What Would Reagan Do: Nostalgia for Reagan’s Presidency Effect on American Politics

Robert Mueller led a 22-month investigation into possible foreign collusion during the 2016 presidential election, and in the final report, his call to action is “Congress has the authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice” (Mueller, 2019). America is in a state of unprecedented peril, partisanship, and corruption. Some would argue that this is the constant condition of the United States. Nonetheless, many Americans are asking, how did we get here? As the first Republican president after Nixon, Ronald Reagan became the face of the modern Republican Party, and 39 years later his policies, charisma, and legacy still control the party. The Grand Old Party (GOP) has utilized Reagan nostalgia to push their agenda of anti-LGBTQIA+, significant tax cuts and intuition-based policies. George W. Bush was re-elected on Reagan nostalgia, and throughout his presidency, he upheld themes and policies of the Reagan administration including optimism, national confidence, military strength, and tax cuts. Further, Trump was able to evoke a sense of restorative nostalgia for Reagan’s presidency through marketing himself as a political outsider, being unafraid of controversy, and having a vision of the future centered in faith over fact.

Nostalgia is derived from combining the Greek terms nóstos and álgos and means longing to return home (Boym, 2001). Nostalgia is displayed in two different forms, reflective and restorative. Reflective nostalgia concentrates on the longing and loss of memories; it encourages people to embrace the past in its true state. In contrast, restorative nostalgia desires to rebuild or complete the past. It cultivates an idealized image of the past by overlooking the negative portions of history. This idealization creates a longing to return to the time period, so people strive to recreate it (Boym, 2001). The Republican Party is infatuated with and longs to recreate the power and prestige of the Reagan administration by constantly implementing Reagan era policies and electing leaders that resemble him.

The GOP has created and advocated an agenda centered on Christian, “moral” beliefs that largely impact the policies and treatment of the LGBTQIA+ community. These beliefs did not begin with the Reagan administration; however, throughout his administration, he utilized harmful rhetoric and “moral” solutions to provide a platform to expand these views. The 80s marked the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and Reagan’s response to the outbreak has been used to justify a plethora of anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment and policies. When Reagan finally addressed the epidemic at a press conference, he stated “After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, doesn't medicine and morality teach the same lessons?” (“The Reagan Revolution,” 2016). Not only did this response solidify his administration's stance that the solution was to eliminate same-sex couples and intercourse, but it also was a clear indicator the GOP would not support the search for a cure. Nostalgia for the “good old days” allows for this sentiment of homophobia to remain a relevant and defining factor of the GOP manifesting in the protests surrounding the legalization of same-sex marriage, the transgender military ban, and the outspoken anti-LGBTQIA+ views of the current Vice President, Mike Pence. By determining the solutions to these “problems” is “morality,” Reagan created a platform and avenue for anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric and sentiment to thrive in modern society.

Further, Reagan’s presidency is defined by his 1981 tax cuts. He promised that this policy would decrease the deficit, grow the economy, encourage entrepreneurship, and create jobs for the American people; however, these drastic cuts were based on an intuition that the wealthiest Americans would invest their saved dollars, rather than consolidating their power and growing their wealth. These tax cuts were met with an increasing deficit, spending, and inflation translating into an economy headed towards a recession. Subsequently, Reagan implemented tax increases in 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1987; H.W. Bush increased taxes in 1990; Clinton followed with another increase in 1993 (Moore, 2001). Despite this failed economic policy, the GOP has glorified the 1980 economy forcing Republican politicians to support and implement tax cuts. Trump’s tax cuts are eerily similar to Reagan's 1981 policy, and he has continuously drawn comparisons between his vision for the American economy and Reagan’s. However, Trump is not the only presidential candidate to implement pro-tax cut rhetoric in order to gain base support. 1996 Republican hopeful, Bob Dole, and W. Bush embraced an across-the-board Reagan-style tax cut. Dole promised, “I’ll be another Ronald Reagan” to the Republican National Committee, and thus, solidifying his commitment to tax cuts and embracing Reagan’s legacy (Moore, 2001). Moreover, W. Bush won the Republican nominee over John McCain due to his commitment to cutting taxes. McCain recognized the fundamental flaw in Reagan’s policy and wanted to lead the GOP into the modern era; however, he was met with backlash. In the article “Still His Party,” Jonathan Chait describes Republican’s opinions of McCain as being “not a real conservative… and [abandoning] Ronald Reagan” (2012). While McCain brought an objective perspective to the Reagan presidency, W. Bush and Dole embraced the power of emulating Reagan; therefore, both were able to win the GOP nomination for President of the United States.

