Focus 580; The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan

In this hour of the program we'll be looking back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan and looking very specifically at some of the economic policies of the Reagan administration. We're talking this morning with John Ermine. He is the author of a recently published book that's titled The 80s America in the age of Reagan it's published by the Yale University Press and looks very specifically at the kind of effect that Ronald Reagan had on American politics. John Berman makes the argument that when you take a look at where Americans fall most Americans fall on the political spectrum he argues that most of them tend to cluster around the middle. And that certainly was the case when Ronald Reagan was elected first time around. And the big question that he explores in the book is given the fact that. Forces operating in American politics tend to push both politics and voters toward the center. The question he asks is it how is it that Ronald Reagan managed to take this system to the right. He makes the argument I think that one of the things that's most important here was the economic policies of the Reagan administration very specifically the tax policies of the

administration. We'll talk about that this morning of course encourage people to call in with questions and comments John Ermine is a foreign affairs analyst for the federal government. He was formerly a lecturer in history at George Washington University. He writes on modern American conservative politics his previous book which was titled The rise of neo conservatism was also published by the Yale University Press. And of course anybody who's interested in calling in here asking questions making a comment is welcome to do that the only thing we ask callers as the people try to be brief and we ask that so that we can keep the program moving getting as many people as possible. That's what we ask and we hope people will do that number here in Champaign Urbana where we are 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we do also have a toll free line and that one's good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 is that number. Dr. Ermine Hello. Yes good morning. Thanks for talking with us today.

Thank you for having me appreciate it. One one of the basic sorts of things that I want to ask you here just to get us started has to do with Mr. Reagan and his style his management style and certainly during the time that he was president there were some people who were critical of his management style arguing that he was detached and he was not directly involved really closely in day to day policymaking and so I guess the question to the extent that there was something like a Reagan revolution and I know Mr. Reagan himself was a little hesitant to even talk in those kind of terms to the extent that there was such a thing. Was Ronald Reagan himself personally responsible. He was in many ways and then in some ways he was riding a wave of developments that it began long before. York your question really breaks down into several I think the management question and there you get not only to the day to day running of the government that any president has to do but

also his trying to oversee and and move through his legislative agenda especially in the early years of his presidency. Yes he was very much involved and I was able when I was researching the book to go to the Reagan Library and look at the documents in the files there. And it's remarkable how you see these long detailed policy memorandums many of them filled with technical points and facts. And you see his handwritten notes in the margins and they're not always just simple check marks or OKs but they clearly indicate that he was reading very carefully. He catches contradictions in the argument. There are some documents where he points out mistakes that his staff had made. So it's clear that he was he was very much on top of the issues and he was very engaged. The idea that he was somehow detached in and out of it. That's a myth and that's one that's I think easily disproven. Was there a Reagan revolution.

Sort of. Many of the developments that we associated with the Reagan years deregulation lower tax rates more hands off government had actually been building steam for some time. Some of them have actually started in the late 1960s. And if you go back and look particularly starting around 1975 there's deregulation of Wall Street in the brokerage industry. It was followed very quickly by deregulation of the airline industry which started under President Ford and really continued the most dramatic developments where under President Carter and then began spreading into the tax and political realms particularly in California with Proposition 13. These are all Reagan developments. The environment for him and for the ideas that he proposed was very favorable now. This had been happening clearly before him. It probably would have continued under whoever won the presidency in 1980. But what Reagan did that I think was unique

was try to take advantage of these developments and to try to push them along wherever he could. When you look at his tax policies you look at his continued encouragement of deregulation of corporate takeovers of letting the markets do what they could. There was no real attempt to try to roll back any of the changes or to stand in the way of new ones. And I think he understood that there was a great wave of change coming. And his conservative views as well as the results from what had already happened suggested that these were going to be very beneficial he understood that quite well and did what he could to encourage it. I think if you look at the American politics today it certainly seems to be a very fierce battle of political ideologies between right and left. And while we might look back to the 80s and want to think that that was that way too. I guess one of the points that you make is that while that kind of thing might have gone on at that point that really and. It seems

