ABSTRACT
Washington Democrats were unimpressed with Ronald Reagan. Clark Clifford, President Harry Truman’s Secretary of Defense, and a fixture on the Washington cocktail circuit, dismissed Reagan as “an amiable dunce.” Clifford predicted that Ronald Reagan would be “a hopeless failure” as president. Boston’s Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, met with Reagan and delivered a stern lecture. Complacent Democrats also failed to recognize how rattled their southern colleagues were following the 1980 election. Southern whites had split their ballots, voting for Reagan but still supporting Democrats further down the ticket. Ronald Reagan revealed how firm of a negotiator he was at the outset of his presidency. The national security side of the “Reagan Revolution” represented a departure from the foreign policies of Carter and Ford. At the heart of the “Ronald Reagan Doctrine” was a reaffirmation, as well as a revision, of the Truman Doctrine.
