A new conservative consensus — and what came next.

Reagan’s election (1980) launched a generation of conservative governance: deregulation, tax cuts, the buildup against the USSR (which collapsed in 1989–91), and a cultural realignment that made the South solidly Republican. The 1990s brought the Clinton “third way,” NAFTA, welfare reform, the dot-com boom, and the impeachment fight. 9/11 (2001) inaugurated the War on Terror, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Patriot Act. The 2008 financial crisis exposed deep structural inequality. Obama’s election (2008), the Affordable Care Act (2010), the rise of Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, the Trump presidency (2017–2021), and the polarization that’s now the dominant feature of American politics — these are the period’s open questions, and historians don’t yet have the distance to settle them.