Passages from Rick Perlstein's Reaganland: Amerca's Right Turn - 1976-1980

Perlstein quotes Theodore White's diary (author of Making of the President [various years])

"How long can you stay interested in the problems of inflation and the tax cut? There were five national elections in Germany the year before Hitler came to power in 1933; the last, which Hitler won, showed a sharp drop-off in votes. We've had politics up to our ears, are gorged with it." (Chapter 37, p.22)

...

Times were dire enough that "a former Nazi and Klansman named Gerald Carlson won the Republican nomination for the congressional seat representing the depressed automotive city of Dearborn, Michigan. He had spent only $180, had no campaign headquarters or phone number and electioneered mostly by handing out leaflets comprised of mug shots that appeared in newspapers during National Auto Theft Week." - Chapter 36, p. 18)

...

[At the beginning of his campaign, Reagan's staff] did their work with the help of an astonishly ambitious survey from Dick Wirthline....Respondents were invited to list the nation's three biggest problems. The most popular answer by far, with a 52.6 percent response was "inflation." But "government spending"--which, for Ronald Reagan had been instructing the public caused inflation--was listed by only 2.8 percent. Only 1 percent were vexed by "government control," 0.7 percent by "national defense," 0.9 percent by "too much welfare," 0.4 percent by "high property taxes." "Decline of moral values" was tied with "unemployment" for the second most cited problem, but it appeared few conceptualized it as conservatives did; the only social issue cited was abortion, by only one in a thousand respondents--2.5 percentage points less than those who cited "utility costs. Almost 55 percent said it was acceptable to 'terminate pregnancy at any time' (and only 01. percent listed it as a top issue). Nearly 64 percent favored the Equal Rights Amendment. More than 40 percent thought solar was the "best future energy source," only 15.4 percent nuclear power [and most were] survened before Three Mile Island.

   "Thus did the people planning Ronald Reagan's campaign discover that the nation shared his opinions hardly at all." [Chapter 29, pp.39-41]...which set the stage for an exceptionally deceptive campaign. Better marketing!

The Commodore, owned by the defunct Penn Central Railway hadn't paid taxes to New York City in six years when an "innovative" plan from the '70s--necessitated by Gerald Ford's refusal to bail out the city's finances--proposed "making redevelopment more attractive by promising the developers future tax relief. The beneficiaries would then be required to share future profits with the city; everyone would win." Trump was the one chosen to redevelop this property. 

"'So far,' he boasted, 'I've never made a bad deal.' The Commodore project, at least, was a good deal--for Donald Trump. To gain the property, and the opportunity to flay offits lanmark brick facade in favor of the gaudy bronze-tinted glass he preferred, he put up no money of his own, receiving $100 million in bank loans by negotiating an extraordinary labyrinthine deal with the New York Urban Development Corporation to forego real estate taxes in which the city was supposed to earn its money back within forty years, though Trump said that day would come in twenty-five...[Critics] calculated the deal would leave New York City $160 million in the lurch. That prediction proved conservative. Trump'lawyers had written the contract so that money only counted as 'profit' when Trump received it, while expenses were deducted immediately, and, years later, after Trumpos business parter the Hyatt Corporation dropped out of the deal and sued hime, New York City claimed they had been defrauded, and auditors discovered that the hotel was missing the most basic financial records and he brazenly violated generally accepted accounting principles" Chapter 29, page 32

The effects of austerity: "[In New York City] The summer of 1979 saw a record epidemic of bank robberies. The typical perpetrators were not the efficient professionals the authorities were used to, but desperately poor young men acting spontaneously. ... The police force began a training program to deal with this new breed of desperado--then suspended it because layoffs had produced a shortage of officers. Mayor Koch responded by suggesting bank guards should start shooting bank robbers themselves." Chapter 29, p.27