George W. Bush’s election platforms and candidacy were reliant on Republican nostalgia for Reagan. Throughout his first election campaign, he focused on emphasizing his views were more closely aligned to Reagan’s, rather than his father’s. In “Farewell to a President,” Doyle McManus describes W. Bush’s campaign method was to display himself as “Reagan’s ideological heir.” He aligned himself with Reagan’s increasingly outdated Christian right beliefs, rather than adhering to the current political climate. In addition, W. Bush’s focus of displaying military strength stems from Reagan administration values and themes. On September 11, 2001, America experienced its first terrorist attack on American soil; however, the response that followed was reminiscent of Reagan’s presidency. Chait highlights “Reagan built up the Pentagon to pursue a more aggressive military posture abroad” (2012). Reagan used his position to increase military spending and illegally engage in unconstitutional involvement in foreign wars. The Iran Contra scandal solidified the GOP’s ability to continuously interfere in foreign affairs for American benefit. Similar to the Iran Contra affair, W. Bush lied to the American people and authorized an invasion into Iraq to gain control of their oil and gas resources (“The Reagan Revolution,” 2016). After months of W. Bush’s approval ratings falling due to the excess military intervention in the Middle East, Reagan passed away in September of 2004. His death marked a period of mourning, and a Republican strategist explained: “mourning for Reagan will turn into a boost for Bush’s reelection campaign” (McCanus, 2004). W. Bush was a two-term president due to his ability to imitate Reagan in order to manipulate Republican nostalgia and gain support. In the end, W. Bush did not live up to the idealized legacy of Ronald Reagan, so the Republican Party began its search to find the true heir to him.

Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, inaugural addresses, and discourse regarding controversial issues originate from Reagan’s 1980 campaign and presidency. Reagan and H.W. Bush’s 1980 campaign slogan was “Let’s Make America Great Again,” and Trump and Pence’s 2016 campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again.” The Trump campaign did not attempt to leave any ambiguity to the period being referenced with the “Again.” Moreover, Trump embodied Reagan’s legacy throughout his presidential campaign. During both of their campaigns, they depicted themselves as political outsiders coming to Washington to fight for the average American. In Reagan’s inaugural address he proclaimed, “government is not the solution; government is the problem” (1981). His ability to separate himself from the political institution, while being inaugurated and previously serving as California’s Governor, was Reagan’s greatest assets. Similarly, in Trump’s inaugural address, he described his administration as a “transfer of power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to the American People” (2017). Donald J. Trump was born into a life of wealth and privilege where he continuously received an abundance of financial support from his father, yet he was able to convince the Republican Party that he was a “man of the people” coming to end corruption in politics. The idea that the government is ineffective and that these two presidents were fighting for middle-class Americans, while passing policies that directly benefit them, is the most prominent deception in political history.

Additionally, Republican nostalgia for Reagan allows for the criminalization of and discrimination against minorities to be widely acceptable. In the name of "patriotism," Trump is able to be blatantly racist without experiencing any negative ramifications because Reagan created a platform that welcomed the criminalization of minority communities in the United States. Reagan formulated a falsified story of a “Welfare Queen” who was an African American woman using eight identities and disabilities to receive over $70,000 in government assistance every year (“The Reagan Revolution,” 2016). He used this narrative to illustrate that ALL minorities on Welfare were taking advantage of the system. Despite there being no factual basis to this claim and top officials informing him that this story was fabricated, Reagan continued to push this anecdote and create an environment of increased hostility towards minorities. Further, Reagan amplified the war on drugs that disproportionately harmed minority communities, in particular African American men. Reagan cultivated a climate of discrimination and criminalization of minority groups, and because this was a defining aspect of his presidency, the nostalgia to return to this era includes these destructive narratives. Following in Reagan's footsteps, Trump has appealed to this “patriotism” by calling for a “Muslim ban,” describing all African Americans as lazy, and claiming that Mexican immigrants were “criminals, rapist, and drug dealers” (Leonhardt, David, and Ian Prasad Philbrick, 2018). Reagan generated a climate of intolerance within the GOP, and in the modern era, these implications and descriptions of minority populations are accepted and utilized. Additionally, the Republican Party has continuously produced policies that disproportionately harm minorities and allow for blatantly racist comments to be made by top Republican leaders without consequence. Republican nostalgia for Reagan is so ingrained within the party that they are unwilling to denounce the racism displayed throughout Reagan’s presidency and the political leaders that followed because it would require the realization that Reagan was wrong.

Restorative nostalgia for Reagan is reliant on the misremembering of the past. KourkenMichaelian, a scholar specializing in memory, emphasizes “memory is constantly reconstructed from clues, context, and personal experience,” and “the ‘malleability’ and ‘plasticity’ of human memory” (2016). Due to the fact that Reagan nostalgia hinges upon the misremembering of his presidency, it is difficult to separate the myth from the man. Reagan’s personality allowed him to captivate audiences. His legacy has been distorted into the present-day manifestation of him, and in turn, the restorative nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has inflated the quality of his administration. Further, the nature of the term “conservative” alludes to the underlying principle to preserve traditions. Without this restorative nostalgia, the Republican Party would be forced to change and adapt to modern times, and their policy would drastically change; therefore, the most effective political tool that all Republican political candidates utilize is the power of nostalgia.

On economics, defense, and “morality”, the Republican Party has ignored the necessity to acclimate itself to a new, modern political landscape because doing so would require accepting that the old beliefs, the Reagan beliefs, are no longer relevant. Today’s GOP agenda is largely the same as it was 40 years ago, and the Republican Party is clinging to relevance by electing leaders that embody Reagan’s ideas, policies, and personality. Unless a cultural shift occurs, exploiting restorative Reagan nostalgia will be Donald Trump and every candidate's most valuable asset in the 2020 election and beyond.