How 'Dallas' Won the Cold War

Which is not to forget how "Dallas" helped shape our own little corner of the world. It would be too much to say that the show made the rise of George W. Bush possible, but it's certainly the case that "Dallas" helped shift the center of American culture from the right and left coasts to the great cowboy middle, decentralizing the traditional sources of power elites in social and political terms. The same accent that marked Lyndon B. Johnson as a hick a generation earlier now signifies vitality and drive, if not couthness. Texas presidents may have proven disastrous for the country, but they symbolize a country less stuffy and stratified than ever.

At the same time, "Dallas" functioned as an update on Benjamin Franklin's "Autobiography," giving jes' plain folks a step-by-step guidebook to how things really worked -- and stoking them with the desire for all the baubles once only enjoyed by the country-club crowd. In demystifying wealth production -- and pouring enough sex, scandal and whiskey to drown communism here and abroad -- "Dallas" arguably stimulated our domestic political economy every bit as much as the Reagan-era tax cuts.

Alas, like Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Turner's Goodwill Games and poodle haircuts, "Dallas" did not long survive the post-Cold War world it helped create, exiting from the scene with the Soviet Union's last Communist prime minister in 1991. But like a gusher in the Lone Star State, it has left us far richer than we ever dreamed possible.

gillespie@reason.com

matt.welch@reason.com

Nick Gillespie is the editor of Reason Online and Reason TV. Matt Welch is the editor of Reason magazine.