I miss Reagan
Principled and practical, he got big things done
Iwas only 10 years old when Ronald Reagan left the White House. My memories of him as president are similar to those of a loved one who passed away when you were very young: few details, but powerful impressions nonetheless.
My grandparents had a small picture of him on their wall. I have thought a lot about it lately. Reagan was the kind of president you were proud to have a picture of, hung next to snapshots of your family and close friends. You were glad to tell your kids or grandkids, that’s our president.
Contrast Reagan with Donald Trump. As a father to young children, my hope is that they have no memory of his tenure. I certainly would never hang a picture of him in my house.
I was thinking about Reagan this week when the news broke of Donald Trump, Jr. eagerly responding to an offer of information supposedly sourced to the Russian government. Reagan never would have done that. He understood that the Soviet Union was evil. They dispossessed and disenfranchised their people, and threatened peace worldwide. Liberal intellectuals were aghast when Reagan called the USSR the Evil Empire in 1983, but he was right.
Vladimir Putin is just as bad. He has suffocated his people’s liberty, transferred wealth and power to a handful of crooked oligarchs and conspired to undermine democracies in any way possible. Reagan never would have sidled up to some crony of Putin to win an election. But Donny Junior was happy for the help.
Another thought struck me this week, as I was reading “WorkingClass Republican,” the great new intellectual biography of Reagan by Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Comparing today’s crop of congressional Republicans to Reagan sure does reveal them as a bunch of second-raters.
Reagan was not a dogmatic, Goldwater-style ideologue. He did not see the debate over government as happening between left and right, but down versus up. Government, he reckoned, could push people down: An ever-expanding welfare state breeds dependence, statism and eventually totalitarianism. On the other hand, government could help elevate people, promoting an ordered liberty that unlocks people’s potential. This is why, according to Mr. Olsen, Reagan not only supported tax cuts for all Americans as president, but also expanded the higher education system in California when he was governor.
Compare this approach — conservative principles commingled with practical considerations — to the effort to repeal Obamacare in Congress. What exactly are congressional Republicans trying to accomplish, except to get rid of a law they campaigned against? What is their positive vision for health care? That have not articulated one, probably because they do not have one. Reagan would be appalled.
Or compare Reagan’s philosophy to Trumpism. Does Donald Trump really have principles at all? Does he understand the possibilities and dangers inherent to the powers of the state? Does he have a vision of what the body politic should look like? I think not. Reagan ran for president because he wanted to help realize the ideal embedded in our Constitution, “a more perfect union.” Mr. Trump, I suspect, ran last year mostly on a lark, or to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for attention.
I am not sure I would call Reagan a “great” president. That is pretty rarefied ground, occupied by the likes of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. But he certainly was a good president. The nation was better off for having him in the office for eight years. You cannot say that about many past leaders.
Republicans have won a bunch of elections since 2009. Judged by the number of offices the party now holds, it has not been this strong since the Great Depression. But I think it actually is at its weakest point in my lifetime. Good leadership counts for a lot. Reagan was a good leader, but the current crop of GOP leaders are not.