Ronnie Dugger - On Reagan: The Man & His Presidency

Dugger, Ronnie

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THE MAN & HIS PRESIDENCY

I

RONNIE DUGGER

Author of THE POLITICIAN: The Life and Times of Lyndon Jr

>*n.is

THE MAN & HIS PRESIDENCY

Ronnie Dugger

"Ronnie Dugger cites chapter and verse inhis bizarre saga of Ronnie Reagan, President.It is an astonishing paraphrase of Emerson'sinsight: 'Banality is in the saddle and ridesmankind.' It is an astonishing study of lick-spittlery triumphant, bowing to the powerfulfew and kicking the powerless many. A power-ful antidote to the mass lobotomy of publicand press that at the moment possesses us."Studs Terkel

"On Reagan is appearing none too soon.Read it; recommend it; pass it on. On Reagancan help us prevent 1984 from turning into

1984."

Robert Sherrill

"Gets Ronald Reagan pat and down cold. AHhis duplicities and actions, so well covered upby a Good Guy image, will be of no avail afterthinking people read what Ronnie Dugger hasrevealed of the man and his crowd."Larry L. King

"Just what we need on the eve of 1984: acomprehensive assessment of the Reaganrecord, written with punch and style "

James MacGregor Burns

"Ronnie Dugger has done our homework, a

prodigious task The Reagan tapes,

displayed for the first time, reveal visions ofempire and evil far more significant histori-cally than the petty and vulgar Nixon

tapes On Reagan is a deeply researched,

keenly analyzed indictment of the false anddangerous values of our plastic President."Ramsey Clark

"At last somei ne has done for Reagan whatRonnie Dugge used to do for Texas everymonth in the 1 'xas Observer. Tell the awful

l^uth;, Victor Navasky

BOSTONPUBLICLIBRARY

Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2012

http://archive.org/details/onreaganmanhisOOdugg

On Reagan

Other books by Ronnie Dugger:

The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson,From the Frontier to Master of the Senate. New York:W. W. Norton, 1982.

Our Invaded Universities: Form, Reform, and NewStarts. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974.

Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered in the Life of ClaudeEatherly. New York: World, 1967. London: Gollancz,1967.

Three Men in Texas, Bedichek, Webb, and Dobie. Essaysby Their Friends in the Texas Observer (ed.). Austin:University of Texas Press, 1967.

For Patricia

Contents

Introduction ix

A Note to the Reader xvii

1. Swerving from Left to Right 1

2. The Board of Directors of the United States 25

3. The War on Social Security 43

4. "A Wholesale Giveaway to Private Interests" 70

5. Riding Down the Marxist Income Tax 100

6. Big Money and Big Business in the

White House 116

7. Uranium, Plutonium, and Bechtel 134

8. Unleashing Free Enterprise 148

9. Trusting Business with Health and Safety 164

10. The Turn Against Antitrust 176

11. "All These Beautiful White People" 195

12. Sneering at the Women's Movement 220

13. The Liberties of the People 237

14. Prayer, Sex, Innocence, and Guns 259

15. Reagan's McCarthyism 268

16. Punishing the Poor 285

17. Housing, Education, and Health;

Workers and Farmers 313

18. Parking Stripes and Moonscapes 343

viii CONTENTS

19. Reagan and the World 350

20. Reagan and Nuclear War 393

21. Critics on Reaganism 1981 -1983 441

Appendix: Reagan on Reaganism 1975-1979 472

I: The United States 473

Social Security/Commerce andConservation/The Environment/Taxes/Campaign Finance/Business/Prices and Consumerism/NuclearPower/Regulation/Civil Rights/Women's Rights/Crime and CivilLiberties/Terrorism and Police/Communists in the U.S./McCarthyism/Welfare/Government/Medical Care/Education/Mass Transit/Farmers andSubsidies/Privatization/Unemployment/Public Sector Jobs/Labor Unions/Christianity/Volunteerism

II: Foreign Policy 512

Vietnam/The Soviet Union/EasternEurope/Western Europe/CentralAmerica/South America/The MiddleEast/Africa/China and Taiwan/Korea/Japan and the Pacific/Foreign Aid/TheUnited Nations

III: The Nuclear Arms Race 533

SALT II and Treaties in General/TheRussians Are Ahead/The NeutronBomb/On Equality and Superiority

Acknowledgments 537

Notes and Sourt J 540

Bibliography 575

Index 601

T

his book is an attempt to understand Ronald Reagan and hisadministration.

I am concerned here not with Reagan's personality, but withhis policies. This is not a personal biography, but a policy biogra-phy, an analysis and discussion of what Reagan is doing as Presi-dent against the background of his career and his ideas.

In 1980 the Reagan campaign staff deliberately and success-fully withheld from the national press the complete sets of thetranscripts of his revelatory radio broadcasts between 1975 and1979. He was presenting himself to the country as a moderate,but these transcripts showed beyond a doubt that deep down hewas a hard-line right-wing ideologue with fully formed and re-cently expressed prejudices on all of the outstanding issues ofthe times.

Not long before the campaign ended I obtained sets of the1978 and 1979 transcripts from Reagan's political action com-mittee in California; later I obtained some of the 1975 broad

IX

casts from the Democratic National Committee. I have made fulluse of these transcripts, which apparently no other journalist hasobtained. On every major issue one's understanding ofReaganism is deepened by what Reagan said on the radio.