Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

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        Haynes Johnson

Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

W.W. Norton & Company

New York

June 16, 2003

544 Pages

Lowery, Leslie Deanne

421-96-1925

American History AMH2020T

Section 2410

According to author Haynes Johnson, Americans were lulled into thinking that Ronald Reagan was much more than what he actually turned out to be, and Reagan himself was not always quite what he appeared.  Haynes’ book details Reagan’s political career beginning with his run for governor of California in 1966.  He won, of course, and almost immediately began planning to run for president.  According to Haynes “The first strategy session for a Reagan presidential campaign took place…ten days after the election and more than two months before his inauguration as governor” (85).

        Haynes portrays Reagan as not really being able to handle being president, and quotes one of Reagan’s aides as saying “we had to protect him and keep him away from the press and keeping him from putting his foot in his mouth” (56).  All throughout Haynes’ book, Reagan is portrayed as being a sort of bumbling president just ambling along and not really being concerned with a whole lot of what was actually happening.  Evidence suggests, however, that Reagan wasn’t really disinterested in what was happening, just that he was more focused on the end results of political happenings than on the means of reaching those ends.

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        Although Reagan did run in 1968, he lost the republican nomination.  He ran again and failed to receive the republican nomination in 1976.  Finally, the eighties would be his chance.  On January 21, 1981, Reagan was sworn in as president.  He was a large fan of supply-side economics, and was interested in the possibilities of “less government, less regulation, slashing personal and corporate tax rates, encouraging entrepreneurship and the acquisition of wealth…” (105).

        Reagan still wasn’t quite what his aides and staff would have liked him to be.  Some even felt sorry for him when he couldn’t fill up the ...

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