Rick Perlstein – The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan

PROGRAM: August 6, 2014

Journalist and historian Rick Perlstein is the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008), an acclaimed and revelatory look at one of the most chronicled presidencies in American history. In his new book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan he offers a portrait of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the tumultuous political and economic times of the 1970s, connecting the Nixon legacy to the resurgence of the conservative wing of the Republican Party achieved by Ronald Reagan in his first (and failed) campaign for the presidency in 1976. Perlstein tells the story of that campaign and offers a history of how between 1973 and 1976 “a new sort of American politics” emerged — “a stark discourse of reckoning,” the ramifications of which still define our national life.

A two-part series looking back at the presidency of Richard Nixon, 40 years since he resigned. The moderator is Jack Rosenthal, Interim Director of Roosevelt House.