Early Reaganism: A Paradoxical Antidote to Chaos
“I want to thank each and every one of you…for giving me near-eight years of administration—you have been wonderful…” a weary, crestfallen Pat Brown hoarsely announced to a group of sad-faced, faithful Democratic supporters on November 8, 1966. Pat Brown, the Democratic Incumbent for Governor of California, had just lost his seat to the Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan. Ironically, Brown had actually sponsored Reagan to run against him during the Republican primaries—the first in a long line of underestimations. Little did Brown, or many of Reagan’s critics, comprehend his ability to pose confidently as a light-hearted moderate, finely treading the line of both poles of radicalism that defined 1960s Californian politics. Reagan managed to win the gubernatorial race in 1966 because he was successful in acting the part of a moderate Republican, masterfully disavowing both the radical left and right in California to garner centrist support, yet also, paradoxically pushing an unholy alliance with both poles against Pat Brown. Although an accomplished governor, Brown was effectively seen as complacent in the face of sixties radicalism; Reagan was going to be the antidote to chaos. Moreover, Reagan’s success in opportunistically utilizing all sides of the political spectrum is founded not only in his temperate public persona, but also in the failings of Pat Brown. Brown’s governorship ended with political disarray—Reagan brought with his campaign a sense certainty and clarity by either including or excluding radicals, ultimately making Brown the “enemy of the people.” This can be seen in three major events: Reagan’s apparent disavowal of the John Birch Society, his decisiveness with the Berkeley protests, and his new affiliation with the Mexican-American community through the “Southwest Strategy.”
Like in many US elections, both candidates on either pole attempted to seem moderate in order to draw the most support. Through skillful rhetoric, ever playing the “good guy,” Reagan managed to appear less right-wing than his 1964 speech in favor of Barry Goldwater would presume. Rather, throughout the campaign, Reagan came across not as inflexible, but as a sincere, sensible man with a friendly interest in people’s concerns and a good sense of humour. His demeanor was warm and inviting—qualities that humanized him in the face of the stereotypes of extremism or evangelism set by the past. Harping on the 1964 disaster, however, Pat Brown attempted to hang the Goldwater image around Reagan’s neck—he thought he would be fighting another right-winger. But the Reagan of 1966 was not the same Reagan of 1964. In 1966, Reagan proved more adept at focusing on symbolic or moral issues, deftly dodging being seen as a right-wing ideologue or doctrinaire. He presented a posture of moderation, successfully centering his speeches around themes of freedom, traditional values and individual autonomy. This appealed to a large portion of the Californian population, particularly to those in southern California: the middle and lower-middle class suburbanites who resented high taxes and government aid for minorities. Here, Reagan found the brunt of his ‘populist’ support, and also managed to draw support from disaffected Democrats. More important to his victory, however, is how he managed the outskirts of California politics: the radicals.
The John Birch Society
Like a wounded animal, Brown lashed out. Desperate to draw right-wing comparisons, Brown attempted to present Reagan as an extremist, with ties to the so-called John Birch Society—a group of right-wingers who posited that the Republicans controlling the California Republican Party were either inert or complicit in the overthrow of American institutions by Moscow guided communist subversives. Brown and his team needed a way to have Reagan’s “Good Guy look…wear thin.” As Henry Lerner, the Democrats’ chief researcher into the “anti” campaign put it, “we have to go hard on the right wing thing because he is coming across as moderate. If we can’t stick the right-wing label on him, then we’ve had it.” In August, the Democrats released their “bombshell”: a twenty-nine-page documentary entitled “Ronald Reagan, Extremist Collaborator.” Among the accusations was that Reagan had claimed he had no “moral justification for repudiating” the aforementioned John Birch Society. While Reagan certainly had sympathy for the JBS in the form of anti-communism, he and his team, namely Spencer and Roberts, released a statement criticizing the conspiratorial leader of the society, Robert Welch, who attacked President Eisenhower as a communist. In disavowing Welch, however, they were careful not to include a blanket statement of the Society. By delicately dodging and maneuvering around the JBS, Reagan eased anxiety among moderates, yet also didn’t alienate the JBS and their sympathizers, as they were some of his most ardent supporters. Whenever the question of the JBS came up, Reagan would refer back to the original statement. Eventually, the questions faded into obscurity. “If anybody decides he wants to vote for me, he has bought my philosophy; I haven’t bought his.” Liberals grudgingly concluded he wasn’t connected to the society.
Ultimately, this approach backfired on Brown. Instead of focusing on his own failings with the radical left—namely riots and the free speech movement at college campuses—he was talking about Birchers, who had no violent affect. His attacks only reignited the fact that he had been a wishy-washy governor in the face of more tangible radicalism.
