The magnitude of President Reagan s victory in 1984 obscured<br >some important underlying political trends. While it is true that it<br >is difficult to defeat an incumbent president during a time of peace<br >and prosperity， it is also true that Americans did not by any means<br >all support President Reagan for the same reasons.<br > Between now and 1988 there will be millions of words written<br >about the post-Reagan political world. In this volume several lead-<br >ing political observers try to focus our attention on the key issues.<br >In April 1985 the Cato Institute gathered these analysts together at<br >a conference entitled "Reassessing the Political Spectrum." The<br >results of that conference are presented here.<br > It is difficult to analyze any problem unless our language is ade-<br >quate to convey a proper understanding of the issues under dis-<br >cussion. A reliance on inadequate language has hampered Ameri-<br >can political analysis for the last two decades. As Professors William<br >S. Maddox and Stuart A. Lilie pointed out in their 1984 book， Beyond<br >Liberal and Conservative: Reassessing the Political Spectrum， "The lib-<br >eral-conservative dichotomy is inadequate to describe and under-<br >stand the opinions and behavior of the American public."<br > Maddox and Lilie argued then， as they do in chapter 4 of this<br >book， that many Americans cannot be rightly classified as either<br >liberal or conservative. Yet this does not mean， as political scientists<br >have traditionally assumed， that their political views are therefore<br >"inconsistent" or "confused." There are consistent threads running<br >through their beliefs that simply can t be categorized on the tradi-<br >tional political spectrum.<br ><br ><br >