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Rethinking the Reagan Mystique - Dutch made mistakes, but also provided edifying examples of...
National Review Online ^
| June 15, 2009
| Steven F. Hayward
Posted on 06/15/2009 9:51:38 PM PDT by neverdem
June 15, 2009, 3:00 p.m.
Rethinking the Reagan Mystique Dutch made mistakes, but also provided edifying examples of keen political judgment.
By Steven F. Hayward
In the New York Times this weekend, John Harwood revisited the debate between conservatives and Republicans over whether it is time to “rethink the Reagan mystique.” Does anyone really think the major media outlets covering this intramural argument really have conservative success in mind? Now, that’s not to say that the argument isn’t a worthy one or should be suppressed — NRO has hosted some fruitful discussion on the issue. But Americans should approach such stories with a grain of salt, since many of them fail to get a few basic things straight. Yes, I have several big dogs in this fight. My copious (and revisionist) narrative history of the Reagan presidency is coming out in August, featuring a special emphasis on the difficult domestic-policy story, rather than the dramatic Cold War story that is easier to tell — and I hope all NRO readers will rush out and buy it. The book is not all cheerleading for a happier time for our movement: It contains a number of criticisms of Reagan. But the criticisms I’m hearing now seem wide of the mark, though — when they’re not simply wrong. There was no Reagan “mystique.” Study him closely and you see that he worked very hard at becoming a good politician, and part of that hard work was invested in concealing just how hard he worked at it. Too many conservatives think it suffices simply to call themselves “Reagan Republicans” and mouth a few optimistic generalities (fill in your least favorite radio talk-show host here.) Now, I hate to disagree with David Frum, who offered some of the earliest cogent criticisms of the failures of the Reagan years in Dead Right, but he capitulates to the conventional wisdom when he says that “the most dangerous legacy Reagan bequeathed his party was his legacy of cheerful indifference to detail.” I sentence Brother Frum to a close reading of Reagan’s diaries, and perhaps a few days in the Reagan Library reading the declassified transcripts of White House meetings, all of which decisively refute this tired cliché. It’s clear that Reagan was hardly disinterested in the daily details of the 1986 tax-reform process, and he was an active participant in every annual-budget fight. Reagan was also intimately involved in the arms-for-hostages debacle — not to his credit, of course. (In my forthcoming book, I sum up one installment of the affair thus: “Through all the murkiness of the decisions made throughout the entire affair, however, one fact is clear — the Iran arms-for-hostages initiative carried on because Ronald Reagan wanted it to.”) Reagan may have ignored the EPA, HUD — make your own list of rightly ignored favorites — but that redounds to his credit; I think it was Wellington who said that sensible men concentrate on the essential things. Unfamiliarity with the historical facts on Reagan is one thing. Reshaping them is quite another. I was startled by Harwood’s quote from Indiana governor Mitch Daniels: “I don’t use [Reagan] publicly as a reference point.” Well, fine; but back in 1989, Daniels said, “The Reagan years will be for conservatives what the Kennedy years remain for liberals: the reference point, the breakthrough experience — a conservative Camelot.” Well, which is it? Has Daniels changed his mind — or has Harwood done a little reshaping of his own here by quoting Daniels selectively? Back in 1989, Daniels added this: “At the same time, no lesson is plainer than that the damage of decades cannot be repaired in any one administration.” This is why I have argued here on NRO that it is precisely the failures and shortcomings of the Reagan years that should be the focus of our debate; here I’m probably close to the same page as Brother Frum, but we differ on the specifics. Frum, in his most recent Bloggingheads exchange with Brink Lindsey, went so far as to say that Republicans might have been better off had neither Barry Goldwater nor Reagan been nominated in 1964 and 1980, respectively. (I think he’s just trying to test the efficaciousness of my new blood-pressure medicine — and give Rush an embolism.) Such debates can get rancorous in a hurry — which is what I think the Left and the media would like to see. Let me shift ground slightly and challenge the Reagan critics this way: Why do we study and praise Lincoln or Churchill? Because we think we’re going to see “another” Lincoln or Churchill? Of course not: We study them for their example of practical political judgment. Britain didn’t get another Churchill — they got Thatcher, for whom Churchill’s examples (even his mistakes, such as his imprudent Hayek-inspired “Gestapo” speech of July 1945) made a strong impression. We are not going to see “another” Reagan. But we can and should learn from a close study of the man, and apply usable lessons to different circumstances. Such a prospect seems remote at present, with Democrats ascendant and led by a charismatic young president. Political success for the GOP, we are sometimes told, will require adopting policies closer to those of Barack Obama than to Ronald Reagan. Here again, history is instructive. Jack Germond and Jules Witcover wrote in their book about the 1984 American presidential election, “Democrats preferred not to face the evidence that their guiding light of half a century — the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and its successor mutations from Truman through Carter and Mondale — had been all but snuffed out by the voters as the preferred framework for governmental policy at the national level.” Today, FDR and the New Deal are back with a vengeance, of course: Judging from his books, Obama clearly considers FDR a model and inspiration. In other words, conservatism finds itself in a place roughly analogous to liberalism’s 25 years ago. Reaganism — in a modified or even high-octane form — might make a comeback, too. We must also rightly judge the role of chance and contingency in human affairs and political fortunes. Brother Frum writes: “It was not Goldwater who made Reagan possible. It was Carter. Had Carter governed more successfully, the Goldwater disaster would have been just a disaster, with no silver lining. And there was nothing about the Goldwater disaster that made the Carter failure more necessary, more inevitable.” There is something to this, as Reagan himself acknowledged. He told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before the Grenada invasion in 1983, “If Jimmy Carter had sent in two more helicopters to Iran, he’d be giving you this briefing right now.”
