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Sunday, June 06, 2004
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1911-2004
This is a sad hour in the life of America. A great American life has come to an end. I have just spoken to Nancy Reagan. On behalf of our whole nation, Laura and I offered her and the Reagan family our prayers and our condolences.
Ronald Reagan won America's respect with his greatness, and won its love with his goodness. He had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility, and the humor that comes with wisdom. He leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save.
During the years of President Reagan, America laid to rest an era of division and self-doubt. And because of his leadership, the world laid to rest an era of fear and tyranny. Now, in laying our leader to rest, we say thank you.
He always told us that for America, the best was yet to come. We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that this is true for him, too. His work is done, and now a shining city awaits him. May God bless Ronald Reagan.
President George W. Bush
Saturday 6 June 2004
As someone who is a fairly intense observer of politics and world events, I was saddened by the death yesterday of Ronald Wilson Regan, 40th President of the United States. For people of my age, Reagan is the dividing marker for the world before I grew up, the world that changed as I grew up, and the world we live in now. Outside of the obviously personal, these are three distinct times in politics and world history.
I was born in March of 1970. Most people my age and younger don't remember or are completely unaware of just how bleak the future looked for the United States in the 17 years prior to Reagan's election. Those years encompassed the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy,race riots, Cambodia, Watergate, the Yom Kippur War, the oil embargoes, the overthrow of the Shaw and the Iran hostage crisis. It was a period of unprecedented Soviet expansion. Communism, which before 1963 had been limited to Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Cuba and North Vietnam, had expanded to destroy lives throughout South East Asia, Southern Africa and Central America.
By 1979, America was seen to be in decline, foremost by Americans themselves. The United States was described as a failed project in democracy. Five presidencies in a row failed through assassination, war or scandal.While not growing up in the panicked state that my parent's generation did, my generation was taught as children to expect a nuclear holocaust in our lifetimes. By November of 1980, this was seen to be the natural state of affairs.
Fast forward a decade.
By November 1990, communism had been abandoned as an article of faith in Eastern Europe and in its death rattle in the Soviet Union itself. China and Vietnam had so reformed themselves economically as to be hardly recognizable as communist. The likelihood of global nuclear war had evaporated completely. The period of 1940-1950 had been almost completely reversed between 1980-1990. It was breathtaking to see the Berlin Wall fall as it was something that was not expected to fall in my lifetime.
In 1980, the American people were doubting their purpose in the world. By 1990, they were certain of it.
Ronald Regan, while not solely responsible, certainly had much to do with this. Prior to 1980, American relations with the Soviets was predicated on the concepts of containment and co-existence. This lasted through the administrations of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter. Seven presidents, as different from one another as can be imagined, followed those policies as an article of faith. As he was in the process of deciding to run for the presidency, Reagan met with Richard V. Allen - who would become his first National Security Advisor. Allen asked Reagan his strategy for the Cold War. Reagan's response was simple, "How about, we win, they lose."
This was a revolutionary change in foreign policy management. The basic terms of the contest had changed. Before 1980, it was thought that the internal contradictions of communism would eventually destroy it, but it was not likely to occur in our lifetimes. Within a decade, not only was the Cold War history, the opponent had simply ceased to exist. Never before in human history had a major world power simply disappeared in so short a time. Napoleon and Hitler were vanquished but France and Germany survived. Less than three years after Ronald Reagan returned to California, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - the only nation ever to have been able to threaten the actual survival of the planet itself - was no more. For as long as I live, the events of 1989-1991 will probably always be the most remarkable.
Without his seven predecessors, Reagan would not have been able to achieve what it did. But without Reagan, it is virtually certain that the Soviets would still be a major world power and that the Cold War would still be with us.
His contemporary critics charged that Reagan wasn't conversant with the details of government. This overlooks the fact that visionary leaders almost never are. George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt weren't overly familiar with the minutiae of government, but Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter were. The micromanagement of policy often undermines a presidency rather than enhances it.
Politics was very different during the Reagan years than it was before or after. Following the recrimination of Vietnam and Watergate, there seemed to be a truce in what came to be called "the politics of personal destruction." While there very serious policy differences during those years, no one questioned the sincerity of Reagan's beliefs and motives and he did not call into question those of his opponents. Chris Matthews tells the story of Reagan visiting the office of House Speaker Tip O'Neil prior to his first State of the Union address. Matthews welcomed the president by saying, "Mr. President, this is where we plot against you." Reagan responded by saying, "Not after six o'clock. the Speaker says we're all friends after six o'clock."
Even in the fierceness of a presidential campaign, Reagan could devastate an opponent in the most inoffensive way imaginable. In 1984, as he sought re-election, Reagan was 73 years old and the oldest person ever to serve in the office. Age was naturally an issue. When asked about it, during his second debate with former vice-president Walter Mondale Reagan said, "I will not exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience." Even Mondale laughed heartily as his heart broke. He has later said that as soon as he heard that response, he knew that he would lose the election and his dream of being president was over.
Politics hasn't worked that way in a very long time. When Reagan was president, he never would have allowed a "Willie Horton" ad. Ronald Reagan would never have said that a president of the United States was personally responsible for a national tragedy like 9/11. Reagan never questioned the basic decency of those who disagreed with him and, for the most part, they never questioned his. Those days are long gone now and democracy is probably far worse for it.
The world is a far better place for having had Ronald Wilson Reagan in it and is a poorer place now that he is gone.
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