1981: Reagan and the Rise of the Salient

By Ben Cooper ‘83

God created Arrakis to train the faithful,” said the Fremen of their arid world in Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. Harvard has long been a desert for conservatives—defined in Cambridge as anyone to the right of Larry Summers. But that is a good reason for conservatives to attend Harvard: What does not kill them makes them stronger. The most recent presidential and congressional elections are no different. My friends and I came to political maturity during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and what we learned then is still true today: The wilderness years are a time to burn out the rot, get tough, and get back in the game.

The conservative movement at Harvard, and the Harvard Salient in particular, arose from a time far more difficult than what an Obama presidency yet portends. In 1979, when I came to Harvard as a freshman, neither house of Congress had had a Republican majority in my lifetime. Republican presidents were often hard to distinguish from Democrats: Richard Nixon and his wage-and-price controls, Gerald Ford and his WIN (“Whip Inflation Now”) buttons. America’s most recent war in Southeast Asia had turned out far worse than those in Iraq and Afghanistan. The economy was wracked by stagflation – skyrocketing unemployment and inflation – and Ec 10 section leaders were conducting discussions over whether this was now the permanent condition of the American economy. Professor Ezra Vogel was promoting his bestseller Japan Is Number One, erroneously anticipating the imminent global dominance of a different Asian economy. And even before the Iran hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter had demoralized the country just by talking to it. 

At Harvard, conditions were bleak. The Harvard Crimson had endorsed the Viet Cong. The Harvard Independent had been founded as an alternative that was apolitical. The Harvard Republican Club was no conservative hang-out: Some of us had to battle mightily to get the HRC to endorse Ronald Reagan in the general election, over Republican-turned-National-Unity candidate John B. Anderson. 

What conservatives had was Ronald Reagan. People may talk about Barry Goldwater’s 1964 run as a crystallizing moment for the conservative movement, but that happened when the Class of 1983 was three years old and it was, after all, a defeat. Ronald Reagan exerted a gravitational field on people of both parties. He single-handedly made Republicans out of teenage Scoop Jackson Democrats. And his appeal was more than a resume or his ability to deliver a speech, although Barack Obama has proved that you can go pretty far on the ability to read a teleprompter convincingly.

What made Ronald Reagan such a transforming leader was his clear articulation of fundamental principles: an unapologetic love of America; his unyielding opposition to Communism and conviction that the Cold War could be won; and his unblanching belief that America’s strength was its people, not its government. 

Certainly President Reagan was not our only inspiration in the early 1980s. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a towering figure, particularly after his 1978 Harvard Commencement Address, which explained why so many of the early Salient editors sported beards. Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, and others were viewed as world-shapers. But Ronald Reagan made true reformation at home seem possible.

The 1980 election was a rebirth for college conservatives who had grown up in the political wilderness. Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Jimmy Carter was especially delicious. But rather than celebrate the victory with others of my ilk to the strains of “Midnight Train to Georgia,” I stayed with a group of distraught liberals watching the late returns and witnessing the Democrats lose control of a house of Congress for the first time since 1954. 

The Party of Lincoln gained a net of twelve Senate seats in that election and took control of the chamber by a 53-46 margin; in contrast, the Democrats likely have gained only seven Senate seats this year. The Democrats who fell included Watergate-era household names like George McGovern, Birch Bayh, Frank Church, and Herman Talmadge. The next day was truly “Morning in America,” as groggy Democrats in Boston were greeted by a bright November sun.

More than just a celebration, the 1980 election was a catalyst for conservative action. The nascent Harvard-Radcliffe Conservative Club, which had been formed as an alternative to the Harvard Republican Club, felt emboldened to open a new front in the war of ideas with a battery of conservative and libertarian perspectives. This was not to be a passive “Review” or “Spectator”—names that would be commonly adopted by conservative campus papers in homage to the National Review and American Spectator. Our graduate advisor, Terry Quist, suggested the apt name The Salient, and the battle was joined in the fall of 1981. My remaining time at Harvard was spent under the Reagan aegis, and it was always comforting to know that no matter how much Harvard students and faculty may have whined, we still had the Gipper at the conn.

While the Salient has continued to do its founders proud, the Republican Party has drifted. Frankly, it has been all downhill since 1998, when Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House and the war of ideas fizzled. In the last few years, numerous prominent Republicans have engaged in the very kind of conduct that in the dawn of the Reagan Era we associated with Democrats: profligate spending on budget items that should not even exist at the federal level; a lack of commitment to the principle of limited government; an increasingly weak-kneed approach to world affairs; and, most dishearteningly, financial and moral corruption of all stripes and sexual orientations. Public service has devolved into careerism, rather than a chance to advance the liberty of the American people. As for me, I was relieved to see the good people of Alaska kick Ted Stevens out. Sometimes you have to prune heavily to restore the tree of liberty to health.

Conservatives and libertarians at Harvard should treat the election returns as a tonic—or even better, greet the election returns with a gin and tonic. Mark Twain wrote in The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg that “the weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire.” Embrace the fire, young Harvardians. Given the relative mildness of this election cycle compared to that in 1980, the fire is not even that hot. If the Right is to restore its political virtue, regain its bearings, and resume leadership of the Republic, it must keep heart. All you need is your principles—and a presidential candidate who actually believes in and will articulate them.

Ben Cooper ’83 was a founder and the first editor-in-chief of the Harvard Salient and is an appellate lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Phoenix, Arizona.