June 7, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORForever the Optimist
By BOB DOLE|
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ASHINGTON — When he said goodbye to the country during his last public appearance at the 1992 convention, Ronald Reagan said he wanted to be remembered as someone who "appealed to your greatest hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts."
A modest request for The Great Communicator, but Reagan believed that if he could accomplish that feat for free people anywhere, particularly in America, he had changed the world. That's how powerful he understood basic human liberties, respect for human life and democracy to be. The Reagan creed — freedom with optimism — was an unstoppable force.
As the Good-Will Ambassador everywhere, his optimism anchored his domestic and foreign policy. People who had their dignity, Reagan reasoned, would work to improve their lives and those of their families and countrymen. Systems that squelched the human spirit were evil.
Reagan believed the compassionate thing to do was to give people their freedom, to place our trust in that freedom, and to put our trust in democracy — in the people, in the goodness of our people — and to believe in ourselves, in our country and what we stood for. While others scoffed at him, he was never ashamed to stand up for what America believed and for what mattered to ordinary people. Government was not equipped to tell us what to do, how to invest our money, or how best to provide for our families. He moved the country in his direction, creating Reagan Democrats — people who believed what he did — regardless of party, race, religion or wealth.
While Americans live in the house that Abraham Lincoln built, the modern world is the home of Ronald Reagan. More than 700 million people who lived behind the Iron Curtain now have a taste of freedom, and their children and grandchildren will live with opportunities they could not have imagined. By building our defenses — rather than unleashing aggression — Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union. In so doing, he exposed its bankruptcy — financial, political, moral and spiritual. This is his great and lasting achievement. Today, economic opportunities are increasing, and while individual and political liberties lag in some corners, they are moving inexorably in the direction that Reagan envisioned and to which he devoted his presidency.
Although his style is inimitable, our leaders today are disciples of Reagan's style and substance. They embrace the entrepreneurial spirit that Reagan saw at the pulse of change and progress. "A communist was someone who reads Marx and Lenin," he joked. "A noncommunist is someone who understands Marx and Lenin." He once asked: "What were the four things wrong with Soviet agriculture? Spring, summer, winter and fall."
One of the first things he taught me was about loyalty: a few months after he took office, I was in the hospital recovering from kidney stone surgery. Much to my surprise, he took a helicopter to Walter Reed hospital to visit and to discuss my new role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. By the time he left, I was ready to march up any hill, let alone Capitol Hill, for him. He also once called my mother when she was very ill.
Later he taught me about compromise: he would rather get 80 percent and go back for the rest later than go home with nothing. Eighty percent was a pretty good deal. He taught me that success is never final nor defeat fatal, as long as you have the courage to act on principle and take the heat. Reagan knew that sometimes you win by losing if you stand firm for what is right.
Ronald Reagan is smiling upon us today because we are working on what he could not complete. His message of individual liberty, global democracy, economic opportunity and national pride thrives. We celebrate his life and the liberty he left as its legacy. There is not and never will be a bad time to remind ourselves of that legacy and to live up to it. Not only did he use grace, charm, wit and indomitable optimism, he used his strength of character to convey the greatness of America.
Bob Dole, the Republican candidate for president in 1996, was a senator from 1969 to 1996.