Conservative Ascendancy and the 1970s

January/February 2007 Historically Speaking 35 Conservative Ascendancy and the 1970s A Review of Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of "EightiesAmerica (Oxford University Press, 2006). David L. Chappell Memories of the 1970s tend to mortify. The decade will always be overshadowed by its older sibling, that daring trailblazer , the 1960s. The 1 970s appears as a sequel, an effort to explain the joke. The 1960s, like die 1920s, defined rebellion as imagination and originality at war with tasteless conformity. Afterward, rebellion looked like a habit—or like a hustle , to borrow the name of the 1970s' most characteristic dance. The exuberant harmonies of the Beades curdled into die canned affectations of Alice Cooper. The biting insights of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon degenerated into the nasalretentive whining of James Taylor. The Miracles and the Suprêmes— so fresh and irrepressible that even Motown could not make them sound mass-produced—gave way to Donna Summer and Teddy Pendergrass , who were born homogenized . Every era has its monotonies, but no era was defined by its monotonies as the 1970s was by Abba, Bread, and Chicago. Apparently people had to wear loud plaids and clodhopper shoes to stay awake. Mercilessly, every untalented American who did not become a musician took up photography. So no one can forget the fun-housemirror look of die decade's bellbottoms and flightless lapels. The nonabsorbent test-tube fabrics of the 1970s are destined to overrun the rummage sales and dirift shops for eternity. Such obtrusive memories tend to occlude the great shift; in political culture—one of die most fascinating and momentous ever—that took place over the decade. No one has yet adequately explained why die population diat overwhelmingly rejected Barry Goldwater's conservatism in 1964 soon embraced a deeper conservatism, and appears to this day unwilling to let go. Philip Jenkins attempts to cut dirough all die awkward and painful memories to provide a psychologically resonant explanation. Jenkins's first and easiest task is to reject what has become orthodoxy among scholars of the decade. The standard view is diat, from the late 1960s on, die GOP relied on irrational appeals—some authorities allege racism, others concentrate on the increasing manipulation of sexual phobias and religious fantasies. Thus Republicans distracted middle - and working-class voters from their true economic interests, which self-evidendy lay with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. This view has been given its most recent and entertaining statement in the best-selling What's theMatterwith Kansas? by Tom Frank, an admittedly brilliant writer who, until recently, devoted himself to deflating academic theorists who disguise their snobbery with leftist clichés. Frank neglects the voters' own explanation Delegates wearing Jimmy Carter smile masks at the Democratic National Convention, New York City, July 15, 1976. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-DIG-ppmsca-09735]. of their flight from liberalism, which emphasized increases in crime, inflation, and taxes, and die deterioration of schools and city services. Though he very carefully rejects racism as an explanation in Kansas, which he plausibly takes as typical of the most conservative states, he claims Republicans systematically purged public discourse of economic issues. Republicans hoodwinked economically insecure voters by convincing them that liberals were snobs who looked down on ordinary folk and by assuring diem of Republican candidates' humble Christian virtues. He sees conservatives as nothing but manipulators, and swing voters as pure dupes. To Frank and most scholars, GOP candidates cynically parroted Middle America's deepest values and inflamed their deepest fears about broken taboos, while giving tax breaks to the rich and helping corporations shift production overseas. To Jenkins, that orthodox line explains away rather than explains die great ideological shift diat brought a conservative takeover of the GOP and then GOP domination of the country. Jenkins thinks that Frank and odiers give too litde credit to the American people and too much to GOP spin doctors. Interestingly, he does not counter the standard view of masses whipped up to self-destructive panic with a fully rationalistic theory of human nature . His account of the political shift is primarily psychological. He places mass...