Ronald Reagan, who presided over the longest continuous period of peacetime economic growth in modern American history, was also, argues Henry Olsen, the most misunderstood of modern chief executives. Liberals and Democrats—categories that include most of the media—had a vested interest in depicting Reagan as the twin of Barry Goldwater. Olsen's book is directed not at the media but at fellow conservatives, who sometimes make what he sees as the same mistake.
A senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, Olsen grew up as a young Republican in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley during the time that Reagan was governor of California. In his very readable new book The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism, Olsen argues that Reagan has long been misidentified as a Goldwater-like, libertarian conservative. That's a mistake because, as Olsen demonstrates, Reagan always saw himself as a defender of what he calls “the public New Deal.”
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