Ronald Reagan was an opportunist who strongly believed in following the most popular beliefs of the day. Likely driven by a mixture of ambition and cowardice.
Even when he was governor of California, one of his most remarkable flip-flops involved his opposition to payroll withholding of state income taxes. "My feet are in concrete," he said, over and over. But in 1970, when the state faced a serious cash flow crisis, Reagan finally gave in. "That sound you hear," he told reporters, "is the concrete breaking around my feet."
As he campaigned, he had been dismissive of some environmental concerns. "You know, a tree is a tree," he said. "How many more do you need to look at?" But as governor, he signed some of the nation's strictest air and water quality laws, increased state parkland and started requiring environmental impact reports on state construction projects.
He signed a historic abortion reform bill authored by a Democrat that vastly liberalized the procedure in California. Advocates promoted it as a model for other states. Later, as a national political figure, Reagan would hold the support of the most militant anti-abortionists, while doing relatively little to advance their cause.
To justify increasing defense spending while slashing taxes, Reagan embraced supply-side economics — a theory that enjoyed little standing among many economists. Supply-siders held that higher spending and lower taxes would not increase the deficit. Instead, the theory held, tax cuts would unleash such a wave of economic growth that government income would actually rise. It did not happen.
As defense spending rose and the tax cuts kicked in, the predicted surge in economic growth did not materialize. The deficit soared toward record levels. Eventually, the national debt nearly tripled. Before Reagan's first year was up, the nation's economy plunged into the worst downturn in years. By March of 1982, Reagan, who had acknowledged "a slight and, I hope, a short recession," was reduced to denying that the nation was in a depression. Unemployment reached a 41-year record of 10.8% that November, and the global effects of the slowdown did severe damage to Third World debtor nations and the world's banking system.
Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, was among the disillusioned. He granted a series of devastating interviews to William Greider, who published them in the Atlantic Monthly, quoting Stockman as saying, "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers."
If the political winds changed, Ronald Reagan would have been one of the charter members of the American Communist Party, a well known Commissar and fabled executioner of capitalist-roaders and their running dog lackeys. It's what opportunists do.
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