Violence, Scandal, and the End of the Cold War 293alliance, especially on issues like taxation and big government, the tone
and style of the lower chamber became increasingly conservative. Many
of the leading and most influential liberals were defeated in the House.
The Speaker, Tip O’Neill, blamed the resulting defeat directly on
Carter. “Ronald Reagan didn’t win the 1980 election as much as Jimmy
Carter lost it.... The fact is that by election day a great many Ameri-
cans couldn’t wait to get rid of him.” Against a really strong candidate
in a robust economy, he insisted, “Ronald Reagan would have had no
more chance of being elected president of the United States than the
man in the moon.” Perhaps.
Many Democrats in Congress were demoralized following this elec-
tion, and they did not look forward to a contest with the pop ular
President over his announced intention of cutting domestic spending
in order to increase the military bud get. But according to those in
California who knew Reagan fairly well, the President-elect was “all
bark and no bite.” As governor of California he had actually increased
spending and raised taxes.
As it turned out, Reagan never had much interest in the details of
legislation, but he was a born political infighter. He pleaded with mem-
bers of Congress over the telephone; he buttonholed them on their visits
to the White House; he worked through his staff and a “savvy team of
congressional liaison men”; and he frequently addressed the American
people on television, which he employed with consummate skill to sup-
port his program. “All in all,” commented Tip O’Neill, “the Reagan team
in 1981 was probably the best run political operating unit I’ve ever seen.”
For the first time in American history the inauguration of the Presi-
dent took place on the West Lawn of the Capitol building. In his inau-
gural address, Reagan, the oldest person to be elected chief executive—he
was less than a month shy of turning seventy—declared that “govern-
ment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Furthermore, he went on, it was time “to get government back within
its means, and to lighten our punitive tax burden.” Conservatives lis-
tening to him screamed their approval, and from that moment on he
became their enduring hero.
Minutes after Reagan finished his inaugural address, the fi fty-two
American hostages in Tehran were released by the Iranian government
in what appeared to be a final rebuke to Jimmy Carter.