particularly stark when you compare that to what's going on today that in fact the that Ronald Reagan was. Well he may have been the ideological he seems to really have been much perhaps much more pragmatic than he was ideological. He was a very pragmatic politician. People forget that he had been trained if you will as governor of California and he had a lot of experience from those years in tempering conservative goals with the real need to compromise from time to time. He understood that dynamic. And I think it's also true that the politics of the 1980s which could be pretty brutal at times still were nowhere near as bitter and divisive particularly on a continuing basis as they are today. You still had a generation of politicians with experience from the 1960s and 1970s who were used to looking at things in a bipartisan kind of way who still had personal friendships that could reach across party

lines to help settle things. There were many more moderates in each party than there are today. You didn't have the accumulated legacy of bitterness that you have today that comes from the late 80s from the Clinton years and so on. So yes so there was a lot more compromise back then and there was a lot more willingness to compromise. And you see that with Reagan that he rolled back some of his own changes when he had to he would strike a deal with Democrats and with moderates in his own party. He he said very specifically on a number of occasions that he would never go down in flames he saw no point to doing that. He was always very willing to take half a loaf if that was the best that he could do. The as I mentioned that this book concentrates on domestic politics it really doesn't deal with foreign affairs. And then in fact on the domestic side it concentrates very closely on economic policy and as I said very specifically on tax policy so there there are many many different things one could

talk about if you just said you were going to talk by the presidency of Ronald Reagan. But do you do you feel particularly that if you ask this question what accounted for his electoral success and particularly when he was re-elected do you think that the. The most sort of telling thing the thing that really helps you understand that most is economic policy. I think so look at again the context in which he was operating in 1070 as had been any era of substandard economic performance. Not as bad as popular mythology has it but certainly not very good you had fairly high unemployment you had rising inflation throughout the decade you had a series of recessions including a very brutal one in Reagan's first year. But once he got past that he delivered prosperity and inflation fell growth returned employment turned upwards. People were able to go to work again.

I think that's a great deal of the success. Because in 1980 the main issue of the election had been Economics who had the better plans for dealing with the situation. Reagan was elected had his plans failed or had prosperity not returned. I think he would have been tossed out just as quickly as Jimmy Carter was. But in the event starting after 19 early one thousand nine hundred two as the recovery came in Ronald Reagan was able to claim and I think claim very credibly that his policies had brought back good times. His claim certainly is as good as any other presidents is when they take credit for that sort of thing. And I and I do think that is the explanation from for most of the popularity. There was also a realization and this is secondary that many of the claims by his opponents that is his policies in general would lead to disastrous results. Simply never came true. And again if you go back and look at the claims made in

1980 during the campaign or more in the early years of the Reagan administration it's supply side economics would lead to economic disaster. His foreign affairs policies would lead to confrontation with the Russians and possibly a nuclear war. All these things well it's simply never happened and there was really no reason in the minds of many people to oppose Reagan particularly after he had delivered on his basic promise to restore good times. Well let me just quickly introduce Again our guest John Ermine He's a foreign affairs analyst for the federal government has been a lecturer in history at George Washington University has a Ph.D. in American history from George Washington. He writes on modern American conservative politics. His book The one we're talking about here this morning is entitled The 80s America in the age of Reagan. Also he's the author of a previous book entitled The rise of neo conservatism both books public university press questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4.

