“Reagan”, by Gennaro Sangiuliano: his conservative revolution a lesson for current leaders
Since becoming director of Tg2 , Gennaro Sangiuliano has given us wonderful episodes of Tg2Dossier dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Refined intellectual and author of precious volumes on Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping, Sangiuliano also participated in the drafting of the "Report on national interest" published by the Adolfo Urso Foundation Fare Futuro , with a brilliant essay entitled "For an idea of Nation in the Third Millennium ".
And it is precisely the idea of nation at the center of his latest book, dedicated to " Reagan – The President who changed American politics" (this is his title), published in recent days for the types of Mondadori . Sangiuliano fills a void in contemporary literature on Reagan in Italy: so far very few writers and journalists have ventured into the analysis of his 8 years (1980-1988) at the White House, and if it were not for the meritorious work of the house Giubilei Regnani publisher, we wouldn't even have had the chance to read Ed Meese's spectacular “Ronald Reagan, a conservative in the White House” .
Reagan was a conservative patriot, realizing that the United States would disappear following the course of the policies carried out by Jimmy Carter in the second half of the 1970s. Thus he carried out his American dream of a minimal state, free enterprise, an unshakable belief in the goodness of his fellow citizens and in the superiority of America over the USSR. All this led the United States to defeat the Empire of Evil and to have unprecedented economic growth – a prerequisite for the well-being of a healthy nation. "I was not a Great Communicator – Reagan said at the end of his 8 years in the White House – I simply had great ideas to communicate".
The Reagan portrayed by Sangiuliano starts from the beginning of his political career as head of the Hollywood actors union in the ranks of the Democratic Party and goes until the end of his presidency, with the extraordinary legacy left as a gift to George H. Bush, the ever successor too loved by The Gipper , and all over the country: believe in yourself before you believe me. But since he made his mark with the famous speech "A time for choosing" in the republican convention that confirmed Barry Goldwater as the candidate for president of the GOP in the elections of 1962 to 1979, the year of his investiture, Reagan has also had to face defeats at the within the party who were about to affect his career: against Nixon in 1968 and against Ford in 1976. When the Republicans finally chose him in 1979, many saw in the 69-year-old former governor of California a candidate who had already had his best days behind him .
His conservative revolution – well highlighted by Sangiuliano who outlines the cultural humus of the American right in those years – worked and managed to obtain the applause, and above all the consensus, of the common people and the American middle class , fed up with stagflation and defeatism carteriani. An election that should have been "too close to call" turned into a landslide victory for the Gop and, in 1984, thanks also to the contribution of the Reagan Democrats , the victory became a triumph with the outgoing president beating Democrat Walter Worldwide in 49 out of 50 states.
In an essay on the US presidency, conservative political scientist Henry Olsen wrote that any presidential candidate simply had to get into the minds of voters who only ask one thing: " Does this politician care about people like me?" . Ronald Reagan showed that he cared about all of America and understood the popular sentiment that was raging in the country by translating it into effective policies supported by adequate communication. A lesson for everyone even today.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/reagan-di-gennaro-sangiuliano-la-sua-rivoluzione-conservatrice-una-lezione-per-i-leader-attuali/ on Tue, 09 Feb 2021 05:02:00 +0000.