It’s stunning to read this book and realize the millions of dollars that have been spent trying to preserve white supremacy in the United States. Reagan’s racist strategy, after all, was to target “voters who felt victimized by government actions that cost them the privileges their whiteness once afforded them.”

Equally surprising is Perlstein’s declaration that Arthur Laffer, Robert A. Mundell, Robert Bartley, and Jude Wanniski were “arguably…the most influential economic thinkers in the history of the United States, even though their theories turned out to be substantially wrong.”

Unquestionably, Jimmy Carter’s presidency was hit with “crisis after crisis after crisis,” from Billygate to Bert Lance to a bitter challenge by Senator Ted Kennedy. But Carter seemed to create his own black cloud by preaching an austere gospel of gloom and doom, whereas Ronald Reagan blew bubbles about the economic boom he’d bring. “We live in the future in America, always have,” Reagan said. “And the better days are yet to come.”

Bryan in 1896, just like Donald Trump today, generated enormous amounts of energy campaigning across the entire American continent on a scale and with an intensity that had never been seen before. More people voted for Bryan than for any other individual in US national history before him. Yet the soothing, easygoing McKinley who hardly ever ventured from his cozy front porch at home during the campaign, beat him legitimately by a margin of almost 5%.

The same pattern held when Bryan ran and lost a third time in 1908 against the literally mountainous (he weighed 330 pounds. or 150 kilograms) William Howard Taft. Yet Taft, who could hardly walk and allegedly got stuck in his own bath in the White House (the story has long been ridiculed but has the ring of truth), won easily too.

Then in 1920, Americans turned their backs on the endless talk, emotional energy and precious few achievements of the high-minded Progressive Era and elected quiet, reassuring conservative Republican Senator Warren Harding of Ohio by record margins. Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt had never enjoyed such a triumph, even though a young Franklin Roosevelt was the vice-presidential candidate on the doomed Democratic ticket.

FDR learned the lesson well himself. In 1932, he smiled a lot and gave vague and contradictory promises about everything to everyone throughout the campaign. So wooly and waffling was Roosevelt that he convinced even such outstanding observers as New York Herald Tribune columnist Walter Lippmann that he was a weak-minded nonentity.

But FDR knew how to smile: Just like Vice President Harris on Tuesday night.

Hapless incumbent President Herbert Hoover added to his woes in 1932 when he allowed his campaign to have as its theme song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” – a heartbreaking tale of woe from the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt ran with “Happy Days Are Here Again.” And he won in a landslide.

In January of 1965, when Reagan, a conservative Hollywood actor, began exploring a run for governor of California, the incumbent, Democrat Pat Brown , sent out a young aide on a scouting trip. The scout reported back that Reagan would "fall apart when he gets attacked from the floor....His attacks on [Lyndon B. Johnson] and Governor Brown won't make it with those who don't think the President is a dictator." Nevertheless the lightweight announced he would run, and a columnist in the Washington Star recorded an "air of furtive jubilation down at Lassie for Governor headquarters."

Reagan's 1965 Republican primary opponent was judged a political superstar by the New York Times, easily "matching oratorical skill" with the former actor. When Reagan visited Redwoods National Park, and reporters quoted his immortal words, "a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?", the San Francisco Chronicle reported his campaign would soon "bottom out."

"The Republican Party isn't bankrupt, or isn't that bankrupt that it has to turn to Liberace for leadership," Esquire observed at the time. "'Bring him on' is our motto," a Brown aide said—and Reagan was brought, winning the nomination in a landslide, and eventually winning the general election.

But the jokes only continued. When Reagan entered the 1968 presidential race, the TV comedy revue Laugh-In made "Ronald Reagan is running for president," an unadorned punchline—that was the whole gag. He ran again in 1976, challenging an incumbent president in his own party, and taking for the nominating contest all the way to the convention, an almost unheard of feat in modern American politics. That this was a historic accomplishment largely escaped the media, however; it didn't matter, for instance, to the author of the syndicated comic strip Dunagin's People, who depicted a TV announcer explaining, "Now that the conventions are over, we can get back to our regular program—old Ronald Reagan movies."

As preparations began for the 1980 race, Lyn Nofziger, Reagan's late advisor, noted that Team Reagan didn't discourage the belittlement. In fact, they came to rely on it as part of their campaign strategy: being underestimated only made their man stronger. Liberals fell right into the trap: in the week running up to the election against Jimmy Carter, Doonesbury ran a series where the strip's indefatigable TV reporter, nature documentary-style, took "a fantastic voyage through...the brain of Ronald Reagan."

"Unhappily, the brain stops growing at age 20, and thereafter, neurons die off by the millions every year," the comic reported. "What this means is that the brain of Ronald Reagan's has been shrinking ever since 1931."

This was a fairly accurate portrayal of how Carter's aides saw their opponent. Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg has related that the campaign's strategists were confident that if they only could get Reagan side by side on the debate stage with the incumbent, the public would finally realize that the Republican candidate and former star of Bedtime for Bonzo was just stupid.

Well, they got their wish: A debate between Reagan and Carter took place the weekend before the voting. Reagan wiped the floor with the president, and a race that had been virtually tied turned into a Reagan landslide.