5 just to stay a little bit with the atmosphere of America what people were thinking about at the time that he was elected. Jimmy Carter certainly had his problems over his presidency there had been a significant increase in inflation. Unemployment was high interest rates were high and he was also struggling with the Iran hostage crisis. When people those those people who did vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 when they voted for him what were they voting for and when to what extent were they simply saying that they this was a vote of no confidence in Mr. Carter. To what extent was that and to what extent was it that they were they were responding to the kind of ideas that Ronald Reagan presented. It's a mixture. There were certainly. Conservative groups in this country who are very much in favor of Reagan and and supply side policies and the alternatives that he represented. How

much of the vote was that group. I don't know that you can really say for sure. I think that the majority of people who voted for Reagan though. Or just as important remember voted against Jimmy Carter. We're simply looking to try something else that Jimmy Carter when he was elected in 1976 had decried the economic policies of Gerald Ford and at that time inflation was running at 6 7 percent a year when Jimmy Carter left office inflation is running at around 13 percent a year. The idea was it was a very simple conclusion for most people that this guy hadn't been able to deal with the problem. So we'll just try the other guy and keep going from one alternative to the other until something works. And fortunately as it turned out I think Ronald Reagan's policies were basically successful. But I don't think there was any great idea logical shift in the country in 1980. I don't think there was a great

blooming of support for conservative ideas. I think for most people who voted for Reagan it was simply looking for an alternative and trying something else. That given what had just happened might turn out better. Well just I think that's that's an important point that you make or at least one is that's where the underlying that you're feeling that the fact that substantial mobs of people voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and perhaps then four years later that did not necessarily mean those people had become conservative or were conservative. Right. And if you ask people what is a conservative you'll get a whole variety of answers because there's there's no agreed upon single definition. People who say yes I'm a conservative often mean very different things. And this was even more so back in the 80s when conservatism was still much more a new phenomenon on the national scene than it is today. And back then to have asked people if they were conservative some of

them like given Reagan success might have said yes but they were probably more like Reagan backers that said there is a lot more conservatism and support for conservatism in the country today than it was then and there has been a gradual shift over the past 20 to 25 years to the right in American politics I think that's undeniable. But for most people it's still a very squishy set of ideas. They don't really spend a lot of time thinking about where they are on the political spectrum. You assume a moment ago that you attributed his success Mr. Reagan's success to the fact that he delivered prosperity. And I think that the critics and I'm sure will be hearing from some of them this morning would say that that was not true for everyone that his policies tend to to benefit the people on the upper end of the income spectrum and in fact one of the things that we see happening during the Reagan years is a growth in income inequality that is the spread between the people on the top and. People in the

bottom widened How do you square those two things there. They're absolutely true. The prosperity was not equally divided among everyone and there's no point in any even pretending that it was. And there probably was greater gains at the top than there were at the bottom. That's sad. If you go in back and look at the figures on income inequality you'll see that the rise which which you accurately described actually began around one thousand seventy three. And if you look at the rate of increase of income inequality in this country it's been fairly steady since 1973 through the presidencies of Nixon Ford Carter Reagan the first Bush Clinton and into this bush. So to blame it on Ronald Reagan is really not accurate. It began long before him and has continued to this day. Now the the question of who benefited and who did not benefit is of course a very complicated one.

And one of the points I make in the book is to try to break down various groups in the country and answer this question. And what I found and I think what most studies find is that the people who lost were basically those at the lower end of the skill labor skills spectrum the less education you had the less skills that you had. Well then the worse you were going to do. And for people who had made their living at it at a fairly basic level in the economy yes it was a very difficult time. And those jobs began to disappear permanently. Those who kept their jobs saw their wages stagnate. At the upper end there was tremendous prosperity. But for that broad section in the middle that includes most Americans there was actual real growth in their standards of living and in their real income. And if you also break down

the major income groups. The quintiles or the court tiles depending how you want to do it you'll find fewer people at the bottom at the end of the 1980s which is to say as a percentage of the population people with lower incomes was a smaller percentage at the end of the Reagan years and at the beginning and the people in the middle also was a smaller percentage at the end than it was at the beginning. But the people at the top in the top income groups were a greater percentage of the population. So what you actually had was not the middle class being squeezed as so many people say and falling down the ladder but actually on balance people moving up. And yes it's important to remember that you're talking about several hundred million people and there's a lot of churning within those numbers so that while large numbers can be moving up at the same time some people can't be moving down. But again on balance despite the growth of income inequality the trend was upward for most Americans.

