Portraits of Power: Ohio and National Politics, 1964-2004

Part IV. Turn to the Right, 1981–2004

Part IV Turn to the Right, 1981–2004 Turn to the Right, 1981–2004 Introduction Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 began a turn to the right in national and Ohio politics that lasted until the end of the century. It included a twelve-year period of Republican presidential dominance , including Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984 against formerVice PresidentWalter Mondale, the 1988 victory of George H. W. Bush (vice president under Reagan) over Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, and the eventual takeover of the U.S Congress by the GOP in 1994. Ohio and national politics continued to be polarized over this period, ending in the very close elections of 2000 and 2004. Zaidan commented on this right turn in a number of columns, beginning with a nostalgic eulogy for legendary GOP party leader Ray C. Bliss, the architect of the GOP pragmatic alliances of the 1960s (“Ray Bliss Was in a Special Category: A Man Who Personified Class”). Zaidan found similarities between former Ohio Governor James Rhodes and President Reagan in terms of “politics and posture”;reported on a confrontation between Reagan and U.S. Senator John Glenn, whose own presidential plans for 1984 ended in disappointment; and noted the Democrats’ futile efforts against Reagan’s reelection bid. In addition, he offered a poignant picture of Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich, a future Ohio governor and senator, who was 199 then“without a party”in a city where scarce Republicans were becoming rare;and commented on right-wingers old (RobertWelch, the founder of the John Birch Society) and new (Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority). But the Republican presidential dominance did not initially extend to the state level, where Democrats continued to win across the country,including Ohio.Richard Celeste was elected Ohio governor in 1982, after Governor Rhodes left office due to term limits. Assuming that Rhodes’s political career was over, Zaidan summed it up in “Rhodes Spoon-fed Believers and Ate Up the Skeptics.” But there was one more chapter in the Rhodes saga: attempting to repeat history “all over again,” the seventy-seven-year old Rhodes challenged Governor Celeste in 1986.This gambit failed and is reported in “The Fall of an Ohio Legend: Flamboyant Rhodes Fades into History.” This essay includes the poignant image of the aged political giant conceding the 1986 election “in the soft isolation of a room at the Cleveland Clinic, where his wife, Helen, was recuperating from surgery.” Zaidan bids adieu to Rhodes with a column on his eightieth birthday party in 1989, illustrating the respect Rhodes enjoyed until his death in 2001. In 1986, Zaidan began writing a regular column for the Akron Beacon Journal, the work for which he is probably best known in his home city.A handful of these columns are reproduced here, including the first one (“A New Column—But Will It Get My Goat, Folks?”) and the last one (“A Columnist Bids Adieu,Looks Back”). Although not political, these bookend columns reveal much about Zaidan the writer and person. Zaidan left the Akron Beacon Journal in 1991, and his farewell column is a rare model of class and grace. The sampling of these columns on political subjects include a brilliant satire of the 1988 U.S. senatorial campaign between then Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich and the incumbent Howard Metzenbaum,with the latter’s“dirty little secret revealed at last”(he was from Cleveland!); trenchant columns on the 1988 presidential campaign and President George H.W.Bush;and a reflection on the Kent State shootings twenty years after the fact. In 1992, the conservative coalition fashioned by Ronald Reagan collapsed for his successor, George H. W. Bush, events that 200 Par t IV Zaidan covered for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.One reason was a pair of conservative revolts, one led by pundit Pat Buchanan and another by billionaire Ross Perot.The latter ran one of the most successful independent presidential campaigns in history,garnering 19 percent of the popular vote (“Pondering Significance of Ross Perot”). These troubles allowed the Democrats to capture theWhite House with former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton,who,like Jimmy Carter in 1976, outlasted liberal opponents for the presidential nomination (“Malaise Chills Usual Heat of Campaigns”). For the third time in five elections, incumbent presidents were defeated by challengers (“Clinton Lead Is NotYet Unbeatable”). However, Bill Clinton’s Democratic coalition did not dominate politics any more...