1 gen 1984 anni - Election of 1984

Descrizione:

During his first run for governor of California in 1966, Reagan had a revelation while speaking with a campaign consultant. “Politics is just like the movies,” Reagan told him. “You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.” The actor-turned-president did just that. Following a lavish inauguration, he quickly won passage of his tax cuts and launched a plan to bolster military spending for the Pentagon. But a long “coasting” period followed, during which Reagan retreated on tax cuts and navigated a major foreign policy misjudgment — known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Finally, toward the end of his two-term presidency, Reagan had his “hell of a close,” leaving office as major reforms — which he had encouraged from afar — helped to tear apart the Soviet Union and end the Cold War. Through all the ups and downs, Reagan remained a master of the politics of symbolism, championing a resurgent American economy and reassuring the country that the pursuit of wealth was noble and that he had the reins of the nation firmly in hand.

Reagan’s “coasting” period began shortly after his 1981 tax reduction package passed. Reaganites cheered these supply-side cuts, but economic conditions forced a reversal by the president. High interest rates set by the Federal Reserve Board had eased the runaway inflation of the Carter years. But these rates — as high as 18 percent — sent the economy into a recession that put 10 million Americans out of work and shuttered 17,000 businesses in 1981–1982. Unemployment neared 10 percent, the highest rate since the Great Depression. These troubles, combined with the booming deficit, forced Reagan to negotiate a tax increase with Congress in 1982 — to the loud complaints of supply-side diehards. The president’s poll numbers plummeted, and in the 1982 midterm elections Democrats increased their majority in the House of Representatives by twenty-six seats and won seven state governorships.

Fortunately for Reagan, the economy had recovered by 1983, boosting his approval rating just in time for the 1984 presidential election. During the campaign, Reagan toured the country promoting his tax policies and the nation’s restored prosperity. The Democrats nominated former vice president Walter Mondale of Minnesota. With strong ties to labor unions, a variety of ethnic and racial groups, and party leaders, Mondale epitomized the remaining strength of the New Deal coalition. He selected Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate — the first woman to run on the presidential ticket of a major political party. Neither Ferraro’s presence nor Mondale’s credentials made a difference, however: Reagan won a landslide victory, losing only Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Still, Democrats retained their majority in the House and, in the 1986 midterm elections, won back the Senate. Despite the fragility of the New Deal coalition and the “Reagan revolution” pushing to topple it, the Democratic Party retained much of its congressional influence through the decade of the 1980s.

Reagan’s 1984 campaign slogan, “It’s Morning in America,” reflected his political mythology: the sun was forever coming up on an optimistic nation of small towns, close-knit families, and kindly neighbors. “The success story of America,” he once said, “is neighbor helping neighbor.” The reality of the nation — which was overwhelmingly urban and suburban, with hard knock capitalism holding down as many as it elevated — mattered little. Reagan’s remarkable ability to produce positive associations and feelings, alongside robust economic growth after the 1981–1982 recession, defined an era characterized by both backward-facing nostalgia and aggressive, future-oriented capitalism.


Between 1945 and the 1970s, the United States was the world’s leading exporter of agricultural products, manufactured goods, and investment capital. But American manufacturers lost market share to cheaper and better-designed products from West Germany and Japan. By 1985, for the first time since 1915, the United States registered a negative balance of international payments. The country imported more goods and capital than it exported, becoming a debtor (rather than a creditor) nation. The rapid ascent of the Japanese economy to become the world’s second largest was a key factor in this historic reversal. More than one-third of the American annual trade deficit of $138 billion in the 1980s belonged to Japan, whose corporations exported huge quantities of electronic goods and made nearly one-quarter of all cars bought in the United States.

Meanwhile, American businesses grappled with a slowdown in an important measure. Between 1973 and 1992, American productivity (the amount of goods or services per hour of work) grew at the meager rate of 1 percent a year — a far cry from the post– World War II rate of 3 percent. Because managers wanted to cut costs, the wages of most employees stagnated. Further, foreign competition had shrunk the number of high-paying, union-protected manufacturing jobs. By 1985, more people in the United States were slinging Big Macs at McDonald’s than rolling out heavy metal in the nation’s steel industry.

A brief return to competitiveness in the second half of the 1980s masked the steady long-term transformation of the economy that had begun in the 1970s. The nation’s heavy industries — steel, autos, chemicals — continued to lose market share to global competitors. Nevertheless, the U.S. economy grew at the impressive average rate of 2 to 3 percent per year for much of the late 1980s and 1990s (with a short recession in 1990–1991). But the direction of growth and its beneficiaries had changed. Increasingly, the expansion came in financial services, medical services, and computer technology — service industries, broadly speaking. This shift in the underlying foundation of the American economy, from manufacturing to service, from making things to providing services, would have long-term consequences for the global competitiveness of U.S. businesses and the value of the dollar.

Every era since the Gilded Age has had its capitalist giants, but Americans in the 1980s celebrated success in ways unseen since the 1920s. When the president christened self-made entrepreneurs “the heroes for the eighties,” he probably had people like Lee Iacocca in mind. Born to Italian immigrants and trained as an engineer, Iacocca rose through the ranks to become president of the Ford Motor Corporation. In 1978, he took over the ailing Chrysler Corporation and made it profitable again — by securing a crucial $1.5 billion loan from the U.S. government, pushing the development of new cars, and selling those new Chryslers on TV. His patriotic commercials in the 1980s echoed Reagan’s rhetoric: “Let’s make American mean something again.”

Iacocca symbolized the desire to see a resurgent American industrialism, but high-profile financial wheeler-dealers also captured the public imagination. One was Ivan Boesky, a white-collar criminal convicted of insider trading (buying or selling stock based on information from corporate insiders). “I think greed is healthy,” Boesky told a business school graduating class. Boesky inspired the fictional character Gordon Gekko, who proclaimed “Greed is good!” in the hit 1987 film Wall Street. His outlook suited a new generation of Wall Street executives who embraced a novel business tactic: the leveraged buyout (LBO). In a typical LBO, a financier used heavily leveraged (borrowed) capital to buy a company, quickly restructured that company to make it appear spectacularly profitable, and then sold it at a higher price — repaying the borrowed purchase price and keeping the difference.

American culture still valued the ethic of hard work, but the Reagan-era public did have a certain fascination with money and celebrity — fed by magazines such as Us and People and television programs such as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. One particular money mogul captivated — and cultivated — public attention. In 1983, the flamboyant Donald Trump built the equally flamboyant Trump Tower in New York City. At the entrance of the $200 million apartment building stood two enormous bronze Ts, a display of self-promotion that earned him a media following. Calling him “The Donald,” a nickname used by Trump’s first wife, TV reporters and magazines commented relentlessly on his marriages, girlfriends, and glitzy lifestyle. Trading on his celebrity as much as his business acumen, Trump would eventually forge a career on reality television and, in one of the most unexpected political developments of the early twentieth-first century, successfully run for president as a Republican in 2016.

A photo shows Robin Leach holding a wine glass and posing with his book titled “Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous.”
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

The 1980s witnessed a celebration of wealth and success unlike anything seen in the United States since the Gilded Age. Movies, television, and magazines praised the wealthy and portrayed the rich as hard-working and noble rather than selfish or greedy. Pictured here is the television host, Robin Leach, whose program Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, offered ordinary Americans watching TV in their modest living rooms tours of the yachts, mansions, and palatial estates of wealthy celebrities and business executives.

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