Berkeley Protests
Pat Brown did not understand the pattern of political change that was quite rapidly occurring in California as he battled Reagan, and his complacency in the wake of this change made him vulnerable. Despite this, Brown had been a capable and accomplished governor in his early years, with a vigor for change to public works and services lead by a mix of activism and idealism. Yet Brown was not the governor mold Californians looked up to—he was a compromiser, not a determined chief executive. By the end of eight years, he had antagonized both Republicans and Democrats, especially over his handling of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
UC Berkeley’s campus has full-time reporters from four daily newspapers assigned to it. When Mario Savio and the free speech movement kicked off in 1964, the protests attracted television cameramen and reporters, directly exposing the demonstrations into every middle-class Californian’s home, frightening them each night. Although Brown had wavered on the Berkeley issue, and eventually ordered arrests, he publicly sympathized with the students. By 1966, the protests were far in the past, but during Reagan’s question and answer phases of his speeches (in order to show he wasn’t scripted), the university demonstrations issue still came up among voters; it was a sub rosa emotional issue with people. Aided in part by the revitalisation of the Filthy Speech Movement in 1966, Reagan began selling Brown as soft on crime and a “mollycoddler of beatnik dissidents.” Reagan affectively portrayed both Brown and Kerr (the U.C. president) as ineffectual push-overs during a time when Californians were in dire need of strong leadership—the university was clearly vulnerable; by implication so was the Brown administration. “When I am elected Governor, I will organise a throw-out, and Clark Kerr will head that list,” he promised.
Reagan's campaign exploited the nascent conservative back-lash against the growing counter-culture, but he also re-ignited the radical New Left, who emerged from the tumultuous Berkeley protests seeing fellow liberals Brown and Kerr—not Reagan—as the enemy. In a two front war, Reagan and the right attacked the university from one end, the New Left attacked the other. Far left and right now had common ground in some sort of unholy alliance. The New Left complained that Kerr had created a “liberal establishment” which created contradictions in education. With similar paranoia to the radical right, the radical left accused the university of being an “education factory.” They didn’t want to be the cogs in the machine—a machine meant for war.
By augmenting public hysteria, and adding to Reagan’s arsenal a new talking point on which to tear at his opponent’s capability as governor, the New Left arguably did more than the right to defeat Pat Brown. Or perhaps Pat Brown did more to defeat Pat Brown. In his conviction-less actions as governor, he soon began to lose the left wing of the Democratic party, many of whom now wanted Reagan to win.
Ya Basta!
Reagan also managed to draw support from Brown in the form of the largest minority group in California: the Mexican-American community. Confident that the community would vote for him based on their previous Democrat affiliation, Pat Brown again fell into complacency, resting on his laurels. He paid little attention to the fact that Mexican-Americans were becoming disillusioned with the Civil Rights Movement. It began to seem like Brown favoured the “negroes” over them, even though the African-American population was half the size of theirs. They felt that they had been left without a meaningful voice in politics: in 1966 not a single Mexican-American held a seat in the California Legislature, although there were African-Americans in both houses. The same went for the Los Angeles City Council, though the city had the highest concentration of Mexican-Americans in the nation.
Reagan did not set out to gain the Mexican-American vote initially, but he again opportunistically jumped upon disaffected Democrats, angered by unrestrained radicalism. Of special importance is the case of Dr. Francisco Bravo, a wealthy surgeon and banker, and a highly influential and respected Mexican-American community leader. Disillusioned with the Democratic party after a squabble over administration jobs with Pat Brown, Bravo turned to Reagan. After several talks, Bravo began running Reagan’s Mexican-American campaign under the slogan “Ya basta” (Spanish for “Had enough”). Reagan, who had a professed affinity for Mexican-Americans because of their history as ranchers and people who used their own hands and grit to work, began a “Southwestern Strategy.” Reagan stressed the problems with big government and how it affected the livelihoods of hard-working Mexican-Americans. Moreover, he attacked Brown’s equivocation on aiding their community—Brown had broken many promises, but he acted as if he did not care until Election Day loomed. Mexican-Americans began to see that they shared many of the same conservative values as Reagan, and in the election he won over twenty percent of their vote—significantly more than any other Republican candidate.
Many Mexican-Americans, like the university students at Berkeley, felt hard-done by Pat Brown and the Democratic Party. For Mexican-Americans, the radical uprising of the Civil Rights Movement in California ended up doing little to help them, even though they were the largest minority community. They felt Brown was content in the face of radicalism—similar to the bulk of Reagan’s white middle-class supporters.
Conclusion
Democrats attempted to tear down Ronald Reagan instead of endeavoring to rebuild Pat Brown. By the time the final vote was cast, Reagan won 55 of 58 counties in California, with close to 1 million more in the popular vote. Reagan won California during radicalism, specifically because he addressed the radicals. Reagan magnified fear of right and leftist fanaticism under a weak leader. He was to be the paradoxical antidote to the chaos for both sides, and his election is as much a story of an awful leader as a fearmongering opportunist. By disavowing either side of the fringes to maintain the bulk of his support, he also managed to turn the radicals—those who many assumed would not even consider him—against Pat Brown. From his tactical repudiation of the JBS, to his sly attacks on universities, and finally to his Mexican-American Southwest Strategy, he managed to show, above all else, that he would help fix the lies papered over by “well-meaning”, but ineffectual liberals.
In the end, perhaps Reagan’s election in 1966 is part of a larger case of the “Cult of Personality” that persists in American today. In the grander scheme of things, it appears that Americans much prefer an executive that appears decisive and driven, regardless of their political stance.