We ask one other question and then I have a couple of callers. I want to get to and I want to promise them that I will make them wait too much longer but the question has to do with deficits because I think that if some people I'm sure that different people if you ask them what did you think was Ronald Reagan's most significant achievement. People will have different answers. But I think a lot of those people will say well that it was the tax cut the biggest tax cut in American history. On the other hand then if you ask people what was the what were some of the most significant downsides at least well maybe we'll limit ourselves to economic issues. They would say it was the fact that his tax cut coupled with very big increases in defense spending helped to create the biggest deficit in American history and that either has huge deficits definitely are also part of the legacy of Ronald Reagan. And on the downside what do you think about that. It's true that tax cuts combined with the spending increases on the military led to

big deficits. It's true that neither the Reagan administration nor Congress ever summoned up the political will to do very much about it they trimmed around the margins but the deficits remained high. It's not true that the deficits were terribly harmful. There doesn't seem to be any particular evidence that the deficits had much effect one way or another. The best that economists are able to say is they might have shaved economic growth by a little bit and again out on the margins but given the strong record of growth in the 80s and the 90s it's really hard to pin much ill effect on the deficits. So you're you're left with this sort of so white feeling about it that yes we all agree for one reason or another that deficits are a bad thing. It's certainly true that they became enormous string the Reagan years but it's very difficult to say exactly what the harm was that came out of that.

All right well we have a couple of callers here to bring in the. Sation Let's start in with someone in your Rica line number four. Hello. Good morning. Interesting conversation. I guess one could rehash pro and con I guess what but strikes me is of Ronald Reagan's too successful re-election bid and I guess the question I have is in your opinion what strategy or tactics did Mr. Reagan and the Republicans employ that turned out positive for their side and what are the stakes. Do you see the Democrats made during both of those campaigns. I take it you're speaking of 1980 in 1984 I'm sorry 1980. It was a pretty standard throw the bums out kind of campaign that Reagan was campaigning on Jimmy Carter's record pointing out that it wasn't very good and promising that he could do better. And once most voters got a good look at him and realized that

even if he was a conservative he was not a right wing nut like the Democrats were trying to portray him. His victory was pretty well assured. Nineteen Eighty Four. It was a fairly standard peace and prosperity campaign pretty much like Dwight Eisenhower had run in 1956 or Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Things are going well there's really no reason not to re-elect this guy. On the Democrat side I don't know if there's much they could have done in 1980 that the record of Jimmy Carter combined with Jimmy Carter's personality made him very unattractive to voters. By 1984 the Democrats were in a different situation but it's also one that's much more familiar to us today which is they weren't quite sure what they wanted to say what they stood for. They had a candidate who if you needed somebody to fill the White House could probably do the job but wasn't terribly attractive to voters in that he wasn't very charismatic.

It was hard to get enthusiastic about and was never quite sure exactly what he personally stood for. And in the face of peace and prosperity campaign like Ronald Reagan was running. It's really hardy how Walter Mondale never had much of a chance. Could I try the faces with you. Sure there's a social psychologist psychologist named Seligmann ever heard of him who did some work on optimism and pessimism and in one of his books I believe learned optimism he suggests that because of the Democratic failure to project an image of optimism and being sort of caught up in the pessimistic scenarios. That was one of the major reasons why they may have lost. Would you find any credence in that. I would. One of the things that was happening in 1984 and it happened again in 1988 was the Democrats tried to convince people that they were suffering and that the Reagan policies had made things worse. And that

first of all gives the Democrats kind of a gloomy image and then very difficult to overcome. But secondly people can just look around and make their own conclusions. And as I said before most people were doing better by later in the 80s and they had been before. So for a campaign to try and convince them otherwise when they can see the evidence in their own lives that that's next to impossible. And there was a lot to Reagan and his optimism. I wouldn't want to overstate that case. Again people are capable of seeing through a false optimism. But Reagan's optimism combined with his track record of actually making things better was it was a very powerful force in his favor. I think Saddam does have something. Thank you. All right well let's go to another caller this is someone listening in Atlanta Illinois line 1 Hello. Good morning gentlemen. Interesting conversation. I would like to ask some questions on Mr. President Reagan's long term legacy that I find a little bit disturbing and

