Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore (95 page)

95
. Johnson,
Sleepwalking Through History
, 150–51.

96
. Watson,
Defining Visions
, 121.

97
. Bruce Schulman,
The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics
(New York, 2001), 249.

98
. See Fraser,
Every Man a Speculator
, 546–54, for examples of materialism in the 1980s.

99
.
The Art of the Deal
(New York, 1988).

100
. Schaller,
Reckoning with Reagan
, 75. Robert Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(New York, 2000), 260, cited polls that asked American college freshmen how much it mattered to them to be “Very Well Off Financially. Is It Essential or Very Important?” In 1970, 40 percent of these freshmen answered yes to this question. In 1975, 45 percent did, and in the mid-1980s, 75 percent did.

101
. Naomi Lamoreaux et al., “Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of Business History,”
American Historical Review
108 (April 2003), 404–33.

102
. Johnson,
Sleepwalking Through History
, 215–19; Cannon,
President Reagan
, 747. Boesky was convicted of insider trading, fined $100 million, and sentenced to two years in prison. Milken was convicted of securities fraud, fined $600 million, and sentenced to ten years. He ultimately did twenty-two months’ time.

103
. Robert Bellah et al.,
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
(Berkeley, 1985), viii, 271.

104
. Lee Iacocca with William Novak,
Iacocca: An Autobiography
(New York, 1984). See also White,
New Politics of Old Values
, 23–36, 114–16.

105
. For this and the preceding two paragraphs, see White,
New Politics of Old Values
,117–21.

106
. Congressional Quarterly,
Guide to the Presidency
(Washington, 1989), 197.

107
. Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg,
Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public
(Baltimore, 2002), 131–33.

108
.
World Almanac, 2001
, 40.

109
. James Hunter,
Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America
(New York, 1991), 280, concluded that Reagan won 79 percent of “evangelical” white voters in the South.

110
. Byron Shafer,
The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics
(Lawrence, Kans., 2003), 24; Robert Samuelson,
Washington Post
, Dec. 3, 2003.

111
. Gillon,
Boomer Nation
, 118–20.

112
. For this conclusion, see Johnson,
Sleepwalking Through History
; White,
New Politics of Old Values
, 74–102; and Eric Foner,
The Story of American Freedom
(New York, 1998), 332–35.

113
. Cannon,
President Reagan
, 837.

1
. Lou Cannon,
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime
(New York, 2000), 162.

2
. Carlucci replaced Weinberger at the Pentagon, at which point Powell took Carlucci’s job as national security adviser.

3
. Cannon,
President Reagan
, 287.

4
. One notable exception was New York’s Senator Moynihan, who recognized the large internal weaknesses of the Soviet Union.

5
. Fukuyama, “The End of History?”
National Interest
16 (Summer 1989), 3–28.

6
. For reflections on the end of the Cold War, by Gorbachev, Bush, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and French president François Mitterrand, see “Defrosting the Old Order,”
New Perspectives Quarterly
13 (Winter 1996), 18–31. For the fall of the Soviet Union, see William Hitchcock,
The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent
(New York, 2002), 375–79.

7
. Michael Ignatieff, “Democratic Providentialism,”
New York Times Magazine
, Dec. 12, 2004, 29–34.

8
. Tony Judt, “Why the Cold War Worked,”
New York Review of Books
, Oct. 9, 1997, 39–44.

9
. Joseph Nye,
Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power
(New York, 1990), 182–88.

10
. Richard Pells,
Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II
(New York, 1997); Joseph Nye,
Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics
(New York, 2004), x–xii, 127–47.

11
. This is the theme of Fareed Zakaria,
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
(New York, 2003).

12
. Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Cultures,”
Foreign Affairs
73 (Summer 1993), 22–49. His capital letters. See also his book
The Clash of Cultures: Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(New York, 1996). Others who warned about serious post-Cold War divisions included Bernard Lewis, an authority on the Middle East, in “The Roots of Muslim Rage,”
Atlantic Monthly
266 (Sept. 1990), 60; and Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, in
Out of Order: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century
(New York, 1993), 187–207.

