HAYNES JOHNSON'S SLEEPWALKING THROUGH HISTORY
This research report consists of a summary, analysis and evaluation of Haynes Johnson's above entitled book on the 1980s. As its title suggests, the author believes that the decade represents a period in which America largely failed to come to grips with its principal problems. This decade long escape from reality was aided and abetted by the mythology orchestrated by the Great Communicator, the President for most of the decade, Ronald Reagan, who struck responsive chords in the electorate and by the development of an electronic media well attuned to the age. The book is more successful in describing what happened during the 1980s than in explaining the deeper significance of the events that then transpired and suffers from the author's attachment to a world which clearly was disintegrating before his eyes as well as a strong tendency to overelaborate and belabor the obvious.
Dominant Motifs of the Reagan Years
Myth and Reality. The 1980s were seen as "an age of illusion when America lived on borrowed time and squandered opportunities to put its house in order" (13). According to Johnson, "for most of the decade, president and Congress had avoided acting on many difficult issues. Precious time and opportunities were squandered as problems were allowed to fester" (441).
Johnson takes a cyclical view of history. He sees the 80s as a period in which too much emphasis was placed on the pursuit of private gain, 'greed is good,' as the movie Wall Street trumpeted, as had occurred during the Gilded Age of the 1880s and the Roaring Twenties. Many Americans at the beginning of the decade were deeply frustrated and troubled "by a series of political, economic and military failures at home and abroad that struck at the nation's self-confidence and self-esteem" (28). Reagan played to perfection the role demanded of him by the public, that of Dr. Feelgood providing them reassurance that...