Ronald Reagan fascinated me from the moment he became governor of California in 1966. He was a right-winger who had won office. In those days right-wingers never won anything. Every office-holder or potential office-holder in every democracy — Labour, Tory, Democrat, Republican — seemed to be a liberal or a centrist. All the authorities said that that was the only way democracies could be governed.
I had only just become interested in politics, and was bored by the subject already. If no one could do anything differently from anyone else, when would I witness any of the great clashes that I had just started reading about in books?
Then came Reagan. He was apparently a fading actor, and a former Democrat who had for some years been making a living out of pro-capitalist and anti-communist speeches for various institutions which were that way inclined. He then made a stirring television speech in support of the hopeless Goldwater candidacy in 1964.
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