American Experience

Historian Robert Dallek on Reagan as Governor of California

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ROBERT DALLEK: Reagan as Governor of California, as in so much of his political career, was something of a contradiction. He runs in 1966, as a staunch Goldwater conservative who will combat the radicalism on the Berkeley campus, combat crime, combat the loss of law and order in the society, will reduce taxes, will be against big government, will restore to the people their autonomy and freedom from government. Coins the phrase, "Government is not the solution, government is the problem." But yet, as Governor, he's also a pragmatist, he's a great pragmatic figure and he's willing to sign on to a withholding tax, which one would have assumed from everything he said, to the moment he signed the tax bill, that he would never do that. He spoke of family values and saw abortion as something that offended his religious values and his sense of the autonomy of the individual again. And yet he signs into law the abortion, the liberal abortion statute in California, because he's also a practical politician. And he's very effective at getting away with this, with these contradictions, because he's a very appealing figure. And his rhetoric is what is so appealing to so many people in the state. People don't pay that much attention to what he does. Oh, I mean his career there was nothing but contradictions, which it wasn't. There were some major contradictions. But he gets away with it, because he does rhetorically and in terms of his actions, largely live up to his conservative agenda.

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