Some call him the Great Communicator. Many credit him with ending the Cold War. Others even consider him the greatest president since FDR. Ronald Reagan claimed several distinctions as fortieth president, but he will be most remembered by admirers and critics alike for his lasting conservative legacy.

This first comprehensive, archivally grounded assessment of the Reagan presidency offers balanced "second generation" evaluations of the ideas and policies that made up the so-called Reagan Revolution. Drawing on recently opened records, seventeen scholars from history, political science, and economics focus on important areas of national policy during the Reagan administration. James T. Patterson, Hugh Heclo, David M. O'Brien, and others look closely at Reagan's ideas and rhetoric, foreign policies, economic agenda, and social policies, as they build a strong foundation for future interpretations of the Reagan years.

In tackling the Reagan legacy, these contributors don't necessarily agree on what precisely that legacy is. While there is consensus regarding Reagan's ideas, personality, and leadership, there is both doubt and debate about actual achievements. In chapters covering such topics as national security, taxation, environmental policy, immigration reform, and federal judgeships, the authors tend to see his accomplishments as less dramatic than "first generation" proponents have maintained-that there actually was no "Reagan Revolution." Nevertheless, they also agree that his administration accomplished much of its mission in foreign policy and domestic economic policy-success attributed to his conservative idealism and pragmatic politics-and had a lasting effect on the transformation of American conservatism.

While less successful in advancing the social agenda of the "New Right," Reagan nevertheless shaped politics and policy in ways that extended beyond the years of his administration. Whether or not Reagan changed America and the world as much as Roosevelt did remains in dispute, but this volume, with its keen insights and broad scope, advances our understanding of his presidency and allows us to better assess its accomplishments and legacy.

Originally published in 1975. This is a history of southern political life since the New Deal and World War II, encompassing a crucial epoch: an attempted Second Reconstruction of the South. The authors focus on the electoral response to candidates and issues. The authors contend that, despite the nationalizing and homogenizing forces that eroded much of the South's distinctiveness during the postwar years, the region's historical legacy perpetuated its distinctive patterns of cultural and political life. Further, the authors contend that despite the virtual destruction of the South's four inherited institutions of political sectionalism during the years of the Second Reconstruction-disenfranchisement, malapportionment, a one-party system, and de jure racial segregation-the new southern politics maintained a deep racial division that has militated against class coalitions, especially across racial lines, and has permitted government by relatively insulated elites.

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 were passed, they were seen as triumphs of liberal reform applauded by the majority of Americans. But today, as Hugh Graham shows in Collision Course, affirmative action is foundering in the great waves of immigration from Asia and Latin America, leading to direct conflict for jobs, housing, education, and government preference programs.

How did two such well-intended laws come to loggerheads? Graham argues that a sea change occurred in American political life in the late 1960s, when a system of split government--one party holding the White House, the other holding Congress--divided authority and enhanced the ability of interest groups to win expanded benefits. In civil rights, this led to a shift from nondiscrimination to the race-conscious remedies of hard affirmative action. In immigration, it led to a surge that by 2000 had brought 35 million immigrants to America, 26 million of them Asian or Latin American and therefore eligible, as "official minorities," for affirmative action preferences. The policies collided when employers, acting under affirmative action plans, hired millions of immigrants while leaving high unemployment among inner-city blacks. Affirmative action for immigrants stirred wide resentment and drew new attention to policy contradictions. Graham sees a troubled future for both programs. As the economy weakens and antiterrorist border controls tighten, the competition for jobs will intensify pressure on affirmative action and invite new restrictions on immigration.

Graham's insightful interpretation of the unintended consequences of these policies is original and controversial. A short, focused, and even-handed narrative, it illuminates many of the issues that vex the United States today.

Using the Kennedy and Johnson archives to analyze the evolution of educational policy from the perspective of the executive branch, Graham finds that the central theme was executive planning through presidential task forces. Mission agencies, clientele groups, and congressional committees produced a cascade of education programs in the 1960s as the administration was collapsing under the weight of the Vietnam war, inflation, and collective violence, yet the last two decades have witnessed a decline in test scores and basic literacy.
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