Paving the Way for Reagan

From George H. Nash's twice-revised The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (1976), scholars first took the power of conservatism seriously. Acclaimed for demonstrating that seemingly boorish strands of conservative expression fused into a rock of postwar thought, Nash steered clear of politics. In Paving the Way for Reagan Laurence R. Jurdem maintains that politicians did, in fact, engage in serious conservative thinking that laid the foundation for the Reagan administration. Ronald Reagan's politics owed to three conservative publications: Human Events, the National Review, and Commentary. While they “did not shape the ideology of conservative decision makers,” they did create “themes that came to forge what became the foundations of ... the Reagan presidency” (pp. 18–19). Jurdem, an independent scholar specializing in conservatism, argues that Reagan's aggressive anticommunist foreign policy formed from writings published in the three journals between his political coming out in 1964 and his presidential election in 1980. That Reagan admired their writers and editors, and fervently read and absorbed their elucidation of an America bent on appeasement, are primary themes. Of interest is Commentary's Norman Podhoretz, originally a liberal who grew frustrated with liberal radicalism, moved to the right, and identified a chief thrust of the conservative movement Nash articulates. Most of the book considers the influence of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and editor of the National Review

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