Happy Reaganmas

Today is Ronald Reagan's 92nd birthday.

Last year, I took cupcakes to the office. Since I'm not working...well, it's cheaper this way.

Here's why you need to care about it in the first place. It's an Andrew Sullivan piece from the Times of London from two years ago. And I, living in the Twin Cities, controlled by a Democrat party that is mired in relentless groupthink, particularly like this Reagan quote from the article:

"Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by govt. decision but by the mil's. of decisions customers make when they go into the mkt. place to buy. If something seems too high-priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it's better than any other that's ever been tried."

And as a Minnesotan, I hope Tim Pawlenty takes this lesson (via Sullivan) to heart:

The contrast with Clinton couldn't be clearer. Clinton was a group-hugger, a man in command of every detail of government, a sex-addict, even to being fellated by a staffer in the White House itself, obsessed with the press, fixated on spin, devoted to polls. Reagan was aloof, distant even from his own family, focussed on a few important themes and a delegator of everything else. He was devoted to his second wife with a romantic zeal that even now impresses, a man who wore a coat and tie at all times in the Oval Office, a room he considered something close to sacred. He was also pricelessly funny. It is not apocryphal that, as he was wheeled into the operating room after a bullet almost took his life, he looked at the solemn, green-suited doctors and said, "Please tell me you're Republicans." The morning after, respiratory tubes stuck down his throat, he could only scribble jokes.On a pink piece of paper, he wrote to his wife, "I'd like to do this scene again - starting at the hotel." The other week, in preparation for Clinton's farewell address, the television networks included a snippet from one of Reagan's last speeches as president. He said of his impending retirement, "I'm looking forward to going home at last, putting my feet up and taking a good long nap." Pause. "I guess it won't be that much different after all."

Reagan cared about public opinion, but only so he knew best how to challenge and shape it. It never shaped him. He didn't need spin. He had faith.

As Pawlenty goes into what may be the biggest crisis of his administration - the budget crisis and his possibly-impending unallotment of state budget funds - it'd be worth it for Governor Pawlenty to remember Reagan's lesson.

Posted by Mitch at February 6, 2003 08:30 AM