Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
John Judis, senior editor for the New Republic:
I lived through Ronald Reagan's two terms as governor of California and his two terms as president, and was forever bewildered by his political success.
Reagan was committed to a very simple-minded and apocalyptic worldview, but he could articulate it in terms (like the vision of America as a "city on a hill" and the Soviet Union as "the evil empire") that resonated with Americans. At the same time, he was a former labor negotiator who loved the give and take of politics and was always willing to compromise when he faced an unyielding majority. He was ideologically dogmatic, but politically flexible and astute.
He entered politics after Goldwater's crushing defeat, but he showed in his 1966 gubernatorial election that conservatives could win voters outside the local chamber of commerce or John Birch Society chapter by appealing to growing social concerns among white working-class Democrats about civil rights and about cultural and political radicalism.
He turned a narrow intellectual movement into a political majority. This new majority was founded in part on hatred and resentment, but Reagan's methods were so subtle that he didn't leave a personal legacy of hatred behind him.
As president, Reagan's record is decidedly mixed.
But Reagan deserves lasting credit for helping to end the Cold War. How much Reagan's aggressive policies and military buildup during his first term contributed to this result remains to be seen; but in 1985, Reagan recognized that the new Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to take the Soviet Union out of the Cold War.
They also were beginning to wind down the disastrous war in Nicaragua. In Washington in 1988, conservatives were sporting buttons reading, "Support the Contras, Impeach Reagan."
By the time he left office, Reagan's foreign policy enjoyed more support from Democrats than from conservative Republicans. It's well to keep that in mind as George W. Bush and his minions seek to summon Reagan's memory to justify their disastrous policies in Iraq.
Frank Mankiewicz, former president of National Public Radio and press secretary to Sen. Robert Kennedy:
The legacy of Ronald Reagan?
We've been reading these last few days that it was dedication, decency and honesty -- the Wall Street Journal, in a full-page editorial, virtually proposed him for sainthood, or at least that his face appear on every coin and paper currency. But the verdict, of course, will be mixed. Taxes went down and then came back up. Foreign policy included triumphs at the Berlin Wall as well as failures in Afghanistan, and particularly Iran-Contra.
But it seems to me we all have left out an evaluation of the main influence on any legacy Reagan leaves us -- the influence of Hollywood. It was there he not only learned his lines but his characters. Hollywood had mastered, in that Golden Age of the '30s, what Americans want to be told about what kind of people they are as well as what they expect of their heroes, and Ronald Reagan mastered all that, and mastered it well -- the optimism, the candor, the will to win; he was a true role model. In addition, he learned more of Hollywood's values; for example, he and Nancy had many gay friends and never thought about it, and he forever told fanciful stories, and made them seem true, about how racial prejudice had long been banished. I think his legacy, and it is one Americans should think about this week and in the future, is that you could learn more about America on the sets of Warner Bros. than at any state house or in the halls of Congress.
