What Bush Should Learn from Reagan

There “they” go again, the Gipper would have said. The New York Times announced President Reagan’s death, portraying him as the standard-bearer for “old time values.” Said the newspaper, Reagan had a “youthful optimism rooted in the traditional virtues of a bygone era.”  Bygone era? Old time values? Not so fast.

There was nothing obsolete or bygone about President Reagan’s values when he resolved to defeat Soviet totalitarianism and communism in the 1980s, and there is nothing obsolete about Reaganite values now, some three decades later. In fact, those values are behind the nation’s current crusade to wipe out the axis of evil across the globe.

When Reagan became President, he challenged the politically correct and morally relativistic view that the Soviet Union would be a permanent economic, political, and military rival, and the United States’ only option was accommodation. Reagan, who had read Karl Marx, labeled the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” and resolved to totally remove it as a threat to Western security and values.

By rebuilding American military might, he forced the Soviets to impoverish themselves by spending on their military. He also compelled the Soviets to fight expensive, far-flung battles, whether in Eastern Europe against American-supported Solidarity forces or in Afghanistan and Nicaragua against American-fortified enemies.

During his presidency, and particularly during his second campaign in 1983 -1984, many members of the media characterized him as an empty-headed, uninformed, congenial, B-grade actor spouting an anachronistic political ideology of anti-communism and American patriotism.  That’s what his political opponents said too.  But a majority of voters knew better, and re-elected him in a landslide. What he stood for and espoused was moral clarity – a commitment to free markets and political freedom – against an evil alternative.

Today, unlike the 1980s, no one would defend Soviet communism as simply an alternative way of life.  What made Reagan a great leader is that he understood and acted on the truth – that the Soviet Union was evil – at the time, not in hindsight.   Sound familiar?  It should, because President George W. Bush has just as unequivocally labeled the current Muslim extremist threat to American security and freedom an “axis of evil.”  The same challenge to moral and cultural relativism that guided Reagan is needed to protect the United States from evil today.

History teaches us that, unfortunately, only a few leaders have the moral clarity to identify evil and fight it.  For example, many Americans opposed U.S. entry into World War II against Hitler.  It’s not a black and white issue, they argued at the time. Of course, with hindsight they saw how stark the issue was.

It’s always easier to identify good and evil after the fact, when evil has been vanquished and the intellectual babblers have moved on to make their relativist arguments on more current issues.  For example, on this year’s anniversary of D-Day, columnist Maureen Dowd suggested that World War II “had such stark moral clarity in history that it’s almost irrelevant in providing lessons about a conflict in grayer times,” meaning the war in Iraq. How untrue!  There is nothing gray about the present danger.

It’s a common mistake – to think that present times are “grayer” and present none of the great moral choices.  Leaders know better.  Today’s challenges are not any more morally ambiguous than the times President Reagan or FDR encountered.

The same moral self-confidence that guided Reagan in conducting foreign affairs also was the underpinning of his domestic policies.  When he came into office, the top marginal tax rate on income was 70%. He reduced it to 28%.  One tax rate was not the moral equivalent of the other in Reagan’s view. It was immoral to tax away an individual’s incentive to work and the largest share of the fruits of labor.

Many eulogies damn President Reagan with faint praise as a congenial actor whose morally crisp world view is no longer relevant.  The New York Times editorial deplores a “black and white view of the world” and argues that “gray is beginning to look a lot more attractive.”