Launching a Domestic Counterrevolution
It was a virtuoso performance. Exploiting the stunning election victory that made him TIME'S Man of the Year for 1980, Ronald Reagan launched a conservative counterrevolution, changing the direction of American government more drastically than any other President in half a century. Not even the bullet from a would-be assassin's gun that pierced his left lung on March 30 could slow his initial momentum.
Reagan conceived, lobbied for and won huge budget cuts, slowing the growth rate of federal spending and shrinking some social programs that had been expanding irresistibly since the early days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. He also won a startling 23%, three-year cut in income tax rates. Reagan exerted the greatest mastery over Congress that any President has displayed since Lyndon Johnson. The Great Communicator skillfully convinced the public on TV, and legislators in one-on-one chats, that only by reducing the size of government and stimulating productivity in the private economy could inflation be curbed and healthy economic growth resume. Democrats and liberals wailed that Reagan's program was savaging the poor and unduly rewarding the rich, but they could not come anywhere near mustering the public support that the President commanded.
It remains to be seen whether Reagan has devised the right combination for the economy. Inflation is abating somewhat, but the nation has stumbled into a recession that Reagan admitted he had not foreseen. The combined impact of the recession and the tax cuts threatens disastrous budget deficits that Reagan has not yet found any persuasive way to shrink.
Though Reagan dominated domestic affairs, the same cannot be said of his handling of foreign policy issues. His strident anti-Soviet rhetoric increased cold war jitters. Using all his political wile the clout, the President won grudging Senate assent for the sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia. The victory staved off what would have been a humiliating public defeat but did little to advance any coherent U.S. strategy for bringing peace to the Middle East.
The Administration's most imaginative proposal, embracing the "zero option". in talks with the U.S.S.R. on reduction of nuclear arms in Europe, may not survive the Polish crisis. At home, the troubles of Budget Boss David Stockman, National Security Adviser Richard Allen and Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan pointed up the thinness of talent in the Administration: the supporting cast is not of the same caliber as the star.
Looking ahead to 1982, Reagan still has the initiative in dealing with the disorganized congressional Democrats. But, to use a show-biz term that the President would appreciate, his own whirlwind first year has given him a tough act to follow. He may not be able to top it.
Inspiring a Ravenous Curiosity
She uttered no sweeping pronouncements or stern warnings; she neither applauded nor deplored. She kept her views on the age's pressing problems to herself. She simply said, "Yes, quite promptly," one day last February, and much of the world immediately fell in love.