like to see what the writer's comments are on that firstly the environment particularly what James Watt in control it seems like with his policies we set the environment back the least the progression of the environmental practices back quite a bit. And Reagan there and what do you think how do you think that's going to pertain to his long term like and that legacy particularly now that the environment with the global warming stuff is getting more and more important all the time the next question is kind of 180 degrees away as his influence on labor particularly with the. Traffic Controllers issue the same psyches that were organized labor back you know maybe back farther than the environment. And how is this going to pertain to his long term legacy you know beginning today it seems like authority having a tremendous two matic effect or even sooner than Labor. So what do you think on those two issues and so far as a long term view

I'll take them in order. On the environment I'm not sure that the impact was very great one way or another over the long term. As you may recall Jeanne's was forced to resign after he made some unfortunate remarks. And by the mid 80s environmental policy had swung back to where it was basically a continuation of many of the policies during the 70s and since then you've had so many intervening policy ups and downs in the in the administrations of the first George Bush Bill Clinton and now the second George Bush. I'm not sure you can really point to a long term Reagan legacy in that area. On the second part on labor I would disagree that he had that much of an impact also but for a different reason. As As you're probably aware the decline of the labor movement began in the 150 S.. That is the percentage of American workers covered by unions peaked in the early 1950s

and started to slow down hill drift drift to the rate of decline accelerated during the 80s but probably not because of anything Reagan did I think it was more structural changes in the economy. Deregulation in particular. When when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers I think it was more of a signal on economic policy in general and in particular on inflationary policy that this was a government and administration that unlike many others would not back down in a difficult situation but rather would see through its policies. I think the impact showed up much more. In that realm. Otherwise I think what happened with Labor was a. Was basically again a continuation of what had gone for the discussion of unions though. Again like many other things it's a double edged sword. Union representation declined

during the 80s. Union members took a lot of economic hits. But there are some interesting arguments out there and I think there's something to them that the decline of unions actually benefits some of their workers. Unions historically had been a way to restrict labor opportunities in some areas particularly for minorities and women. And with the decline of unions it opens up more opportunities for these groups. I wouldn't want to overstate that case I wouldn't want to say that it's to the credit or detriment of Ronald Reagan but it's just something to keep in mind when looking at the labor situation. Well I'm I'm not here to argue and I appreciate your responses. I guess you know I don't necessarily agree obviously but we all have to look here in the next decade or so and then to see when we look back on Reagan as if like to say is the way it's going to look. Thank you very much.

We're going to go it's a fair way of looking if one of the one of this is maybe a little bit. Society sure but what it does indeed have to do with Ronald Reagan and what's happened from from that day to this. And the question is if indeed Ronald Reagan and his presidency so thoroughly changed American politics and discredited liberalism the Democratic Party why is it that just four years after he left office Bill Clinton was elected president how do you account for Bill Clinton. Well take a look at the performance of the first George Bush. Ronald Reagan was a tough act to follow. And in many ways as a personality and also on the policy side. But George Bush Sr. inherited a situation that was becoming much more different in part because of the successes of Ronald Reagan and then later on had a difficult economy. And at the end of 12 years of republican control the White House which is a fairly long

span by modern American standards and the economic uncertainty that plagued him during the last couple of years of his of his administration it's not all that surprising that he lost to Bill Clinton who essentially was doing what Ronald Reagan had done projecting a very optimistic personality and promising better times. I don't think that that that's the best way of evaluating the the long term legacy of Reagan. Because you then have to ask what happened when Bill Clinton became president. And did he roll back the changes of the Reagan years. Well the answer is no he didn't. He had a tax increase in the first year but it wasn't anywhere near it didn't bring tax rates back anywhere near where they had been pre-Reagan it was tinkering at the margins. And in many other ways he looked either left the Reagan legacy alone or expanded on it deregulation continued and was expanded a welfare

