Power, Lost and Found: America At Century’s End 525the mid-1970s, fell to less than 2 million; a barrel of oil had cost about $16
in April 1979, but within a year it was up to almost $40 [or almost $115 in
current dollars, the highest price for oil until 2008]. Carter’s political future,
it goes without saying, was in trouble.
By late 1980, he was being challenged by the Republican candidate for
President, Ronald Reagan of California. Reagan had been a small-time movie
star in the 1940s and 1950s, and had even testified about “Communists”
before HUAC, as we have seen, and he then turned to politics, and was
elected California Governor. He promised to make America “great” again, and
to pull it out of the “funk” that Carter had created. He would rebuild the
economy and increase America’s military strength, get the country out of the
“Vietnam Syndrome,” the idea that the loss in Vietnam meant that the U.S.
should be less involved in the world. To Reagan, America was destined to be
a “city on a hill,” the old Puritan idea that God had deemed the U.S. to be
the finest example to the rest of mankind, and it was only natural that it
would have more economic and military power than any other nation. In fact,
to reach this goal, Reagan encouraged and took advantage of the role of
churches in politics, especially the Religious Right, conservative Christians [led
by ministers like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Swaggart] who
thought the country had turned away from God and was thus suffering for its
sins.
Reagan’s plans for this hegemony were somewhat puzzling, however. He
believed that the biggest problem in the economy was that corporations and
wealthy people were over-taxed. He wanted to significantly cut taxes on the
most rich so that they would use that money [that would have previously
gone to taxes] to create business and jobs. This, his followers claimed, was
trickle- down economics–the money given to those at the top would “trickle
down” to working people and average Americans. But Reagan claimed he
would also balance the budget, which would seem difficult to do with such
big tax cuts. But again he insisted that the money saved on taxes would be
used to increase business and thus lead, actually, to higher tax revenues. And,
then, as the final piece of his economic puzzle, he promised to dramatically
increase military spending, to make the U.S. the strongest country again. So,
to put it simply, Reagan was going to dramatically cut taxes, significantly raise
military spending, and, voila, balance the budget. Little wonder than his
Republican rival, George Herbert Walker Bush, called his plans “voodoo eco-