Reagans eight years were good ...except George Bush was His biggest mistake
Here is my theory on why we have got so partisan in our politics. When we had the USSR and the Cold War, we had the ultimate boogie man that both sides could agree on as the enemy as they cold blow us off the map.
Then in Dec 1991 the USSR fell and the Cold War was over and we lost our boogie man to rally around (at least partially). Then Clinton gets elected in 1992, thanks to Perot siphoning off votes and do or die partisanship was on its way as the parties used the other party as the boogie man
“Reagans eight years were good ...except George Bush was His biggest mistake.”
Yeah, I remember a lot of us were extremely disappointed by that - he said he wanted to unite the party - but in retrospect, he could have picked Charles Manson as a running mate and still beaten the peanut farmer.
The primaries weren’t even close - I could never figure out why he thought he needed to do that. The nominating committee acted as if they still had some say over whether Reagan was the nominee even though he stomped Bush 44 states to Bush’s 7. Bush didn’t even come close to winning his home state of Texas.
I guess there’s always talk of a “brokered convention” where the delegates don’t go with winner of the state primary. Maybe they threatened that and Reagan blinked.
I was sure Reagan was going to pick Jack Kemp. Kemp would have stopped Reagan from making his second biggest mistake: phasing in the tax cuts over 3 years. Kemp warned that a phase-in would cause the economy to grind to a halt as businesses would naturally defer transactions for three years, so as to take full advantage of lowest rates. Kemp was right.