reform which was something that the Republicans had been hoping for under Reagan but couldn't get something that came under Clinton. I don't see I see a lot more continuity with the Reagan years than I do efforts to reverse them and George Bush's defeat in 1992 I think is something that's just very specific to George Bush and and the unfortunate set of circumstances that he was working in. And you think also in part Bill Clinton success has also something to do with Bill Clinton. It is a it is a matter of again perhaps like Ronald Reagan that people tended to to resonate with a man personally there was something about him. His style how he presented himself that. People undoubtedly But and this is a very important but Bill Clinton was nowhere near the legacy builder then that Ronald Reagan was and what Ronald Reagan did was. Here again look back in the late 70s or even 1980 the

idea that an ideological conservative could become president could govern successfully and bring the country around to his point of view was considered ludicrous to many. It was certainly debatable. By the end of the 80s that was the case and he had refocused American politics toward the right. Ask yourself this question though about Bill Clinton. Did he make any similar change did he bring American politics back toward the Democratic center. And I don't think he did. Ask yourself what is the long term legacy of Bill Clinton's presidency. I'm not sure that you can point to very much certainly nothing on the scale of Ronald Reagan's that the Clinton presidency was very much about Clinton. And he certainly was a remarkable politician and a man who could who could have political success who could create political success under the most unfavorable conditions imaginable. I think he really did not leave very much behind him. He did not rebuild the Democratic pot party. He did

not rebuild liberal institutions. You can't point to a great liberal experiment under Bill Clinton that refocused policy or change people's thinking. And I think in large part the current President Bush did much of Clinton's legacy just in his first few months of office even before September 11. Our guest in this part of focus 580 is John Ermine He's a foreign affairs analyst for the federal government. He has been a lecturer in history at George Washington University and he writes on modern American conservative politics. He's the author of two books. One we're talking about here this morning is the 80s America in the age of Reagan and before that his book previous book was titled The rise of neo conservatism both of them both books are published by the Yale University Press and questions again are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. Next caller in line is in champagne and on line. Number two. Hello.

Hello. Yes I have read someplace that neo conservatism was a kind of philosophical outgrowth of liberalism. Is that true and if so how is it true I'm going to hang up and listen. Thanks. Thank you. Yes it is true. Neoconservatism grew out of liberal anti communism which was a variety of liberalism that really became dominant among Democrats in the late 1940s it's basically Harry Truman's liberalism which combines a very strict anti communism activist foreign policy overseas and continuation of New Deal policies at home. And by the late 70s the so-called neo conservatives had become a minority within the Democratic Party which had moved substantially to the left on foreign policy issues. And that's where the break really came over how to deal with the Soviet Union detente

perceptions of the Soviet threat and neo cons believe that the Soviet Union continued to present a very dire threat to the United States and its interests and had to have to be confronted. There was very little support for this in the Democratic Party by that time and so they migrated over to the Republicans where they've been ever since. But yes it comes out of post-war democratic liberalism or it will go to someone here in Champaign County on the cell phone line number one. Hello. Hi how are you doing today. Good good. My question concerns revisiting the labor question of the air traffic controllers and their terminations in 1900. It would seem that the Reagan administration coming out of the election had a mandate more or less to bring the economy into some kind of control again for the just for the national psychology

did their thought process concerning firing the air traffic controllers and therefore throttling the nation's air traffic for a significant time period afterwards. Did that have any. Were they at risk are were they afraid of being at risk for insuring the economy in any way. And was there a greater mandate instead where they're taking on and perhaps ending the Cold War. I think so and I'll hang up and listen. OK. I know I don't think that there was that much concern about the economic impact of the air traffic strike. The economy by that point was already in a recession anyway if you want to ask how much worse the recession was made by the response to the traffic controllers strike. I'm not even sure that anybody has ever done any research into that question.

