Ronald Reagan: Presidential Transformer

Last year's presidential primary brought a flurry of debates about American political history. One stood out: it began with an off-hand remark that President Barack Obama made about Ronald Reagan. He called Reagan "transformational." He wasn't praising Reagan's policies, of course, but suggesting that the fortieth president had permanently transformed the American political landscape by cracking the New Deal coalition (drawing the votes of "Reagan Democrats") and building support for his antigovernment ideology. Bill Clinton pounced on the remark, as was his wont at the time, trying to build his own legacy and buffer his wife's candidacy. Obama retorted something to the effect that, well, yes, Bill Clinton was president for two terms but was neither profound nor transformational. I couldn't find a historian who didn't believe Obama had won the debate.

What better way to understand Reagan's transformational presidency than by comparing him to his transformational predecessor—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president who permanently altered the political landscape by building America's welfare state and crafting a political coalition that lasted until recently. Most historians, after all, do recognize Reagan's indebtedness to FDR. There are stories about Reagan teaching himself how to speak like FDR, and most treatments of the fortieth president of the United States suggest that he honestly admired Roosevelt's political skills. As Reagan came of age during the 1930s and 1940s, he was a self-described FDR-liberal. There is, of course, the added irony that probably needs no restating: Reagan wanted to overturn many of FDR's signature policy accomplishments.

Those interested in a full-fledged comparison of these two "transformative" presidents now have FDR and Reagan, written by the political scientist John W. Sloan. Anyone searching for new information or groundbreaking interpretation will likely be disappointed by the book. Sloan's historical insights are gleaned from major historians—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and William Leuchtenberg, among others—and his political science interpretations, at least to this reader, seem banal. The general outline of what most history professors teach in survey courses about the New Deal are repeated here: the three New Deals (1932–35, 1935–37, 1937–39), the string of experimentations with different policies, and the problems FDR ran into with packing the Supreme Court. Reagan's success at accomplishing a tax cut without slicing into defense spending is also told in fine detail but has been told numerous times before. When it comes to the abstractions the discipline of political science demands (not just jargon like "regime" and "transformational" that litters the text), the book becomes pedestrian. Take this quote: "A new regime has a set of policy commitments that significantly differentiate it from its discredited predecessor and that will set the agenda for presidents engaged in the politics of articulation" (p. 178). That sounds like a long-winded way of stating the obvious. In addition, the book is weighed down by repetition.

Still, the combined portrait comes up with important insights, and it would be remiss to ignore them. Sloan shows how both presidents balanced differing viewpoints in their administrations and drew strength from clashing ideas (something that many political critics are discussing in the context of Barack Obama's cabinet formation at the time of this writing). Sloan emphasizes the wide array of opinions offered by FDR's Brains Trust and key Cabinet appointees (ranging from fiscal conservatism to regulated capitalism to support for massive public works and relief). The difference for Reagan boiled down mostly, as Sloan tells the story, to a conflict between conservative ideologues, centrist pragmatists, and those obsessed with public relations (the latter group usually won, Sloan points out on page 163). A lively set of debates within an administration seems to create the possibility of transformative power, especially when its leaders are not, in the case of...