I haven't posted anything about Ronald Reagan going to his long-deserved reward because so much has already been said by so many others, most of whom said it better than I could anyhow. All I really can say is that, no matter how long he lived or how expected his death, it makes me sad and the nation is poorer for having lost him.
I became fairly absorbed in the weeklong outpouring of tribute, and a number of notions occurred to me. The first is how much George Bush uses Reagan as his presidential role model, rather than his own father.
The tough and uncompromising tack which Reagan took with the Soviets, back when there were still Soviets, is obviously similar to Bush's rhetoric and actions during the ongoing War on Terror. The Evil Empire speech is referred to so frequently as to sound almost trite now, but--like Meg Ryan's fake-orgasm-in-a-restaurant scene--was utterly shocking and unexpected at the time.
The full context of those remarks contains additionally a striking and slightly overlooked rebuke to moral equivalency, which in my opinion is actually the more important element of this particular speech. It made quite an impression on me the first time I heard it:
So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride--the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
Likewise his resistance to being governed by opinion polls. President Clinton was unusually guilty of swaying metaphorically in the wind, whichever way it happened to blow; this reduces the benefits we otherwise realize from having a Republic, not a Democracy. But both Bush and Reagan took decisive actions when they were convinced of the correctness of them, even if they were momentarily wildly unpopular decisions. None of us can forget the huge demonstrations in February 2003 on the eve of the war, which included the second largest ever in New York City, and which were uniformly and loudly opposed to the proposed military action. Bush ordered in the tanks anway, because he was convinced it was right, even if it wasn't popular.
The 2003 demonstrations included the second-largest ever in NYC only because they failed to exceed the demonstrations of popular anger over President Reagan's deployment of Pershing missiles in 1982. Any who today would say that decision was wrong can be dismissed as naive partisans or historical revisionists; while the verdict is still out on whether we will be successful in Iraq (thanks in no small part to the uncertainty of the November elections), the decision to disregard what was popular in favor of what was right is very Reaganesque. Bravo to President Bush, and Bravo! again.
Bush 41, contrariwise, had quite a more subtle foreign policy, based on consonance and multilateralism--before this last was adopted by the left as part of their lexicographic code. This naturally was exemplified in giving primacy to the size of the coalition to kick Saddam from Kuwait, not in the correctness or desireability of that enormous coalition's goals, limited as they were to expressly forbid actually deposing him. This is the sharpest example since Neville Chamberlain's Peace in our time speech of trading being effective for being agreeable.
So President Bush models his moral and foreign policy views after Ronald Reagan, not entirely surprisingly. He is, however, deficient in meeting Reagan's overall standard in two primary ways, both of which are understandable. He lacks Ronald Reagan's rhetorical skills--which, in all I've read of American politics and history, were probably only equalled by perhaps ten men in the history of the Republic, all the Founders included. So it's hardly shameful to fall short of that standard, but President Bush's occasionally awkward speaking style has made it difficult to effectively communicate the reasons for the difficult and unpopular decisions. I think I've heard the reasons why a few times, but much of the global vision of a democratic domino effect in the middle east has been fleshed out by subordinates, spokesmen, and outside conservative analysts. This has compromised the effectiveness of the message, and unfortunately is the primary reason why George Bush is in such a hot re-election fight. The success of Iraq is still undecided since we are so perilously close to electing a President who won't make tough decisions based on firm principles, but based on how his focus groups respond to certain proposed policy actions.
I agree entirely with the President's decision to go to war in Iraq, and even agree basically with the conduct of the war's aftermath. It's hard to say how successful or not we presently are being, because this type of war has really never been tried before and we don't have much of a model for what success should look like at this point. Could be better. Could have been much worse, if you recall all the Stalingrad references leading up to the fall of Baghdad. But the overall mission would have been helped if Bush were able to communicate it more clearly.
The other deficiency Bush seems to have is that, while he does not use his father's presidency as a model, he does seem to have been traumatized by watching his father's 82% approval rating dwindle into unelection within nine months in 1992. How else to explain a few of the more shameful policies, such as the steel tariffs and the Medicare prescription drug benefit? I hope we see some return of Reagan's anti-government message and some spending discipline in Bush's second term; if there is no second term, we may well see the same traumatization in Jeb Bush's first term when he's elected President in 2012.
Of all these shortcomings by comparison to Ronald Reagan, I say So what? Reagan is a once-in-a-generation leader. We'll not see his kind from either party any time soon. I still hope Bush wins in November.
The one historical context I'm having a hard time nailing down is just how unusual is this weeklong national mourning: does the nation really love Reagan that much, or is this level of attention afforded to any well-respected former president who dies? Nixon doesn't count. LBJ really wasn't well-liked even by a lot of Democrats, so he doesn't really count either. It seems that the last popular former presidents to pass away, who have earned respect from at least modern members of the opposing party, were Eisenhower in 1969 and Truman in 1972. If any readers with firsthand perspectives on the nation's response to their deaths wish to contribute a few thoughts comparing that response to what we witnessed last week, I would be grateful.
JKS.
Posted by JKS at June 17, 2004 07:26 AM