2
these, 45 percent blamed a lowering of parental standards and widespread permissiveness;
another 31 percent said cited two-parent working families.
4
Other data compiled by Wirthlin
found a widespread sense of personal anomie:
Two of three Americans agreed that “everything changes so quickly these days that I
often have trouble deciding which are the right rules to follow.”
A majority believed we were “better off in the old days when everyone knew just how
they were expected to act.”
Seventy-one percent felt “many things our parents stood for are going to ruin right before
our eyes.”
Nearly eight-in-ten believed “what is lacking in the world today is the old kind of
friendship that lasted for a lifetime.”
One-in-two said they felt “left out of things going on around me.”
5
Enter Ronald Reagan. In many ways, Reagan was the quintessential man of the 1950s.
He resembled the spiffily dressed salesmen of that era: nice pressed suit, perfectly knotted tie, a
white handkerchief in the breast pocket, and shoes spit-polished and shined to reflect his sunny
optimism. Reagan had a certain “father knows best” quality, and his personality seemed drawn
from the popular father figures of television’s golden age: Ozzie Nelson (The Adventures of
Ozzie and Harriet), Ward Cleaver (Leave It to Beaver), and Jim Anderson (Father Knows Best).
Pollster Wirthlin found that Reagan’s authoritative, father-like persona appealed to voters. In
particular, Reagan supporters regretted the loss of deeply-cherished values, especially those
Convention