Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal

Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal PDF Author: Gene Kopelson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780182198849
Category : Political campaigns
Languages : en
Pages : 942

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Book Description
"This ground-breaking book weaves an exciting, never-before-told story of Ronald Reagan's first quest for the presidency in the late 1960s. Reagan's goal was to prevent a first-ballot Nixon victory, as many delegates couldn't wait to vote for Reagan on the second ballot. Yet Reagan favored the broad political tent of the Republican Party and said he would support whomever was the nominee. Behind the scenes, Reagan's private political mentor was Dwight Eisenhower, and Reagan's public political foe was Robert Kennedy. Reagan scholar Kopelson's analysis relies on newly uncovered audiotapes from candidate Reagan's days as governor of California, the Eisenhower-Reagan correspondence and files, Ike's post-presidential diary, and interviews with 35 grassroots Reagan activists from 1968. Many of the major triumphs of Reagan's subsequent tenure as president originated during that first campaign: Tearing down the Berlin Wall. Lessening nuclear weapons. The peaceful defeat of communism. Creating a missile defense shield for America. Bringing freedom to Eastern Europe. And dealing with hostage crises. During 1968, Reagan emerged as a world statesman and shaped his crusade to restore pride in America. Kopelson further demonstrates why for Reagan, Ike's tutelage was critical. This political mentorship changed America's national priorities through the end of Reagan's presidency, whose effects are still very much with us today."--Amazon.com.

Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal

Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal PDF Author: Gene Kopelson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780182198849
Category : Political campaigns
Languages : en
Pages : 942

Get Book

Book Description
"This ground-breaking book weaves an exciting, never-before-told story of Ronald Reagan's first quest for the presidency in the late 1960s. Reagan's goal was to prevent a first-ballot Nixon victory, as many delegates couldn't wait to vote for Reagan on the second ballot. Yet Reagan favored the broad political tent of the Republican Party and said he would support whomever was the nominee. Behind the scenes, Reagan's private political mentor was Dwight Eisenhower, and Reagan's public political foe was Robert Kennedy. Reagan scholar Kopelson's analysis relies on newly uncovered audiotapes from candidate Reagan's days as governor of California, the Eisenhower-Reagan correspondence and files, Ike's post-presidential diary, and interviews with 35 grassroots Reagan activists from 1968. Many of the major triumphs of Reagan's subsequent tenure as president originated during that first campaign: Tearing down the Berlin Wall. Lessening nuclear weapons. The peaceful defeat of communism. Creating a missile defense shield for America. Bringing freedom to Eastern Europe. And dealing with hostage crises. During 1968, Reagan emerged as a world statesman and shaped his crusade to restore pride in America. Kopelson further demonstrates why for Reagan, Ike's tutelage was critical. This political mentorship changed America's national priorities through the end of Reagan's presidency, whose effects are still very much with us today."--Amazon.com.

The Peacemaker

The Peacemaker PDF Author: William Inboden
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 152474591X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
A masterful account of how Ronald Reagan and his national security team confronted the Soviets, reduced the nuclear threat, won the Cold War, and supported the spread of freedom around the world. “Remarkable… a great read.”—Robert Gates • “Mesmerizing… hard to put down.”—Paul Kennedy • “Full of fresh information… will shape all future studies of the role the United States played in ending the Cold War.”—John Lewis Gaddis • “A major contribution to our understanding of the Reagan presidency and the twilight of the Cold War era.”—David Kennedy With decades of hindsight, the peaceful end of the Cold War seems a foregone conclusion. But in the early 1980s, most experts believed the Soviet Union was strong, stable, and would last into the next century. Ronald Reagan entered the White House with no certainty of what would happen next, only an overriding faith in democracy and an abiding belief that Soviet communism—and the threat of nuclear war—must end. The Peacemaker reveals how Reagan’s White House waged the Cold War while managing multiple crises around the globe. From the emergence of global terrorism, wars in the Middle East, the rise of Japan, and the awakening of China to proxy conflicts in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, Reagan’s team oversaw the worldwide expansion of democracy, globalization, free trade, and the information revolution. Yet no issue was greater than the Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union. As president, Reagan remade the four-decades-old policy of containment and challenged the Soviets in an arms race and ideological contest that pushed them toward economic and political collapse, all while extending an olive branch of diplomacy as he sought a peaceful end to the conflict. Reagan’s revolving team included Secretaries of State Al Haig and George Shultz; Secretaries of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Frank Carlucci; National Security Advisors Bill Clark, John Poindexter, and Bud McFarlane; Chief of Staff James Baker; CIA Director Bill Casey; and United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Talented and devoted to their president, they were often at odds with one another as rivalries and backstabbing led to missteps and crises. But over the course of the presidency, Reagan and his team still developed the strategies that brought about the Cold War’s peaceful conclusion and remade the world. Based on thousands of pages of newly-declassified documents and interviews with senior Reagan officials, The Peacemaker brims with fresh insights into one of America’s most consequential presidents. Along the way, it shows how the pivotal decade of the 1980s shaped the world today.

