John Kenneth White
The New Politics of Old Values provides the first assessment of the vital importance of values in the political process by analyzing Ronald Reagan’s intuitive appeal to traditional American values including individualism, freedom, and equality of opportunity. The author was the first to go beyond money and taxes into the now hot topic of values as motivation for the decision-making of voters. He exposes the first approach to an election with a ’strategy of values’ as Reagan did in 1980 through this now dominant subject during the presidency of Bill Clinton. He follows the evolution from Reagan’s appeal to the underlying liberalism that characterizes the American polity using the words ’family, work, neighborhood, peace, and freedom’ to Clinton’s repeated emphasis on ’opportunity, community, and responsibility,’ capturing how values have reshaped the political maps of the United States bringing the Democratic and Republican parties together on these mandatory issues.