We can apply this same lesson to Lincoln, Churchill, FDR, and others who come to mind. Only thoroughgoing Machiavellians think humans can control chance or fate; the rest of us should follow Churchill’s counsel to “assume that the favorable and adverse chances equate, and then eliminate them both from the calculation.” To which I would add that, like Reagan (and Churchill), I do not believe that Chance is indifferent to human excellence. — Steven F. Hayward is F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980–1989, forthcoming in August from CrownForum. |
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TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: dutch; frum; harwood; lessons; reagan
1
posted on
06/15/2009 9:51:38 PM PDT
by
neverdem
To: neverdem
2
posted on
06/15/2009 9:53:35 PM PDT
by
GOP Poet
To: neverdem
I love Reagan-- but I wouldn't need to reference him as much if Republicans of today had some balls.
It was Reagan's courage in the face of a liberal media with no Fox News, no Rush, no Hannity, no Savage, no Levin, no Drudge-- solid conservatism in that environment (and for decades before) is a political courage that is almost nonexistent today, in the GOP.
It's not about mystique. Did Reagan make mistakes? Sure. He's human. But with Reagan, political courage was THE RULE, not the exception. That is not mystique. And that's what we miss.
3
posted on
06/15/2009 10:01:44 PM PDT
by
exist
To: neverdem
There was one element of Reagan in particular that I'd like to see in our current Republicans--he had the courage of his convictions, and simply didn't care to be liked by the "intellectuals" and media liberals of his day. I don't think he HATED these opponents (though they hated him), he simply didn't think about them...and that's what drove them nuts.
The rule today is that we have half-hearted "conservative" politicians who are embarrassed to be thought of as conservatives, and want to explain that they're really NICE, when a real conservative knows no such explanation is needed (or would be listened to by someone stupid enough to demand one), and think providing "free" healthcare, for example, is something they can agree on if they will be LIKED. They also seem to want the love of John Stewart and Colbert (zzzzzz), and The Mainstream.
They shouldn't even care about any of this junk. But it seems to be very important to many of them.
To: neverdem
A good start in the “rethinking process” would be to toss the opportunistic weasel David Frum over the side and let him to swim to his comrades on the left.
5
posted on
06/15/2009 10:10:18 PM PDT
by
Pelham
(California, formerly part of the USA)
To: Darkwolf377
Reagan didn’t just oppose “media liberals”.
He took on the reigning Republican moderates and liberals by challenging a sitting Republican President in the 1976 primary. Reagan was not the choice of GOP power brokers, and I’d class the crowd that has taken over National Review as being far closer to those that opposed Reagan than to those who supported him. It’s no wonder that they are “rethinking” him.
6
posted on
06/15/2009 10:15:23 PM PDT
by
Pelham
(California, formerly part of the USA)
To: neverdem
The only rethinking process the GOP needs to do is to go back to the Reagan model, PERIOD!
Take the best of the Fiscal Conservative crowd married with the best of the Social Conservative crowd married with the best of the Pro-Military Conservative crowd.
Everything else gets tossed.
This is the what will allow the GOP to win again, nothing else.
This means that each group gets what is most important to them and lets go of everything else: The social conservatives get pro-life, anti gay-marriage, strong pro-family positions on the issues, the fiscal conservatives get limited government, reduced regulation, and REAL lower taxes, the Strong Military conservatives get a stronger military, and finally, a strong anti-illegal alien plank and platform.
