This is an update of a post I ran in 2014

Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday.

I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii, my college English advisor and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence.  His eight years were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for almost forty years.  His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.

Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century.

But in these difficult times, after (in effect) three terms of a President who promoted  fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessors – something Donald Trump needs even more, today.

And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.

Ten years ago, I wrote “the best we can hope for from President Trump is that he approaches the job with the same tenacity to match his vision that Reagan had.” The first term was a mixed bag. This past two and a half weeks – well, so far so good. 206 weeks go go.

Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I respond with a contemptuous sigh, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who Reagan more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Scott Walker?

There are also conservatives who pick out their favorite issue – debt, abortion – and ask “what did Reagan ever do for us?”  

Remember – Reagan never controlled Congress.  Republicans controlled the Senate for his first six years, but they were by no means a rubber stamp.   The Democrats controlled the House all eight years, and seized the Senate in 1987.   Trump controlled both houses in 2017, and he does again today; it’s narrow, but it’s more than Reagan had to work with.  Reagan knew he had only so much political capital, and focused it all on his two major issues – defeating the USSR, and reviving the economy.

He succeeded wildly at both.

I’m imagining what Reagan might have done if he’d had Trump’s circumstances – control of Congress and the SCOTUS and that combination of first-term energy and second-term “I don’t have to worry about getting re-elected, so I’m gonna mix stuff up”.

Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Most of it, anyway.

So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, February 6th, 2025 at 7:34 am and is filed under History And Its Making. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.