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June 7, 2004
Memories of Reagan
The first time I saw Ronald Reagan was while watching the 1976 Republican National Convention on television. He was in the audience, and many of the delegates were chanting for him to give a speech. He declined with a smile and a wave. I asked my parents who that man was and my mom explained to me that he was the man who had challenged President Ford for the nomination but had lost. By this time I had decided that I was a Republican, mainly because my parents were. Because he had challenged Ford, whom I wanted to win the election, I instinctively decided that I disliked him. Little did I know the influence he would have upon us all.
It during the Carter presidency that I started to pay attention to politics and the world around me. What I saw was a country that appeared to careen from crisis to crisis. Energy, inflation, unemployment, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage crisis, on and on it went. Carter seemed overwhelmed and unable to gain control of events. His plan for dealing with any one of them changed from one week to the next. To top it off he told us that we must learn to accept a lower standard of living.
Then Ronald Reagan returned. His appeal wasn't that he had some specific fourteen-point program complete with footnotes and documentation. Nor did he shake his fist and make threatening speeches about the Soviets or the Iranians. Rather it was his simple confidence in himself and what our country could do if we set our minds to it. He projected this confidence. He made you believe. He was optimistic without wearing rose colored glasses. He wasn't Jimmy Carter, with whom I and the rest of the nation had lost confidence.
Reagan had plans to handle the various crisis, to be sure. But as he reminded us, the solutions were relatively simple and straightforward; lower taxes, a smaller less-intrusive government, and a more robust foreign policy coupled with a strong military. And often the solutions to complex problems are simple, the problem being that people do not have the moral courage to implement them.
And Reagan was true to his word. He restored confidence in the country. He stood up to the Soviets. He didn't blindly pursue arms control treaties for the sake of pursuing a treaty. He wasn't afraid to walk away from a bad deal.
Unlike the conservative leaders of the previous twenty years, such as Barry Goldwater, Reagan's message was not one of being "against" various things. It was a vision of hope for the future, of being in favor of doing certain things. To be sure, any program contains elements of both. The real question is where the emplace lies. Goldwater's victory was to transform the Republican party into the party of conservatism. Reagan's was to transform this in to a message that the country could understand and believe in.
The problem with Carter had never been so much a question of specific military weapons, or overall dollars and cents. His defenders will, for example, rightly point out that it was he who approved the Pershing II and Cruise Missile programs that would eventually be installed in Europe. His problem was rather one of willpower and determination, of fortitude and vision. He spoke of a "malaise" and said that we needed to get over our "inordinate fear of communism".
Reagan showed no such qualms. He called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire" and made no apologies for doing so. This of course appalled the press, the democrats, and liberal intellectuals, but he had the virtue of being right.
Reagan was not alone in his struggle against communism, for he had partners across the Atlantic who stood firm with him. Margaret Thatcher symbolizes the era as much as Reagan did. Helmut Kohl stood firm in Germany. And Pope John Paul II provided leadership and encouragement to the millions of Christians trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
Reagan called the Soviet bluff in Europe. In the late '70s they had installed new SS-20 nuclear missiles in order to threaten western Europe. Their deployment introduced a new class of weapons which destabilized the continent. Carter and other western leaders ordered a mix of Pershing II missiles, and ground launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) to counter this threat. Their plan was to use them as a negotiating chip.
By the early '80s negotiations with the Soviets had gone nowhere. Reagan instead on a "zero - zero" outcome; the Soviets had to dismantle every one of their SS-20s whether they were deployed in Asia or eastern Europe, and we would dismantle or not deploy our Pershings and GLCMs. This was derided as hopelessly simplistic by the liberal press and foreign policy intellectuals. Oh no, they said, we must reach a middle ground whereby each side can keep some missiles.
The Soviets threatened to walk out of the negotiations if we went ahead with deployment. Reagan insisted that we had no choice but to deploy if they did not agree to his zero - zero option. The U.S. press was full of stories about how we just had to accept the "reasonable" Soviet proposals and that it would be a diasaster if the negotiations broke down.
The governments in western Europe were under much pressure to reneg on their earlier deal and vote against deployment. It was Reagan and Thatcher who provided the vision and courage that enabled them to vote to deploy. Even with this the vote in several parliaments was close.
In the face of large "peace" protests, we went ahead and initiated deployment. Eventually the Soviets came back to the table. They saw that their bluff had been called and that they had the loosing hand. The agreed to Reagans zero - zero proposal. Every single SS-20, Pershing II, and GLCM was destroyed within a few short years.
Carter defenders will point out that it was Carter who initiated the deployment of our counter missiles. The obvious response is to point out that it is highly doubtful that he would have had the courage to see it through to their deployment in the face of massive "peace" protests.
Reagan also decided that we needed to defend ourselves against ballistic missiles and that was that. It was simply morally unacceptable that our only option in a crisis was to threaten to kill millions of enemy civilians. His enemies derided him again, and lampooned the initiative as "Star Wars", but it was Reagan who held the moral upper ground.
Reagan's greatest achievement was to reduce the Soviet Union to the "ash heap of history", just as he said he would. Those who say that he simply came along at a time when the Soviet Union was close to collapse anyway are wrong. 1980 was a moment in time when the world could have gone either direction. Another Carter presidency and the Soviets would have made further advances around the globe. Without increased military spending they could have kept their economy moving.
My emphasis has been on foreign policy because that is what interests me the most. This is not to dimes his accomplishments in the domestic sphere. Before Reagan the idea of large tax cuts or substantial decreases in government were simply not contemplated. That the deficits grew was because spending increased faster than the rate of inflation, not because of the tax cuts. Revenue from taxes increased under his admistration, and it increased because the tax cuts spurred unparalleled economic growth. It simply could not keep up with spending. And liberals need to be reminded at this point that all spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which they controlled throughout the '80s.
During the current remembrances, it is easy to forget how harshly he was vilified. "Amiable dunce" was one of the nicer epitethits his enemies used. But none of their barbs could stick. Maddened by his resilience, they attacked Nancy instead. I remember one of my history professors saying that "the word is that this Nancy is something of a bitch." And this was the attitude of much of the liberal establishment. Revealing that you never hear of this now.
Ronald Reagan was the most influential political figure of my time. He was certainly the greatest.
Posted by Tom at June 7, 2004 9:21 PM
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