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CHAPTER 29
Conservative Revival
1977–1990
This chapter examines domestic and foreign policy under the Reagan and George H. W. Bush
administrations.
CORE OBJECTIVES
1. Analyze why Jimmy Carter had such limited success as president.
2. Identify the key factors that led to the election of Ronald Reagan, the rise of the conservative move-
ment, and the resurgence of the Republican party.
3. Define “Reaganomics,” and evaluate its effects on American society and economy.
4. Explain how Reagan’s Soviet strategy helped end the Cold War.
5. Characterize the social and economic issues and innovations that emerged during the 1980s.
6. Appraise the impact of the end of the Cold War and the e orts of President George H. W. Bush to cre-
ate a post–Cold War foreign policy.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
1. The Carter Presidency
A. Jimmy Who?
i. Early Success
ii. Carter’s Limitations
iii. A “Crisis of Confidence”
B. Carter’s Foreign Policy
i. Human Rights
ii. Panama Canal
iii. Afghanistan
iv. Crisis in Iran
2. The Rise of Ronald Reagan
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A. The Actor Turned President
B. The Rise of the “New Right”
i. The Christian Right
ii. Anti-Feminist Backlash
iii. Financing Conservatism
iv. The Election of 1980
3. The Reagan Revolution
A. Reagan’s First Term
i. Reaganomics
ii. Budget Cuts
iii. Reagan’s Anti-Liberalism
iv. The Election of 1984
B. Reagan’s Second Term
i. Reagan’s Halfhearted Revolution
4. An Anti-Communist Foreign Policy
A. A Massive Defense Buildup
B. The Americas
C. The Iran-Contra Affair
D. A Historic Treaty
E. Reagan’s Global Legacy
5. The Changing Economic and Social Landscape
A. The Computer Revolution
B. Carefree Consumers
C. The Poor
D. The AIDS Epidemic
6. The Presidency of George H. W. Bush
A. The Federal Debt and Recession
B. The Democracy Movement Abroad
C. The End of the Berlin Wall
D. Communist Coup Fails
E. Reducing the Nuclear Threat
F. Panama
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G. The Gulf War
H. Bush’s “New World Order”
I. The Election of 1992
LECTURE IDEAS
1. A lecture on the Jimmy Carter administration will give you an opportunity to show how the country
dealt with a post-Vietnam society. Focus on both his domestic and his foreign-policy initiatives. Useful
resources include the following:
2. An interesting aspect of President Reagan’s foreign policy was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI),
also known as the “Star Wars” program. Many have speculated that Soviet leaders’ belief that the
Americans might be able to weaponize using space-based programs forced them to negotiate nuclear
disarmament agreements with the United States. In a lecture, discuss SDI and explain its significance
in American-Soviet relations. Suggested readings are:
3. A lecture on American diplomacy in the Middle East from 1945 to 1993 will help provide students
with a framework for understanding Anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. See H. W. Brands’
Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945-1993 (1994).
4. Michael Harrington, the writer and social activist who opened the eyes of many Americans to the
problem of poverty in 1962 with The Other America, describes a new class of poor in The New
American Poverty (1984). Harrington’s work would be a good source for a lecture on this continuing
5. An overview of American foreign policy in the 1980s will give students a good background in the
diplomatic policies of President Reagan and President Bush. Be sure to emphasize U.S. Central
American policy. You might find the following references helpful while preparing your presentation:
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6. A good source for a lecture on the Gulf War is Lester H. Bruce’s America and the Iraqi Crisis, 1990–
1992: Origins and Aftermath (1993). Also see Colin Gordon’s “Lessons of History? Past and Present
in the Gulf War” (Radical History Review, Winter 1993), an article that makes several interesting
7. John Steele Gordon’s “Understanding the S&L Mess” (American Heritage, February/March 1991)
would be a useful source for a lecture on the savings and loan crisis; Gordon’s article is especially
8. A presentation on the intellectual development of American conservatism since World War II would be
a very effective way of explaining much of the politics of the Reagan years and for decades thereafter.
See Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie’s The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945–2000 (2008) for its
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES / FLIPPED CLASSROOM SUGGESTIONS
1. Divide the class into several groups. Ask each group to explain the rise of Ronald Reagan and
Republican conservatism. Additionally, ask each group to present its findings to see if any common
trends can be found.
2. Have students identify the factors that led to the end of the cold war. Was there anything that could
have been done to stop it? Why did it last so long?
3. Ask student groups to identify the Iran-Contra affair and assess the impact it had on the nature of the
executive branch of government. How did this incident affect public opinion about the powers of the
president? Are similar questions being asked today?
4. Divide the class into three groups. Instruct each group to conduct research outside of lecture on the
background of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush before they were elected to the
presidency. In class, lead the students in a discussion that examines the similarities and differences of
the three men. What prior experiences contributed to the successes and failures of each of their presi-
dencies? Why is Reagan often remembered more fondly from a historical perspective than either Carter
or Bush?
5. An overview of the Reagan domestic agenda would be a good starting point for this chapter. Divide the
class into groups, and have each study and report on a particular aspect of Reagan’s domestic
initiatives—economic, social, or cultural. Suggested sources include:
• John Karaagac’s Between Promise and Policy: Ronald Reagan and Conservative Reformism
(2000)
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• John Sloan’s The Reagan Effect: Economics and Presidential Leadership (1999)
• Gary Wills’s Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home (1987)
• David Stockman’s The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed (1986)
• Michael Schaller’s Reckoning with Reagan: America and Its President in the 1980s (1992)
• B. B. Kymlicka and Jean V. Matthews’s The Reagan Revolution? (1990)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the Camp David Accords and the effect on the potential of a future Arab-Israeli war.
2. Discuss why historians often characterize President Carter’s term in office as a failure and assess
whether this is accurate.
3. Analyze how the cold war came to an end and the specific ways in which particular leaders were re-
sponsible. What were the roles of Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H. W. Bush?
4. Analyze how the technology revolution of the 1980s affected the United States economically, socially,
and politically. In what way did America’s advancement in computer technology help shape the coun-
try’s foreign policy?
5. Analyze the Reagan Revolution, and discuss the rise of the Moral Majority and the New Right.
6. Assess the economic program that became known as Reaganomics. Discuss the long-term and short-
term effects of Ronald Reagan’s economic policies.
7. Describe the domestic initiatives during the presidency of George H. W. Bush. What, if any, impact
did cultural conservatism play in pushing his policies forward?
8. Discuss the successes and failures of George H. W. Bush’s foreign policy.
PRACTICING CITIZENSHIP
The disintegration of the Soviet Union in late 1991 brought an end not only to the cold war but also to a
phase of history that dated back to the end of World War II. Aside from all its traumas, one of the cold
war’s contributions was that it raised to prominence one of the most gifted writers in the history of the
English language, George Orwell. One of Orwell’s continuing themes is how twentieth-century
governments—dictatorships especially—abuse political language, using basic political terminology in a
most inaccurate and deceitful way. Read Orwell’s classic 1946 essay on this matter, “Politics and the