Victory on Capitol Hill
Victory on Capitol Hill
This chapter considers Reagan’s first year in office. As he had triumphed with the voters in 1980; he did so with lawmakers in 1981. His success was fundamentally the result of the November 1980 election returns, which made his program’s passage certain in the Senate and likely in the House. The demoralization, division, programmatic exhaustion, and mediocre leadership of the Democratic Party also played a role. But it must be noted that Reagan, in his triumphal first year as president, did not ask Congress to take a hard path. No powerful interests opposed his program. He asked Congress to take politically attractive actions—voting huge new military expenditures and cutting taxes for everyone, most of all for the wealthy and powerful. The most controversial and least popular of his efforts had been the spending cuts, aimed mainly at the needy.
Keywords: election, Reaganism, political success, political skills, Washington
Columbia Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
