Video: “The Age Of Reagan: An Interview With Steven F. Hayward”

by Ed Driscoll | February 6, 2010 4:34 pm

In honor of what would have been the Gipper’s 99th birthday, here’s a flashback to a video interview I recorded with Steven F. Hayward, the author of the magisterial two volume set, The Age of Reagan.

Hayward stopped by the vast Silicon Graffiti production facilities in the suburbs of San Jose one Friday back in August[1] to discuss the second and final volume in his history of Ronald Reagan and his era. The new volume is titled, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989[2], and was released. In the video below we discuss:

• Why it took eight years to get this second volume out after the first volume[3] hit the streets in 2001.
• The shape of the economy Reagan inherited, (which I explored in my review of the first volume in this early Blogcritics post[4]) and how the Reagan administration turned it around.
• How Reagan’s actions during the Air Traffic Controllers’ strike reverberated as far as the Soviet Union[5].
• How prepared Reagan was when he took office in 1981? (With a cameo from Kiron Skinner, who edited Reagan In His Own Hand[6], the collection of op-eds and radio scripts the Gipper wrote in the 1970s.)
• In the final analysis, was there, as initially promised, a Reagan Revolution? And if so, what was it?

Tune in here to watch (or visit Ed Driscoll.com to see a larger version of the video[7]):

Stop byPJM Political[8] to hear the rest of the interview, which further discusses President Reagan’s legacy, plus explore its administration’s self-inflicted wounds during its second term. And for previous editions of our Silicon Graffiti blog, click here[9] and keep scrolling.