Ben Vore’s Reviews > Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 > Status Update

Remarkable that when Carter said what was both true and obvious — that Reagan’s Neshoba County Fair speech and his invocation of “states’ rights” was a message of “hatred,” adding that “racism has no place in this country” — the media turned it into a referendum on whether Jimmy Carter (Jimmy Carter!) was being “mean.”

Hard to believe, given where the party of Reagan is in 2025, that the Gipper responded to a 1980 audience question about illegal immigrants by answering, “Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, and make it possible for them to come here legally,” adding that he wanted to “open the border both ways.”

This book affirms what Adam Serwer wrote about the Trump/Musk feud: “The one bridge that connects Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush to Donald Trump is slashing public services while showering tax cuts on the rich. This is the Republican Party’s most sacred, fundamental value, the one it almost never betrays. Whatever else Trump and Musk may fight about, they are faithful to that.”

Perlstein is always good at bringing in pop culture (usually film) to illuminate politics — and vice versa. I never realized just how much Superman is a fantasy of conservative nostalgia.

Pearlstein's love of the word "peroration" continues (two times so far this book). I get it. Great word.

“It was the epitome of Regan’s rhetorical gifts, that capacity to cleanse any hint of doubt regarding American innocence. That was the soul of his political appeal: his liturgy of absolution.”

Of course Ronald Reagan didn’t like Roots.