0:02 reagan's most significant achievement
0:03 was in the cold war
0:06 in 1985 leadership of the soviet union
0:08 passed to mikhail gorbachev who realized
0:09 that the soviet union
0:12 desperately needed to reform itself so
0:13 he instituted a program known as
0:15 glasnost which meant
0:17 greater transparency in government think
0:18 of the word glass
0:20 glass gnost but soviet allied
0:22 governments in eastern europe had been
0:23 maintained by
0:25 force since shortly after world war ii
0:27 when it became clear that gorbachev
0:29 would not send the soviet military to
0:31 prop up these regimes that he was trying
0:32 to reform
0:34 they collapsed one by one beginning in 1989
0:35 1989
0:38 first poland then hungary czechoslovakia
0:39 romania bulgaria
0:43 and east germany by 1991 the ussr had
0:44 dissolved into a commonwealth of
0:46 independent states
0:49 the soviet union was no more each of its
0:52 nations was now independent and cia
0:54 director robert gates maintained in his
0:56 book from the shadows that soviet
0:58 communism had committed suicide it had
1:00 failed on its own
1:02 but that reagan and later h.w bush had
1:06 crucially given it the space to do so
1:07 the emergence of acquired
1:10 immunodeficiency syndrome or aids
1:13 simultaneously devastated stigmatized and
1:13 and
1:16 energized the nation's gay community
1:18 when aids appeared in 1981 most of its
1:19 victims were gay men
1:21 and reagan's administration appeared
1:23 indifferent to their suffering
1:25 when surgeon general c everett coop
1:26 called for more federal funding of
1:28 aids-related research
1:29 critics on the religious right argued
1:32 against it claiming that the disease was
1:33 killing the right
1:36 people in 1985 aids activist cleve jones
1:38 came up with an idea to protest the
1:40 government's failure to act
1:43 the names project memorial quilt began
1:45 in san francisco in 1987.
1:47 so they created a quilt with each patch
1:50 roughly the same size as a grave
1:53 and dedicated to the memory of a person
1:55 killed by hiv aids
1:57 in 1987 they showed the quilt on the
1:59 national mall in dc putting into focus
2:02 just how many americans had died
2:05 without a response from their government
2:08 and i've included here some examples of works
2:09 works
2:11 in the quilt so each of these in person
2:12 is roughly the size
2:20 in 1984 13 year old ryan white
2:22 contracted hiv
2:25 from a tainted blood transfusion so ryan
2:27 white was a hemophiliac his blood did
2:28 not clot
2:31 so he had to receive transfusions which
2:33 included factor eight which is made from
2:34 blood it's a blood product
2:36 and some of the blood that was used to
2:38 make factory was tainted with hiv so he
2:40 becomes hiv positive
2:42 when he tried to return to school angry
2:43 parents feared that he would somehow
2:45 infect their children
2:46 and when the school refused to let him
2:49 attend white's parents filed a lawsuit
2:51 white became the symbol of the cause
2:53 decreasing the stigma
2:56 of hiv aids in 1987 reagan finally
2:58 convened a presidential commission on
2:59 aids which called for
3:01 anti-discrimination laws to protect aids victims
3:02 victims
3:04 and for more federal spending on aids research
3:05 research
3:07 the way aids patients were treated in
3:09 hospitals though changed the gay rights
3:11 movement forever
3:13 when lifelong partners were kept from
3:14 the death beds of their loved ones by
3:16 family members who did not approve of
3:18 homosexuality and had legal right to
3:20 make those decisions
3:21 the importance of legal marriage or
3:23 civil unions to protect these
3:25 relationships became apparent
3:27 the abuses of the 1980s would lead the
3:29 lgbt rights movement to fight for those
3:32 protections so it's not until
3:34 beginning during and shortly after the
3:36 hiv aids crisis that we really see the
3:38 gay movement begin to fight for
3:41 marriage rights or some type of civil
3:42 union that would protect their
3:44 relationship especially
3:46 if one half of the couple ended up
3:47 seriously ill or
3:50 dying ryan white passed away in august
3:52 of 1990 but not until congress passed
3:54 the ryan white comprehensive aids
3:56 resources emergency or
3:59 care act and president george h.w bush
4:00 signed it
4:02 it was the largest federally funded
4:04 program in the united states for people
4:06 living with hiv aids it was later
4:07 extended by both presidents george w
4:09 bush and barack obama i do not believe
4:10 it's come
4:12 up for extension under president trump
4:14 it's not that he hasn't extended
4:15 it i don't believe it's expired under
4:17 him yet the devastating
4:19 impact of hiv aids can be seen in this
4:22 1993 photograph of the san francisco gay
4:25 men's chorus founded in 1978.