13
. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP rose from 4.9 percent to 5.2 percent between 1980 and 1990, and from 22.7 percent to 23.9 percent of total federal outlays.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 305–7. Also see H. W. Brands,
The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War
(New York, 1993), 174; Robert Collins,
More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America
(New York, 2000), 201–2; Nye,
Bound to Lead
, 9;
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 305.

14
. James Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet
(New York, 2004), 119–20.

15
. Powell and Joseph Persico,
My American Journey
(New York, 1995), 303; Robert Divine, “The Persian Gulf War Revisited: Tactical Victory, Strategic Failure?”
Diplomatic History
24 (Winter 2000), 129–38.

16
. Cannon,
President Reagan
, 275–83; Frances FitzGerald,
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War
(New York, 2000). For the movie
Star Wars
(1977), see
chapter 2
.

17
. This is a central theme in FitzGerald,
Way Out There in the Blue.

18
. (New York, 1987). Kennedy’s subtitle is
Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
. See especially 442–46, 514–33. For sales, see Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans
, 161.

19
. Kennedy,
Rise and Fall,
533. From Shaw’s
Misalliance
(1909).

20
. Edward Luttwak,
The Endangered American Dream: How to Stop the United States from Becoming a Third World Country and How to Win the Geo-Economic Struggle for Industrial Supremacy
(New York, 1993), esp. 251–54. For political ramifications, see Kevin Phillips,
The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath
(New York, 1990).

21
. Nye,
Bound to Lead
, 232–33.

22
. See Godfrey Hodgson,
The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America
(Boston, 1996), 273–74.

23
. American aid in Afghanistan went to radical Muslim nationalists who led the anti-Soviet resistance. After 1989, these radicals dominated the Taliban government that sheltered Osama bin Laden once he settled there in 1996.

24
. Cannon,
President Reagan
, 389–95.

25
. Capitalizing on the favorable response to
First Blood
, Stallone starred in two followups,
Rambo: First Blood: Part 2
(1985), and
Rambo 3
(1988). Both featured mindless action and violence.
Rambo 3
, costing an estimated $58 million to make, was then the most expensive film ever produced.

26
. In December 1983, Reagan did take responsibility for decisions that led to the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut.

27
. Cannon,
President Reagan
, 394–95.

28
. For the history of Iran-contra, see Haynes Johnson,
Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
(New York, 1991), 245–371; William Pemberton,
Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan
(Armonk, N.Y., 1998), 172–90; and Cannon,
President Reagan
, 298–320, 580–662.

29
. Hodgson,
The World Turned Right Side Up
, 266.

30
. Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans
, 151–53.

31
. Ibid., 153. Pemberton,
Exit with Honor
, 179. “Qhadhaffi” is Weinberger’s spelling.

32
. Adam Shatz, “In Search of Hezbollah,”
New York Review of Books
, April 29, 2004, 41–44.

33
. Pemberton,
Exit with Honor
, 187.

34
. Cannon,
President Reagan
, 626. His ratings did not rise above 50 percent again until early 1988.

35
. Ibid., 655.

36
. Pemberton,
Exit with Honor
, 191.

37
. Ibid., 192; Cannon,
President Reagan
, 662.

38
. In 1994, when Reagan disclosed that he had Alzheimer’s disease, many people speculated that this illness had contributed to the mismanagement that led to Iran-contra. Those who saw Reagan regularly in those years, however, saw no evidence of impairment during his presidency. See Edmund Morris, “The Unknowable,”
New Yorker
, June 28, 2004, 40–51.

39
. McFarlane had been convicted earlier after pleading guilty to four misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress. His sentence was two years probation.

40
. Nye,
Bound to Lead
, 118–30.

41
. Dinesh D’Souza, “How the East Was Won,”
American History
38 (Oct. 2003), 37–43.

42
. Robert Cottrell, “An Icelandic Saga,”
New York Review of Books
, Nov. 4, 2004, 26–29.