The air traffic system was disrupted for a few weeks but it was up and running pretty quickly. So for most people the effects were were temporary and minor question of a mandate. To the extent that Reagan had one I think it was on on economics. As I said before the issue was could he do better than Jimmy Carter and he had a he had a mandate certainly to try but there was not going to be much toleration for for a failure. Had he failed he would have been out in four years to on on the Cold War and very few people in the early eighties saw the Cold War as something that could come to an end. I think the dominant assumption among for almost everyone was that it was just a fact of life and it was going to keep on going into the infinite future. The changes that started with the affection of Mikhail Gorbachev in

1905 and then accelerated after that took most people by surprise. Perhaps you could argue that you like Reagan when he talked about the coming collapse of communism. You could argue that yes he saw it but he might have also been thinking more abstractly not trying to put any kind of time line on it or deadline. So I don't think that most people thought people thought in terms of a tougher policy against the Soviet Union and its expansionism. But I don't think too many people were were actually thinking that it could be brought down so quickly and all they really want to belabor the point of the pad co strike but again I guess I'm thinking about the fact that when the air traffic controllers walked off the job this was in 19 August of 1981. Asking for higher pay one of the realities of their employment was that as federal employees they were forbidden by law to strike. And

President Reagan said well you know that's the law and either you can go back to work or you can be fired and they mostly chose to ignore the threat and they were fired and a lot of people generalize there and said Well that means that Ronald Reagan in the Reagan administration is was going to be anti labor. Can you indeed. You would probably argue that you couldn't read that into that decision and that it was much more case specific than it was a some kind of general statement about the attitude toward organized labor. Indeed the air traffic controllers had two problems and one as you mentioned was they were violating the law and it was a very clear violation of federal law. The other problem was that they had no support and they probably thought that once they went on strike there would be a wave of public support for their position and to get the traffic control system operating again. But what they learned was that these guys made a very good salary they were on. On average I believe

making about forty thousand dollars a year which in 1901 was a pretty good salary and most Americans couldn't understand what it is that the problem was why they felt they had to go on strike particularly when you combined it with the with the violation of federal law. I don't think that it Harbutt it was a harbinger or an indicator of any anti labor attitude or effort by the administration to go after unions. There was really no need for the administration to do that. Unions were declining on their own and there was very little that if the administration was so anti-union there was very little that it needed to do to keep that decline going and there is probably very little that it had to do or could do it. It was a structural thing that was that was and still is very much beyond the reach of anything but really a drastic policy turnaround. I don't I don't think they were so much anti labor or anti

union as just content to let the situation go as it was going as far as they were concerned it was in their favor. We have about five six months left in this part of focus the. Lines are full. I know that we won't be able to get everybody but we try to get at least a few more callers. We go next to Urbana and this is line number three I like a good half hour good morning and I'm somewhat interested in the statistics that you've been in that you've been using earlier. This is some time earlier in the program at this point you were talking about the difference in that Democratic versus Republican are in the in the examples you cited Clinton versus the other all the way Republican presidents over the last number of years had on income across classes and across quintiles and I just to question one observation or a piece of piece of information and one question for you. And the first is that the Washington Monthly recently have done an analysis going back likely

further than yourself going back over the last 50 years and and and comparing Democrats and Republicans and they found something kind of the opposite of what you have. Which is the Democrats for the bottom 20 20 percent have a much or have a higher rate of increase in ink income growth. And then they do for far for the older percentile and Quintiles budgets and have and have higher income growth across across the board than Republicans up to something like the 90 50 percent. But I am Zeus's but Butch puts you where where I want to ask your question was that you. You used very what I thought something I found very strange you said that when you look at either quintiles or of course child. That the number

