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Ronald Reagan: New Deal Republican

Henry Olsen

3.56 · Rating details · 57 ratings · 12 reviews

In this sure to be controversial book in the vein of The Forgotten Man, a political analyst argues that conservative icon Ronald Reagan was not an enemy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, but his true heir and the popular program's ultimate savior.

Conventional political wisdom views the two most consequential presidents of the twentieth-century FDR and Ronald R ...more

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Hardcover, 304 pages

Published June 27th 2017 by Broadside Books (first published May 16th 2017)

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Aug 13, 2017 Kate Pitrone rated it liked it

I came to the Right from the Left and Ronald Reagan helped me get there. I had thought the Left was all about individual rights for ordinary people. Then I found it was about conformity through government control, and not prosperity, but a confining security through government largesse. I didn't want that and couldn't see how it was good for anybody. Reagan said that government was the enemy. The government that governed least governed best. That sounded right to me. I became a Republican.

Was Re I came to the Right from the Left and Ronald Reagan helped me get there. I had thought the Left was all about individual rights for ordinary people. Then I found it was about conformity through government control, and not prosperity, but a confining security through government largesse. I didn't want that and couldn't see how it was good for anybody. Reagan said that government was the enemy. The government that governed least governed best. That sounded right to me. I became a Republican.

Was Reagan for the working man? He sure was. My husband was a welder, but the way we were taxed in 1979, if he worked overtime he took home less pay for the week because he was suddenly in a higher tax bracket. Reagan called that bracket creep. That kind of thing was crazy, but how else could the nation pay for all of the programs intended to help -- somebody else, not us nor any of the other struggling young families we knew. Reagan said he would reduce government and lower taxes. We would be allowed to keep more of our own money, which we spent, stimulating the economy. That last bit was supply side economics. Reagan understood that and sold it to a majority of Americans, but Olsen misunderstands him and the theory.

Strikingly, Olsen says almost nothing about Reagan and the abortion issue. "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" reiterated what Reagan had said on the topic prior to the 1980 election through Citizens for the Republic. (Oddly, Olsen never mentions that publication, nor Lyn Nofziger, perhaps because the image of Reagan he shaped was counter to that which Olden is trying to form in this book.) One great appeal to us ordinary folk was Reagan's stand on abortion. Olsen suggests Reagan said little about religion, but he did speak of God and when he used words like "conscience" we understood that as a religious motivation. Working class America was religious and we understood Reagan to be so as well.

Oh well. The book is an interesting read, especially for anyone who lived through the 1980s and paid attention to politics. Olsen's point by the end of the book seems to be to allow those who DIDN'T live through the Reagan era to reconcile Reaganism to Trump and Trumpism. Making Reagan into a New Deal Republican means that the Republican Party has been wrong, which means that Trump must be inevitable and right. It's an argument for our era.

Yet, Reagan actually was a working class hero, given his childhood. Olsen spells that out well. I don't see how we slap that image onto the current Republican president, but Olsen tries and maybe that is the best reason to read the book. If we can find a way to re-understand the past to accommodate the present, there is political expediency in that. Well, therein is another difference from that older form of Conservatism. We used to despise revisionist history, but now it might be necessary to embrace it. Current political necessity trumps political history.
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Aug 22, 2017 Kevin rated it liked it · review of another edition

A thought provoking but problematic look at Reagan through the lens of the Trump phenomenon.

Olsen in essence argues that Reagan was a principled but pragmatic politician who eschewed ideology and dogma and instead sought the betterment of average Americans by supporting the basic idea of FDR's New Deal while rejecting the progressive and New Left extremism even as he rejected its opposite, rigid libertarianism.

But Olsen builds his argument based on Reagan's language and rhetoric and assumes tha ...more

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Dec 10, 2020 Jake Stone rated it really liked it

Henry Olsen makes a compelling case that too many read a libertarian-dominant conservatism back into Reagan. As a result, the GOP has failed to produce winning coalitions that win a majority of the nation. In this book, Olsen contrasts on how Reagan’s conservative philosophy was neither cookie-cutter nor was it rooted in pinching pennies. Instead, Reagan wanted to help the common man. As Olsen moves through Reagan’s career, he shows just how much our 40th president saw himself as a guardian of t ...more

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Mar 25, 2019 Tony Seel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Good stuff. Olsen has some insights into Reagan that I've read no where else, particularly Reagan's commitment to New Deal social programs. ...more

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Jul 24, 2017 Mike rated it it was amazing

Henry Olsen rescues Reagan from the clutches of the conservative movement. Instead of being a cardboard cutout version of Barry Goldwater, who was about cutting government above all, Reagan was fundamentally a New Deal conservative who cared about the concerns of every day people. His politics was grounded upon the idea that government had a duty to provide for those who couldn't provide for themselves. Monetary concerns were in the service of human life, not the other way around.

The drawback of ...more

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May 11, 2018 Caden Mccann rated it really liked it

This was one of the better books I've read on Reagan. Looking beyond the popular conception of Reagan as a small-government libertarian, Olsen parses Reagan's speeches and looks at his past as an FDR-loving democrat to frame the the 40th president as someone with a unique conservative vision that sought to at once promote economic freedom and preserve the social infrastructure of the New Deal. With the recent election of Donald Trump bringing to light many of the systemic issues within the GOP, ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Dennis rated it really liked it

Great book that gives a different perspective on the 4oth President.

