Stepping out of his quiet retirement, George W. Bush dedicated his Presidential Library last month. Later in an interview with FOX News, Bush 43 commented that the Republican Party is "leaderless". This assessment gathers support if one surveys the primary battles from the past two Presidential elections. More than any other politician, the 40th President Ronald Reagan. Guiliani appealed to his leadership. Tancredo blasted his immigration amnesty. The cult of Reagan has taken hold of the Republican Party for the last ten years. Even President Obama has gone out of his way to compare himself with his Republican predecessor, with a swift amount of press from the media.
The former Screen Actors Guild President cuts quite an outline.
As Governor of California, he took a state which was teetering under Pat Brown's soft-hearted liberalism, a mind-set which did not set well with voters as Brown failed to quell student revolts on campus, nor deal with spending problems. He won reelection, and left office with a state on the mend, with a surplus in the treasury.
Ronald Reagan ran for President three times. He first ran for President in 1968, the same year that he called for the demolition of the Berlin Wall. The Republican National conference supported Richard Nixon. In 1976, following the upsets which had shaken the country, from Vietnam to the War on Drugs to the Environmental Protection Agency to Watergate, House Minority Leader turned Vice President turned President Gerald Ford had to clean up the mess left by his former boss. Two years later, the more conservative element in the Republican party were rising up against the liberal-moderate faction. Reagan should have won, but didn't.
His perseverance paid off. His time finally came, and united the otherwise fractious national, social, and fiscal conservatives into a winning coalition. Indeed, he triumphed over Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1980, and he trounced Walter Mondale in 1984. In 1988, his successor the moderate George Herbert Walker Bush thrashed Michael Dukakis.
Reagan resurged conservatism, patriotism, and dedication to this country's future, fiscal prowess without military failure. For good reason, Ronald Reagan has been bandied about as the standard-bearer for the Republican Party for the last six years.
But Ronald Reagan is dead. He has been dead for nearly a decade. Despite the tax cuts which spurred economic growth during his first term, this country cannot ignore the budget deficits and the deficit spending which ensued during Reagan's Presidency. One of the 40th President's ardent supporters, George Will, noted that "Reagan's Conservatism" allowed Americans to love big government and hate it at the same time. This political schizophrenia has emerged into the Republican public consciousness, with the "superego" of fiscal restraint pressing against an Establishment bent on winning elections, maintaining power, principles and people be damned.
Ronald Reagan's conservatism was not just amiable patriotism, nor should anyone slam or discredit his policies to promote the preeminence of the American people. The defining element of his Presidency was not domestic discipline, but a foreign policy polarized around the Cold War. The Soviet Union was a useful as well as inescapable adversary, one which was teetering on the brink the moment that final premier Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. The Cold War is over, the "bad guys" lost, and Ronald Reagan is dead.
Following his election, US Senator from Kentucky Rand Paul wrote in his book that the Party has to cut the spending, not just say "government is the problem". Ben Shapiro slammed Reagan's support for an assault-weapons ban. "He's not a god", Shapiro chided Piers Morgan. No he isn't. God are supposed to be immortal.
While liberal bloggers have taken Patti Reagan's voucher of his father's tolerance to assume that he would endorse gay marriage, no one should write off the strong policy legacies of the president, who supported the traditional family, he endorsed the scope of the parent as greater than the power of the state in the lives of our youth. "The Gipper" was quite a trip. A great communicator with a working-class background, yet elite connections, including long-standing rapport with Hollywood as well as an affable ability to enfeeble the press.
But Ronald Reagan is dead, and the country which he presided over, which he oversaw for eight years, which he represented, is with us no more. The United States is navigating in a very different world, not the era of Conservatism relaunched against the "Keynesian" cult of the 1970's. The global markets, the teeming ethnic minorities with their divisions, are more than a mere diversion which a misplaced "amnesty (cf. Simpsonn-Mizzoli, 1986) can fix. Urban development and transportation renewal are a must, but so is a balanced national budget with diminished national debt. Entitlements consume 20-22% of GDP, and an unprecedented 43 million people are taking in food stamps.
The rhetoric of "return" will not turn many, who have no past to look to, besides a nation still reeling from terrorist terrors and sub-prime mortgage crises. Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and the Republican Party still seems caught in a net of techno-ignorant twits who will not face the facts: the party's best years cannot be found going backwards, into the past, but stepping forward into a different schema. A revelation of relevance for those who are down and out, for those who see no options, who hear, who feel that they cannot speak for themselves, is needed.
To quote a recent article slamming GOP fanaticism with Ronald Reagan, it's time to "Tear Down This Icon." Not a cult of "leadership", but a culture of leaders can promote the message which individual governors, which composite statehouses, have advanced. From Indiana and Alabama, where voucher programs are reaching out statewide, to Wisconsin and Michigan, where labor reforms have welcomed expanding business interests while empowering the individual workers, to Kansas, where the elimination of the income tax will force surrounding states to compete with reforms, not play with tax payer dollars.
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