Attention to foreign affairs and local workers' issues gave way to reporting on national politics during the election of 1980.

Crimson Managing Editor Susan C. Faludi '81 remembers thinking this an appropriate transition. A best-selling feminist author, Faludi characterizes the paper's international coverage as "a little self-aggrandizing" with its presumption that "anybody was going to be turning to the editorial pages of The Crimson for foreign policy."

In spite of the trend away from international news, the paper did issue two foreign affairs-related extra editions in 1981. One proclaimed the declaration of marshal law in Poland; the other, printed the night of Ronald Reagan's inauguration as President, announced the release of American hostages in Iran.

Spurning the Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter, the newspaper had endorsed leftist candidate Barry Commoner, a fringe party member, against Reagan. Radical politics of the '70s were still lingering at The Crimson.

The paper's response to Reagan's victory repudiated any lessening of political passion that had occurred toward the end of the decade.

Faludi remembers The Crimson being "uniformly horrified by Reagan."

Crimson president William E. McKibben '81 reportedly reacted to news of the vote by putting his fist through a soda machine.

Faludi emphasizes how alienated Reagan's popularity made her feel from main-stream America. "I didn't understand how it could have happened," she says.

Nevertheless, after having been the only newspaper in the country to support Commoner in 1980, The Crimson endorsed the mainstream Democrat Walter Mondale against Reagan in 1984.

"The whole debate had moved substantially to the right," Hershberg explains.

Among the triumphs of the paper's domestic political coverage in these years was the first interview of Reagan's presidency in 1981, conducted by Crimson president Paul M. Barrett '83.

When The Washington Post later claimed it had won Reagan's first interview, The Crimson forced a retraction.

In another Crimson coup, political editor Michael W. Hirschorn '86 called the victory of Gary Hart over Mondale in the 1984 New Hampshire primary.

Free Speech and the '90s

Prolific coverage of national politics in the Reagan years was attended by muted leftism on the editorial page. According to Barrett, who is now a deputy editor at the Wall Street Journal, "There was a self-conscious effort to moderate the tone of our editorials."