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.