangzte-for occasional displays of vigour before piles of splintered wood, supervising the writing of his official biography, and doing those other things expected of American elder statesmen. He will, at last, be gone from the centre of national politics. Reagan's impending departure naturally inspires a number of questions about the meaning and legacy of that destructive bundle of policies, eponymously identified as 'Reaganism', pursued during his time in office. Where did Reaganism come from? What did it amount to, and what has it accomplished? How will its achievements shape the post-Reagan future of American politics? In this essay, we offer some provisional answers to these questions, concentrating on their implications for US domestic politics.