Reconsidering Reagan

Reconsidering Reagan PDF Author: Daniel S. Lucks
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 080702998X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
2021 Prose Award Finalist A long-overdue and sober examination of President Ronald Reagan’s racist politics that continue to harm communities today and helped shape the modern conservative movement. Ronald Reagan is hailed as a transformative president and an American icon, but within his twentieth-century politics lies a racial legacy that is rarely discussed. Both political parties point to Reagan as the “right” kind of conservative but fail to acknowledge his political attacks on people of color prior to and during his presidency. Reconsidering Reagan corrects that narrative and reveals how his views, policies, and actions were devastating for Black Americans and racial minorities, and that the effects continue to resonate today. Using research from previously untapped resources including the Black press which critically covered Reagan’s entire political career, Daniel S. Lucks traces Reagan’s gradual embrace of conservatism, his opposition to landmark civil rights legislation, his coziness with segregationists, and his skill in tapping into white anxiety about race, riding a wave of “white backlash” all the way to the Presidency. He argues that Reagan has the worst civil rights record of any President since the 1920s—including supporting South African apartheid, packing courts with conservatives, targeting laws prohibiting discrimination in education and housing, and launching the “War on Drugs”—which had cataclysmic consequences on the lives of Black and Brown people. Linking the past to the present, Lucks expertly examines how Reagan set the blueprint for President Trump and proves that he is not an anomaly, but in fact the logical successor to bring back the racially tumultuous America that Reagan conceptualized.

Becoming Ronald Reagan

Becoming Ronald Reagan PDF Author: Robert Mann
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640122559
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
In the 1960s transitioning from acting to politics was rare. Ronald Reagan was not the first to do it, but he was the first to jump from the screen to the stump and on to credibility as a presidential contender. Reagan’s transformation from struggling liberal actor to influential conservative spokesman in five years—and then to the California governorship six years later—is a remarkable and compelling story. In Becoming Ronald Reagan Robert Mann explores Reagan’s early life and his career during the 1950s and early 1960s: his growing desire for acclaim in high school and college, his political awakening as a young Hollywood actor, his ideological evolution in the 1950s as he traveled the country for General Electric, the refining of his political skills during this period, his growing aversion to big government, and his disdain for the totalitarian leaders in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. All these experiences and more shaped Reagan’s politics and influenced his career as an elected official. Mann not only demonstrates how Reagan the actor became Reagan the political leader and how the liberal became a conservative, he also shows how the skills Reagan learned and the lessons he absorbed from 1954 to 1964 made him the inspiring leader so many Americans remember and revere to this day. Becoming Ronald Reagan is an indelible portrait of a true American icon and a politician like none other.

Nixon Rebuilds

Nixon Rebuilds PDF Author: John David Briley
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476683883
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Richard Nixon's election to the presidency in 1968 was an improbable vindication for a man branded as a loser after unsuccessful presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Yet during the 1966 mid-term elections, he emerged as the critical figure who united the fractured Republican Party after the disastrous 1964 presidential election. Along the way, he sensed how large swaths of the American public were moving against the Democrats, and how a candidate could take advantage of this. Filling an important gap in the Nixon literature, this book explores his dynamic reinvention during the dark days of the mid-sixties--a period that mirrored his 1946-1952 rise from obscure congressman to Eisenhower's vice-president. Beginning with his 1962 press conference after losing the California governor's election and ending with his 1968 presidential victory, a far more human Nixon is revealed, unlike the familiar caricature of the shady politician and orchestrator of Watergate who would do anything to win.

Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust

Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust PDF Author: Jason Lantzer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111327116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Dwight Eisenhower’s encounter with the Holocaust altered how he understood the Second World War and shaped how he led the United States and the Western Alliance during the Cold War. This book is the first to blend scholarship on Eisenhower, World War II, and the Holocaust together, constructing a narrative that offers new insights into all three, all while uncovering the story of how he became among the first to vow that such atrocities would never again be allowed to happen. From the moment he stepped foot in the concentration camp Ohrdruf in April 1945, defeating Nazi Germany took on a moral hue for Eisenhower that had largely been absent before. It spurred the belief that totalitarianism in all its forms needed to be confronted. This conviction shaped his presidency and solidified American engagement in the postwar world. Putting these pieces of the story together alters how we view and understand the second half of the twentieth century.

Star Power

Star Power PDF Author: Lauren Wright
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429888821
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Are celebrity politics the spice of American public life or a pox on policy progress? This book identifies and measures the attributes of celebrities that make them well-equipped to win campaigns and yet poorly prepared to govern effectively. The framers of the U.S. Constitution worried about the propensity of an undereducated public to elect unqualified entertainers rather than fit characters to government positions. Celebrities have come to play an increasingly central role in the American political process as fundraisers, surrogates, and as candidates themselves, yet remain a sorely understudied topic in political science. Through a multimethod approach that includes qualitative analysis, novel public opinion surveys, and survey experiments, this book assesses whether Americans are more likely to vote for celebrities than well-known traditional politicians and the implications of these preferences for democracy in the U.S. Perfect for students, scholars, and interested citizens, Star Power looks at the contemporary American political landscape through new lenses of research as well as popular appeal.

President Reagan

President Reagan PDF Author: Lou Cannon
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 078672417X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 916

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Book Description
Hailed by the New Yorker as "a superlative study of a president and his presidency," Lou Cannon's President Reagan remains the definitive account of our most significant presidency in the last fifty years. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the first actor to be elected president, turned in the performance of a lifetime. But that performance concealed the complexities of the man, baffling most who came in contact with him. Who was the man behind the makeup? Only Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan through his political career, can tell us. The keenest Reagan-watcher of them all, he has been the only author to reveal the nature of a man both shrewd and oblivious. Based on hundreds of interviews with the president, the First Lady, and hundreds of the administration's major figures, President Reagan takes us behind the scenes of the Oval Office. Cannon leads us through all of Reagan's roles, from the affable cowboy to the self-styled family man; from the politician who denounced big government to the president who created the largest peace-time deficit; from the statesman who reviled the Soviet government to the Great Communicator who helped end the cold war.

The Imagination of the New Left

The Imagination of the New Left PDF Author: George N. Katsiaficas
Publisher: South End Press
ISBN: 9780896082274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
"The Imagination of the New Left" brings to life the social movements and events of the 1960s that made it a period of world-historical importance: the Prague Spring; the student movements in Mexico, Japan, Sri Lanka, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Spain; the Test Offensive in Vietnam and guerilla movements in Latin America; the Democratic Convention in Chicago; the assassination of Martin Luther King; the near-revolution in France of May 1968; and the May 1970 student strike in the United States. Despite its apparent failure, the New Left represented a global transition to a newly defined cultural and political epoch, and its impact continues to be felt today.

The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order

The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order PDF Author: Steven F. Hayward
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307453693
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 850

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Book Description
The Age of Reagan brings to life the tumultuous decade and a half that preceded Ronald Reagan’s ascent to the White House. Drawing on scores of interviews and years of research, Steven F. Hayward takes us on an engrossing journey through the most politically divisive years the United States has had to endure since the decade before the Civil War. Hayward captures an America at war with itself—and an era whose reverberations we feel to this very day. He brings new insight into the profound failure of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the oddly liberal nature of Richard Nixon’s administration, the significance of Reagan’s years as California’s governor, the sudden-death drama of his near defeat of Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican primary, the listlessness of Jimmy Carter’s leadership, and the political earthquake that was Reagan’s victorious presidential campaign in 1980. Provocative, authoritative, and majestic in scope, The Age of Reagan is an unforgettable account of the rebirth and triumph of the American spirit.