This event has finished Took place on: Thursday, 26th Jan 2017
Drawing on the extensive archival research undertaken for his new biography, Reagan: American Icon, Iwan Morgan examines Ronald Reagan's presidential leadership and argues that its success rested on his capacity to combine philosophical conviction with political pragmatism. He considers how Reagan cut personal taxes to enhance incentive but raised corporation taxes to reduce the budget deficit, reduced federal spending on some discretionary programmes but reached accommodation with the Democrats to preserve entitlement programmes, and built up America's military strength in his first term as a prelude to negotiation of nuclear arms reduction with the Soviet Union in his second term. Reagan's agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev to eliminate their respective intermediate nuclear forces, represented the first arms reduction treaty of the atomic era but it encountered the wrath of many in the conservative movement for reaching accommodation with godless communism.
Reagan also disappointed the right through his refusal to invest political capital in support of moral conservatism, notably for efforts to amend the Constitution to outlaw abortion. Morgan further considers the limits of Reagan's pragmatism, notably his failure to understand that some Americans needed government to overcome disadvantage, exemplified by his very unsatisfactory record on racial issues and civil rights. In addition, he shows how the greatest crisis of the Reagan presidency, the Iran-Contra scandal, occurred when the president’s habitual pragmatism deserted him.
Iwan Morgan, Professor of US Studies, University College London, is the author of numerous books on American presidents.
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This event has finished Took place on: Thursday, 26th Jan 2017
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2017-01-26 2017-01-26 Europe/London Ronald Reagan : Pragmatic Conservative in the White House Drawing on the extensive archival research undertaken for his new biography, Reagan: American Icon, Iwan Morgan examines Ronald Reagan's presidential leadership. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/calendar/2017/01/26/ronald-reagan-pragmatic-conservative-in-the-white-house-131386 British Library,96 Euston Road, London, London,Location
London,
NW1 2DB
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