I have a bumper sticker on my bulletin board with the numbers 1-20-09 on it, the date that President Bush’s harmful term will come to an end. This number is available on a wide range of other products that offer the comforting reminder that it won t be much longer until we can begin to put the Bush years behind us (provided certain conspiracy rumors don t become reality). This unusually high level of anticipation for the end of an administration suggests that the ideological excesses of the Reagan Revolution have begun to run their course. We are not hearing so much about family values and non-issues like gay marriage this time around. With gas prices, personal bankruptcies, the national deficit and debt at record highs, the increasing use of the word recession, and a pointless and expensive war in the background, the American family is facing more real threats than the rights of gay people.

Another sign that the Revolution is in trouble is the incredibly early start of the campaign season. Sometime over the course of the year 2006 Bush was consigned to a virtual lame duck status after a string of failed policy initiatives and disastrous failures of leadership. Not long thereafter the national discourse turned to the question of who s next. Thus one of the buzzwords of the current campaign is change. It is not surprising that the opposition party is promoting change that s what opposition parties do but we haven t really seen any prominent Republican candidates embracing the Bush legacy. Now that McCain has come from behind to clinch the Republican nomination (much to the disappointment of some die hard ideologues), he has received the official endorsement of President Bush. Their joint interview on the White House lawn suggests that this is not entirely welcome for the Arizona senator. McCain constantly stressed that Bush will campaign for him only as much as his busy schedule will allow and his body language implied that he is not too comfortable being in the same camera frame as the his 2000 rival.

For many years now we have been hearing about the corrosive influence of modern American culture on traditional family values, and how the abandonment of these values has been at the root of all of our social, political, and economic problems. Part of the mystique that surrounds the late President Reagan was that he supposedly restored American pride after it had been shattered by hippies, feminists, and the failures of the Vietnam War. Reagan was part of the so-called Greatest Generation , and while he did not make the same sacrifices that so many other Americans of his time did, he managed to fashion himself into an emblem of an era many were nostalgic for after the upheaval of the 60s and 70s.The current political climate, the media, and events in my personal life have made me reflect on the 60s and early 70s quite a lot lately. I was born in 69 so my personal memories of these years are very limited, but now that so much time has gone by the generation now coming of voting (and military) age wasn t even born when Reagan left office it is easier to put these years in an objective historical context. These two decades represent a crossroads in the American historical imagination where no matter what one s social ideology is everything about our culture began to turn sour. Depending on whom you ask, they either represent the introduction of excesses that have corrupted our values (the sexual revolution, recreational drug use, popular music) or a time of great potential that was later stifled by a conservative backlash (the early environmental movement, the War on Poverty, a government that proactively engaged social issues). In either case these years were a time when ideological battle lines were drawn that have been a potent force in electoral politics ever since.

Two recent films one a documentary about porn chic, the other a historical crime drama have underscored some of the ways in which these pre-Reagan years have shaped the society we live today. The HBO documentary Inside Deep Throat is fascinating not so much as a story of how the infamous porn film was made, but as an insight into the different cultural reactions it engendered. At a time when the line between pornography and mainstream film had a sizable amount of overlap, Deep Throat enjoyed a period of trendiness and was viewed by such mainstream celebrities as Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. For a while it seemed as if our cultural taboo surrounding sexuality might be lifted somewhat, however in the long run it sparked a backlash, congealing with Roe v. Wade and the pill to energize Evangelical Christians and other social conservatives who claimed that the degeneration of our culture had gone to far. Reagan, with his folksy image of a more innocent time, profited greatly from these sentiments.

It is not my point to defend the pornography industry or enter into the debate over whether or not pornography exploits women. My point is that this particular pornographic film had cultural consequences that we still live with today. The Moral Majority got its start in the aftermath of Deep Throat, and within a decade they had gained enough influence so that Bush I was compelled to court their approval to win the 1988 election. But the obsession with sexual morality in our culture has obscured more pressing ethical issues and led to counterproductive and even harmful policies. As Abu Ghraib was first coming to light a wardrobe malfunction during the Superbowl created an absurd national scandal and resulted in a record fine by the FCC. Under pressure from evangelical social conservatives we have embarked on a number of wasteful ventures such as abstinence education, which has consumed over one billion dollars and produced no results.

Zodiac, an underrated film staring Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal about the unsolved serial murders near San Francisco in the early 70s likewise evokes an earlier age before our current culture of fear. Public fear and frustration over the likes of Charlie Manson and the Zodiac killer engendered new heroes in the 70s like Charles Bronson in Death Wish (1974) who turned vigilante when the law let him down or the iconic Dirty Harry (1971), who didn t let things like constitutional rights stand in the way as he dispensed justice. The image of Clint Eastwood pointing the most powerful handgun in the world at the head of a black bank robber and asking do you feel lucky punk undoubtedly came as a cathartic gratification for many. Reagan, the pro-death penalty president benefited greatly from the feeling that we had become soft on crime and even incorporated Dirty Harry into his persona.

As part of their tough on crime image social conservatives have emphasized an authoritarian approach to social deviance rather than addressing its root causes. The War on Drugs , which began in the Reagan years and has arguably been lost despite billions in spending, has replaced LBJ s War on Poverty. With three strike laws and other enhanced sentencing guidelines we have crowded our prisons to the point where they compete with schools for funding and have become a more likely destination for some demographics than college. Meanwhile the United States stands alongside the despotic regimes of China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan in accounting for more than 90 percent of executions carried out worldwide. Yet somehow countries that social conservatives so often deride as socialist enjoy lower murder rates, better education rankings, longer life expectancies, and a higher degree of satisfaction in life.We have little to show for the conservative approach we have taken to social problems for the past thirty years. The trillions we have poured into prisons and drug interdiction at the expense of social services, public education, and drug treatment have done little to reduce crime or drug use. We are the most prosperous nation in the world yet we fall dismally short of other nations in terms of the well being of our citizens. In the meantime the recent spate of sex and corruption scandals among conservative politicians and religious leaders shows how social conservatives constantly beat others over the head with standards that they themselves cannot live up to while more legitimate problems continue to mount. We found ourselves in this situation because of what many perceived to be the excesses of 60s and 70s liberalism. But the so-called Culture War that was such a vital issue in elections past now seems insignificant compared to the real problems we face. As 1-20-09 approaches we can hope that Bush s tanking approval ratings are a sign that Americans are taking notice of where ideological excess has brought us.

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