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Links Copyright 2001 Andrew Sullivan A Mash-Note Reagan was right about almost everything. He will turn 90 this Tuesday, but in all likelihood he will barely be aware of it. The cruelty of Alzheimer's has robbed Ronald Reagan of the capacity for clear memory. He seems, in some respects, an historical oddity now, his political and cultural presence obscured in America by the Clinton psychodrama and the Bush dynasty. But the truth is, his successors do not begin to compare either in achievement or legacy. Reagan is still, in my view, the architect of our modern world, and nowhere is this clearer than in the United States. Reagan stood for two simple but indisputably big things: the expansion of freedom at home and the extinction of tyranny abroad. When he came to office, top tax rates in the United States were in the 70 percent range. Against the odds, Reagan slashed the top rate to 28 percent and ignited an economic boom that, in some respects, is still with us. Bill Clinton nudged taxes up a little, but to nowhere near the levels of the Carter's America, and all signs now point to a reduction this year back to Reagan levels. But unlike George W Bush, and certainly unlike the hopelessly confused Michael Portillo, Reagan understood what tax cuts were about. Back in 1976, he made the case in one of his innumerable radio addresses, the transcripts of which have just been released by the Free Press in a mammoth 500 page tome. Here's the relevant passage (in his idiosyncratic style), just excerpted in the Weekly Standard: "Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. 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." Some people believe he was a moron, incapable of argument or intellectual engagement. A brief perusal through these dozens of talks will put the lie to that. He wrote constantly, and grappled directly and bravely with the main issues of his day. He was a believer in the press and the media as a way to communicate as powerfully as possible ideas that could change lives. In this sense, he was one of the most intellectual presidents in history. He took great pain with words, and spent a lifetime learning how to craft them. And if he was right about taxation and the role of government, he was also right about the other great question of his day: the Soviet Union. "Isn't that what a farmer has with a turkey until Thanksgiving?" I will never forget the moment I heard his "evil empire" speech. It was broadcast on Radio Four in snippets, festooned with sceptical British commentary about this inflammatory and dangerous new president, this cowboy who knew nothing about geo-politics or the complexities of late-Communism. But for all the criticism, what came through to my teenage brain was an actual truth. But who in a position of power said so when it mattered? He alone saw that communism was destined to be put on the "ash-heap of history," as he told the House of Commons. His achievement in this respect was so monumental that a whole generation of former peaceniks now take it for granted. And yet both now thoughtlessly enjoy the soft and easy fruits of a greater man's courage. The critics harp on the enormous deficits of the Reagan era, and see them as an indictment of all he stood for. But the truth is, federal revenues boomed on Reagan's watch. Tax cuts didn't destroy public finances they helped them. What created the deficits was an unprecedented increase in defence spending the bargaining chip that eventually forced the Soviets to surrender. And you could easily argue that this was a price worth paying for an early end to an extremely expensive conflict. Thanks to the peace dividend of the post-Cold War world, and the free market expansion that Ronald Reagan initiated, America is now enjoying record surpluses. Even the straggling defenders of perestroika now concede that Reagan's intransigence and skill speeded the collapse of the Soviet empire. The deficits, from the standpoint of history, were therefore a fiscal bargain. And on most of the current pressing issues, Reaganism still has plenty of credibility. The main cloud on the fiscal horizon the long-term insolvency of the government-run pension system stems from a program Reagan opposed. The partial privatization of the program that George W Bush is now contemplating is straight out of the Reagan hand-book. The most significant change in American social policy in the 1990s the end of the federal welfare entitlement was also presaged by Reagan. In the early 1970s, when Reagan was governor of California, the question of whether to federalize that entitlement was in front of the National Governors' Association. The governors voted to have Washington guarantee the benefit 49 - 1 Guess who the hold-out was. It took thirty years and Bill Clinton to finally recognize the validity of Reagan's point. And Reagan's unlikeliest dream - nuclear missile defence - is also still with us. Lampooned at the time as "Star Wars," it will soon regain the preeminence it deserves in America's military defence, as Donald Rumsfeld aggressively moves it forward. 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. 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." 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." Reagan cared about public opinion, but only so he knew best how to challenge and shape it. A natural populist, Reagan spent hours as president hand-writing letters to friends and often obscure pen-pals from around the country he had befriended some time in the past, never dreaming for a second that he was too important to ignore such little tasks of courtesy. He was a democrat to his fingertips who didn't need a 'common touch' because he was so effortlessly a common man himself. It takes time to recognize greatness and it sometimes appears in the oddest of forms. A B-actor from Hollywood, a cold fish, a man unknown even to his own children at times, a hack-radio announcer for General Electric, and easily the finest president of the last fifty years. For Americans know in their hearts that this unlikely man understood the deepest meaning of their country in a way no-one else has done for a generation. He gave them purpose again, and in return they still give him love.
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