4:26 so everyone you see there in a white
4:28 suit is one of the original members of
4:29 the choir
4:31 everyone you see there in a black suit
4:33 represents one of the original members
4:40 polls showed a trend dubbed the reagan paradox
4:41 paradox
4:43 americans loved the man as an individual
4:44 even when they didn't support his policies
4:46 policies
4:48 a majority of americans did not support
4:49 a school prayer amendment and the
4:51 anti-abortion amendment only pulled at
4:52 25 percent
4:55 and most voters supported the era yet a
4:57 majority of these same voters backed
4:59 reagan who didn't agree with them on any
5:00 of those issues
5:02 voters also didn't support a lot of
5:04 reagan's civil rights policies for
5:05 example he opposed even making martin
5:06 luther king
5:08 day a national holiday arguing that
5:10 federal employees had enough holidays already
5:10 already
5:13 but the house passed the bill 338-90 a
5:16 veto-proof majority so it became so
5:19 despite his unpopular policies reagan
5:21 himself remained immensely popular hence
5:23 the paradox
5:25 falwell and robertson's moral majority
5:27 organized religious voters that is the
5:28 religious right
5:30 and reagan made huge gains for the
5:32 republican party with these religious groups
5:32 groups
5:34 in 1976 only one-third of southern
5:37 baptists voted republican by 1984
5:38 two-thirds of southern baptists voted
5:40 republican and that number is probably
5:41 even higher today
5:43 the rise of cable tv also led to more
5:45 religious programming
5:47 and tele-evangelists 13 million people
5:49 tuned in each week to see falwell and
5:52 robertson merge politics and religion
5:54 so reagan leaves office in 1988 with the
5:57 cold war waning but still going on
5:59 and the economy booming the stock market
6:01 recovered from the crash
6:03 but these economic gains that had been
6:06 made were unequally distributed
6:07 the top one-fifth of households enjoyed
6:09 rising incomes
6:12 the rest stagnated or declined so the
6:14 american economy saw more jobs created
6:16 than lost during the 80s that's a good thing
6:16 thing
6:18 but half of the jobs eliminated were in
6:20 high-paying industries
6:21 and half of the new jobs failed to pay
6:23 wages above the poverty line
6:25 so that's not a good thing trickle down economics
6:26 economics
6:29 rarely trickled down it benefited the
6:30 really wealthy the wealthiest
6:32 fifth of the country so the number of
6:34 government employees actually
6:35 increased under reagan as did the size
6:37 of the government breaking one of his
6:39 key campaign promises
6:41 and between 1980 and 1989 the national
6:44 debt rose from 914 billion dollars
6:48 to 2.7 trillion dollars steep tax cuts
6:50 for corporations in the wealthy just did
6:51 not pay for themselves
6:54 moreover so-called regressive taxes on
6:56 payroll and certain goods actually
6:58 increased the tax burden on low and
6:59 middle-income americans
7:01 while reagan pledged to balance the
7:03 budget in his first three years in
7:04 office the deficit the amount that the
7:06 government goes into debt each year
7:09 grew two and a half times or 250 percent
7:11 during his presidency
7:13 he increased spending 1.2 trillion
7:16 dollars in five years while adding tax
7:18 cuts so under reagan the republican
7:20 party became a much more southwestern
7:21 and moral
7:23 issues party it had been a business
7:25 oriented party now it was also
7:28 a much more religious party while most
7:29 new deal and great society programs proved
7:30 proved
7:32 durable reagan saw the end of the
7:34 democratic party's new deal coalition
7:36 the government still offered its
7:37 neediest citizens a safety net but it
7:40 was a continually shrinking one
7:41 as conservative political ideas grew
7:43 ever more popular the democratic party
7:45 began to adapt its own message in
7:47 response to the conservative mood of the country
7:48 country
7:50 so we're going to see both parties shift
7:51 to the right
7:53 to try to match where they believe the
7:56 country is
7:58 the legacy of the conservative reagan
7:59 revolution lingered over the
8:02 presidential election of 1988.