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Aug 02, 2019 Andrew Figueiredo rated it liked it · review of another edition

Henry Olsen presents an interesting argument in "The Working Class Republican" (not to be confused with Rick Santorum's "Blue Collar Conservative"). Essentially, his main claim is that Ronald Reagan was not an ideologue, but rather a conservative who maintained a lifelong respect for the New Deal consensus that undergirds American society. In this, Olsen seeks to distinguish between support for government intervention to help those who Reagan found as deserving help and expanding bureaucracy and Henry Olsen presents an interesting argument in "The Working Class Republican" (not to be confused with Rick Santorum's "Blue Collar Conservative"). Essentially, his main claim is that Ronald Reagan was not an ideologue, but rather a conservative who maintained a lifelong respect for the New Deal consensus that undergirds American society. In this, Olsen seeks to distinguish between support for government intervention to help those who Reagan found as deserving help and expanding bureaucracy and help for those seen as not needing it. It's a fascinating piece that uses a lot of Reagan's speeches as evidence and traces how the New Deal Democrat in him never fully went away. Olsen also employs right-wing opposition to Reagan (which I didn't know existed) as evidence for his point. Personally, my image of Reagan was always of a tax-cutting conservative who didn't pay much regard to the not-well-off, and this book definitely challenged that narrative by showing how Reagan made space for government intervention in his ideology. Olsen ends the book with a discussion of how the Republican party has erred since Reagan and his explanation that compassionate conservatism, Paul Ryan's agenda, the Tea Party, and Mitt Romney all failed to reach the blue-collar voters that Reagan did. Personally, this seems to reflect the EJ Dionne book "Why the Right Went Wrong" and it's a good argument. But then Olsen concludes that President Donald Trump is the best hope for Reaganism to continue in the party. Yikes.

That gets me to the reason I only give this book three stars though; I find this argument somewhat shaky. I accept the main point, but I don't think Reagan was as devoted to all of the working class as Olsen posits. After all, Olsen spends a significant amount of time defending Reagan against charges of racism, noting his switch on a housing discrimination bill in California. However, just a few days ago from when I wrote this review, a tape emerged of Reagan and Nixon in 1971 in which Reagan employs numerous racial slurs. Moreover, Reagan's support for a flat tax seems more like right-wing orthodoxy to me than the "not just for the rich" measure Olsen seeks to portray it as; this might stem from ideological difference though. Another example would be the elimination of farm subsidies (which Olsen mentions) DURING the farm crisis of the 1980s. That position is awfully far from a humane acknowledgment of the role government has to play in our society.

I also find myself appalled at the book's conclusion. Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan, while both decidedly appealing to blue-collar voters are not that similar otherwise. Just look at their backgrounds for example. And the way Donald Trump treats people contradicts Olsen's central idea that Reagan was concerned with human dignity. I think Olsen is wrong to portray Donald Trump as the best hope for Reaganism, a philosophy that was open to immigrants and humble at times.

Overall, this is a good book to make you reconsider Ronald Reagan's legacy, even if its arguments aren't 100% convincing. It seems like every conservative has their own way of interpreting his legacy, and it makes for good reading. ...more

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Mar 19, 2020 Reza Amiri Praramadhan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-ebooks, favorites

This book comes with a proposition that will send chills into every libertarian’ spines: Ronald Reagan was, and is always been, an FDR New Deal’s adherent. But how? After all we have been inundated with the dominant views that Ronnie was a budget-cutting, freedom-loving, worshipper of supply-side economics, just like libertarians wanted us to believe. However, this book reveals that they could not be more wrong. As perfectly by his statement that the Democratic Party left him, Reagan was, indeed This book comes with a proposition that will send chills into every libertarian’ spines: Ronald Reagan was, and is always been, an FDR New Deal’s adherent. But how? After all we have been inundated with the dominant views that Ronnie was a budget-cutting, freedom-loving, worshipper of supply-side economics, just like libertarians wanted us to believe. However, this book reveals that they could not be more wrong. As perfectly by his statement that the Democratic Party left him, Reagan was, indeed, a former Democratic Party member, who, being disappointed at the direction Democratic Party took, more following Henry Wallace’s progressivism rather than Henry Truman’s the true heir of FDR’s legacies. This caused Reagan to be unorthodox in his political stances when compared with other conservatives with Republican Party.
A washed up, b-list actor, Reagan was catapulted into political stardom by his support of Barry Goldwater’s doomed presidential campaign in 1964. This opened up a path for him to be Governor of California, a chance to practice his core belief that government exists to extend helping hand to the most needy, while not dictating the lives of its citizens. This core belief led Reagan to make decisions that was construed as weakness, compromise or deviation from conservatism, as critics from the right believe. However, Reagan was merely acting on his hatred of ideology and ideologues, and their refusal to see the reality. A principled, rather than ideology-driven man, Reagan does not really care how his goals are reached, as long as they are reached in the end.
His charisma, warmth, and genuine care towards average people earned him support from people from every walks of life, the most important being blue collar conservatives. They are the people who are most receptive of Reagan’s principles yet often neglected by both parties in America. Interestingly, the author also asserts that the mantle of Reaganism was most closely captured by Donald Trump, as seen during his presidential campaign, although the whole results remain to be seen. My final message to libertarian free-marketers: how does it feel when your patron saint did not act according to your core beliefs? ...more

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May 01, 2019 Hasan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, history, us-politics

This is a fairly interesting take on Ronald Reagan. And it makes a lot of sense.

It doesn't figure out how to accomplish the budget cutting that the supply siders are trying to get at. But it's definitely a gentler, more workable Republican approach. George W. Bush might've been trying to get to this with "compassionate conservativism" but 9/11 got in the way. He did try to turn Social Security into a voucher system, which didn't work.

But given that the Republican Party of today is largely rural ...more

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