This is the winning combination of issues.
To: Pelham
He took on the reigning Republican moderates and liberals by challenging a sitting Republican President in the 1976 primary. Reagan was not the choice of GOP power brokers, and Id class the crowd that has taken over National Review as being far closer to those that opposed Reagan than to those who supported him. Its no wonder that they are rethinking him.
Amen!
This is just more repackaging of the "We gotta move to the center(left)" message of the moderate GOP.
To: Pelham
Reagan didnt just oppose media liberals.I didn't suggest he did. My point was very specific. And I don't see him as being as defiant toward the party as you suggest--I see him as more a leader than a reactor, so to speak. His personality was such that he did his thing without worrying too much about what others thought, and his success pulled the country club GOP along in his wake.
That's why I specifically mentioned his dealings with the opposition. Even today, if a genuine conservative were to win big, the GOP would also be pulled along, and they would have no choice.
To: Pelham
"A good start in the rethinking process would be to toss the opportunistic weasel David Frum over the side and let him to swim to his comrades on the left." Can I hear an Amen.
Amen.
10
posted on
06/15/2009 10:50:25 PM PDT
by
506Lake
To: neverdem
Obama clearly considers FDR a model and inspiration; his belief that Roosevelt led America out of a great economic depression. Reagan lifted a traumatized country out of a great psychological depression, induced earlier by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and sustained by the Vietnam War, the scandal of Watergate, and the malaise of Jimmy Carter. Reagan used the same political instruments as Roosevelt - the major address to Congress and the fireside chat with the people - and the same optimistic, uplifting rhetoric...
But although both Roosevelt and Reagan appealed to the best in America, there was a significant philosophical difference between the two Presidents: Roosevelt turned to government to solve the problems of the people, while Reagan turned to the people to solve the problems of government.
Reagan united a coalition of economic conservatives who favored fewer taxes; foreign policy conservatives who favored his opposition to communism; and social conservatives who identified with Reagan’s conservative religious and social ideals. The Reagan Revolution was as much a governing philosophy as a political movement. Yet, probably the greatest thing Reagan gave to the ‘future’ was the legacy of his person, a deeply American image that will continue to inspire untold numbers of people.
I loved Reagan. And, Reagan would have been outraged at the idea of No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind expanded the power of the Federal government and increased the education budget by over 50%. That is not conservatism. Our partys message has been twisting in the wind content to fit the mold of the day.
To note, Reagan did NOT speak to the core of conservatives. Reagan spoke his conservative principles to the CORE OF AMERICA as a whole. True conservative values and principles are a threat to the Rockefeller liberal wing of the Republican party, of which, the likes of Ford, Noonan, Parker, Powell and McCain reside. They are not the Reagan coalition.
To win general elections, we need to find the telegenic and charasmatic candidates that will attract the moderates, conservative democrats and independents beyond the primary elections and into the general election and then ‘govern’ as conservatives. We need to find the holders and practitioners of Conservative Values in the ‘New’ Republican Party. Reagan’s governing philosophy is on display right now in Alaska. This is a platform from which Sarah can take hold of.
IMHO, Sarah Palin is capable of reviving a modern-era Reagan coalition of the entrepreneurial middle-class and blue-collar workers .... who unite traditional economic conservatives (that believe in smaller government and tax relief) with blue-collar workers who hold traditionalist views on culture or morality.
At 45, is Palin the second-coming of Reagan? Probably not. But even Reagan wasn’t Reagan at age 45. To be exact, I dont think another Reagan in his exact form is in our future. But, like Reagan, Palin has generated a lot of enthusiasm with the base and garnered much attention from her defectors just as the Gipper did before winning the hearts of the American people.
Rethinking the Reagan mystique? I’m sold.
“We are a nation that has a government not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.” - Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981
11
posted on
06/15/2009 11:40:51 PM PDT
by
506Lake
To: neverdem
If Reagan could post anonymously at this forum he would suffer max abuse as a worthless rino.
12
posted on
06/16/2009 2:58:48 AM PDT
by
Jacquerie
(Whenever Government is destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of People to alter or abolish it)
To: SoConPubbie
This is just more repackaging of the "We gotta move to the center(left)" message of the moderate GOP.You completely missed the gist of the article. The author repeatedly, in effect, asks "Brother Frum" to repent.
13
posted on
06/16/2009 10:35:32 AM PDT
by
neverdem
(Xin loi minh oi)
To: exist
14
posted on
06/16/2009 1:46:37 PM PDT
by
Paul Ross
(Ronald Reagan-1987:"We are always willing to be trade partners but never trade patsies.")
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