in the in the lower quintiles dropped in in under Reagan Bush in the number of departure the number of people in the upper quintile increased but quintiles are usually measured in terms of one fifth of the population in in in each quintile. So I wondering are you using a nonstandard definition of of Clinton quartal. That's a good question. And as it happens I've got the table in front of me that we're talking about. But let me answer your first question first which is very quick just to say that I'm not familiar with the statistics you're citing so I can't really comment on them. As for the quintile core tile I misstated and what I'm looking at is income levels that is in constant dollars. If you look at the percentage of households making from zero to ten thousand dollars in 10000 to 35000 and 35000 and up in other words slicing the

population three ways by income. But that's a nonsense you know. You know there are statistics can be played anywhere you want but yeah I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that usually one would look in terms of quintiles or in terms of you know what to do to say you know you we can look either in quintiles or quarter of it is so much creative perhaps on your part. Well like I said I'm sorry that I misstated but I'm looking at income levels and the proportion of the population in the bottom income levels shrank between one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and the proportion in the middle income levels also shrank. And what you have is a very large growth in in the in the proportion of the population that's in the upper income levels. So I take that as evidence. People on balance moving up. Let's go to Champagne next. This is why I won.

Hello hi. I just think you overlook in the first quarter reading and the impact of what the price of oil did there incurs administration and the effect on the economy. What happened during Reagan. And ministrations. And when the price of oil got knocked down below $10 a barrel in 1986 that had it there was a huge boost in the economy. So unlike your comment on it I think you're as far as alike as searing goes maybe I just look at human rights in Central America. It's just you know to balance things out. You're certainly right that the fall in the price of oil is a big boost and it was Jimmy Carter's bad luck to be president when oil prices were going up and it was Ronald Reagan's Good luck to be president when they were coming down. I would point out though that the economic recovery predated.

The fall in oil as you say the oil price began. Took that big drop in 1986 but the recovery began and in 1982. So while Reagan certainly got a boost out of it I don't think that invalidates the performance of his policies before that on human rights in Central America. I think the administration inherited a real a really difficult set of problems. But I think overall there their policy was the right one and I think in the long term that it proved to be the successful one. And. For all the violence and brutality that took place in Central America the administration's goal was to reduce it by removing the. The government of El Salvador toward a more liberal democracy and to try and force moderation of the Sandinista government and in the long run. And I don't think you can overlook the

difficulty in the violence of the situation. But I think in the long run they were successful on both counts. And in both countries today you have reasonably stable elected governments and certainly nowhere near the levels of violence and and human rights abuses that that were present 20 years ago. I don't think anybody would claim that those countries are on the par of a developed Western countries human rights level but they're certainly better than where the administration began in 1901. We're almost out of time we have about a minute left and just because you have written about conservative politics in America one thing I'm interested in having you talk about and as I say. Unfortunately I can only give you about a minute is what it what it means for the GOP that over time if you look at people who have been the leaders of the party that there has been it seems an increase in ideological content and commitment and that we go from someone like Barry Goldwater to someone like Ronald

Reagan who may indeed have been ideological but you suggest perhaps made more progress adek pragmatic than ideological was a gofer of figures like that to someone like for example Bill Frist who is the now the majority leader in the Senate and is said to be thinking about running for president. What does that mean for the GOP. I'm not sure. To be perfectly honest I'm a historian I deal with the past. I'm not very good at predicting the future. Now that copout aside I would say You also should look at the other side of the coin which is the Democrats and where they've gone from having figures like Tip O'Neill who could work with both parties and reach across party lines to some of the leaders that they have today. I don't I don't want to get into any kind of political critique of the of the individuals who are running things now but I think that this

polarization and ideological hardening is something that's occurred in both parties. Well there we're going to have to stop if we had more time we could continue but we'll simply have to leave it there for people who are interested in reading more on the subject. You can look at the book that we mentioned it's titled the 80s American in the age of Reagan by our guest John Ermine takes a look primarily at economic policymaking and politics in the Reagan administration. The book is published by the Yale University Press. Dr. Germ thank you very much for talking with us. Thank you very much.