Back to the woodshed

By Julian Delasantellis

Many explanations were proffered for the 1980 electoral victory of Ronald Reagan that marked the commencement of the conservative era in the United States. My favorite was not from some American political strategist or pundit but from a writer for Pravda, what was then the official house organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

This person was certainly not going to attribute the cause to US concern for the world situation following the previous year's Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; for at that time the party line was that the invasion was a glorious triumph for the whole world, delivering to a primitive nation the blessings of modernity. Also, the explanation was not going to be the national humiliation of the Iranian hostage crisis, whose travails the Soviets viewed with, at the very least, sublime serendipity.