Other times, we call to mind his military interventionism, his encouragement of the then-new religious right (“I know you can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”), and his failure to really reduce the size of government. But the more experience we have with later presidents, the better Reagan looks in retrospect.
After a dispiriting era of stagflation, he revived American spirits and our faith in free enterprise. He slashed marginal tax rates and ushered in a “long boom.” Along with Margaret Thatcher, he both symbolized and galvanized a renewed enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and free markets. He shocked the
chattering classes in Washington and New York when he told the truth about communism: that it was a world of “totalitarian darkness” and a “sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written.” Even we anti-communists thought he was overly optimistic when he said that in 1983.
Edward H. Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1988 that Reagan never paid much attention to the people he appointed to important positions in his administrations in Sacramento and Washington, thus undercutting his own efforts to implement his goals and policies. He appointed a lieutenant governor of California he’d barely met. He promised to abolish the departments of Energy and Education, then appointed secretaries who had no interest in carrying out that mission. And most particularly, he chose George Bush as his vice president and then endorsed him for the presidency. Perhaps Ronald Reagan’s worst legacy is 12 years of Bush presidencies.
Reagan had his faults. But he was an eloquent spokesman for a traditional American philosophy of individualism, self-reliance, and free enterprise at home and abroad, and words matter. They change the climate of opinion, and they inspire people trapped in illiberal societies. And these days, when people claiming the Reagan mantle push for wars or military involvement in Iraq, Iran, Georgia, and other danger spots, we remember that Reagan challenged the Soviet Union mostly in the realm of ideas; he used military force only sparingly. George W. Bush, whom some call “Reagan’s true political heir,” increased federal spending by more than a trillion dollars even before the financial crisis. We watch the antigay crusading of today’s conservative Republicans and remember that Reagan publicly opposed the early antigay Briggs Initiative of 1978 (featured in the movie Milk).
And in those moments we’re tempted to paraphrase the theme song of All in the Family and say, “Mister, we could use a man like Ronald Reagan again.”