8:04 reagan's vice president george h.w bush
8:07 promised to continue the conservatism of
8:08 the reagan era
8:10 george h.w bush was a world war ii
8:12 veteran president of a successful
8:13 oil company which is how he ends up in
8:15 texas and had served as chair of the
8:17 republican national committee and
8:19 director of the central intelligence
8:20 agency the cia
8:22 he had also been elected to the house of
8:24 representatives from his district in texas
8:24 texas
8:26 and after failing to beat reagan in the
8:29 1980 republican primaries he was elected
8:30 as his vice president
8:33 in 80 and again in 84. bush had to
8:35 contend with what the press dubbed
8:37 the wimp factor next to a hollywood
8:38 actor he looked
8:41 wimpy right reagan was this very
8:42 charismatic actor and
8:45 bush just wasn't but he did give a
8:47 stirring speech at the 1988 republican
8:49 national convention which you're about
8:52 to see a very famous clip of
8:55 bush also struggled to get conservatives
8:57 who had backed reagan behind him because
8:58 they didn't
8:59 trust him necessarily they thought he
9:01 was too liberal
9:02 even though he is a conservative
9:03 republican reagan's much more
9:05 conservative than he is
9:08 so he has to kind of get their trust
9:08 even though those
9:10 voters are not going to vote for a
9:11 democrat anyway
9:14 in 1988 massachusetts liberal michael
9:16 dukakis was the democratic nominee
9:18 and he ran a pretty weak campaign now
9:20 bush clearly had some weaknesses he was
9:21 a connecticut aristocrat he had never
9:23 been fully embraced by movement
9:25 conservatism who loved reagan
9:28 so he hammered dukakis on moral and
9:30 cultural issues to try to get that super
9:31 conservative base behind him claimed
9:33 that dukakis had blocked the recitation
9:34 of the pledge of allegiance in
9:36 massachusetts schools and that he was a
9:38 quote card-carrying member of the
9:40 american civil liberties union
9:43 bush meanwhile dispatched his eldest son
9:43 george w
9:46 bush as his ambassador to the religious right
9:46 right
9:48 following reagan's strategy of dog
9:51 whistle racist politics bush
9:52 infamously released a political ad
9:55 featuring the face of willie horton
9:57 a black massachusetts man and convicted
9:59 murderer who raped a woman after taking
10:00 advantage of a massachusetts prison
10:03 furlough program during dukakis's tenure
10:05 the program that the ad referred to as
10:07 the weekend pass program allowed
10:08 prisoners to leave prison for a day or
10:10 more to work or visit home
10:12 it was introduced to massachusetts by a
10:14 republican governor and most states had
10:17 similar programs including california
10:19 during republican ronald reagan's tenure
10:19 as governor
10:21 so when you actually look at the issue
10:23 here it's not a great one for
10:25 republicans to go after there's a lot of
10:27 weaknesses to this
10:29 argument and that they use it because it
10:30 is so
10:33 easy to turn this issue into one of
10:34 racist politics
10:36 and that southern strategy of the
10:38 republican party
10:40 so you're going to watch two clips uh in
10:42 the lecture next the first is from
10:44 bush's convention address including his
10:46 very famous line read my
10:48 lips and the second is the infamous
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