Reagan's birthday is coming up and his former speechwriter Peggy Noonan has penned a delightful column about the essence of the former president:

You knew he was a good man and you knew he meant it. So you understood how he could be the biggest supporter of FDR and the New Deal in 1944, and the most persuasive voice for Barry Goldwater in 1964. He'd thought it through and changed, not overnight but in time and with effort. He could change his mind on abortion in the same way, and not because he feared the base. Reagan was the base.

Something worth remembering when the commentariat questions Giuliani's handicap to be sufficiently appealing to certain constituencies. Very few of the candidates that are lining up for the next presidential contest have the ability to define and become that base.

Donald Luskin links to a collection of Reagan's CPAC speeches from 1974 to 1988. If you have the time read them all, they reveal a lot about those years and how the emerging conservative movement was able to effect meaningful and above all positive change. So yes, there's too much to excerpt, but I selected two bits that I really liked. This one may be relevant for today, from the 1974 speech:

We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

At many points over the past three years I have been at pains to explain why Iraq is not Vietnam - and it still isn't - but with what we know today there is no denying that certain lessons from that terrible war were not heeded. Reagan's term 'our full resources' I believe does not need any further elaboration in that context. Reagan, had he been president today, would have been as reluctant as George Bush to relieve his Secretary of Defense of his duties. But he would at a juncture like the one we're in today, and after some pressure, have allowed his advisors to carry out a dismissal that in the long run would salvage and buttress his own reputation.

This is a beauty, from 1987 and it doesn't need any elaboration:

Our confidence flows not from our skill at maneuvering through political mazes, not from our ability to make the right deal at the right time, nor from any idea of playing one interest group off against the other. Unlike our opponents, who find their glee in momentary political leverage, we garnish our strength of purpose from a commitment to ideals that we deeply believe are not only right but that work. Ludwig Von Mises, that great economist, once noted: “People must fight for something they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil.”

Well, the conservative movement remains in the ascendancy because we have a bold, forward-looking agenda. No longer can it be said that conservatives are just anti-Communist. We are, and proudly so, but we are also the keepers of the flame of liberty. And as such, we believe that America should be a source of support, both moral and material, for all those on God’s Earth who struggle for freedom. Our cause is their cause, whether it be in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, or Angola. When I came back from Iceland I said—and I meant it—American foreign policy is not simply focused on the prevention of war but the expansion of freedom.

There is a reason for the emphasis on 'I meant it'. Reagan's detractors have always labeled him as an actor, most often a bad actor. But through most of his time as a politician I believe he wasn't acting at all, he merely and often very effectively used certain movie industry techniques to further the message in which he deeply believed. Especially in later age Reagan became keenly aware of how his message was read and thus felt a need to underline his sincerity and earnestness. For most of his followers however that was hardly necessary, they instinctively understood the natural honesty that was an essential part of Ronald Reagan.

With Israeli forces close to launching a major incursion into Lebanese territory I was reminded of this classic Reagan anecdote, when Israel made its first call to the gates of Beirut in 1982. Former NSC staffer Geoffrey Kemp recalls as follows:

“Menachem, this is a holocaust” Reagan said.

“Mr. President, I think I know what a holocaust is” Begin replied, in a voice that Kemp would recall as “dripping with sarcasm”. According to Deaver, Reagan continued “in the plainest of language” to tell Begin what he thought about the bombing of Beirut, concluding by saying, “It has gone too far. You must stop it”.

Twenty-minutes later Begin called back and said he had issued the order to Sharon to stop the bombings. After he had hung up the phone Reagan said to Deaver, “I didn’t know I had that kind of power”.

(from Lou Cannon’s President Reagan, The Role of a Lifetime)

This snippet from the past is instructive on many levels, especially Reagan’s insistence combined with his astonishment over Begin’s prompt response. The reason I reprint it is not so much to suggest that George should treat Olmert in exactly the same manner, but we should be very aware that there still isn’t that much that a US president needs to do in order to direct Israeli actions. And Menachem was made of sterner stuff than Olmert, I believe.

I should emphasize that Ronald Reagan, a man strangely constituted of self-certainty but little egotism, never had a conscious image of himself as destined for power. Yet his subconscious will seemed to work at it all the time.

The events - Nofziger, Weinberger - of last week prompted Reagan's biographer Edmund Morris to look at one of the former president's remarkable abilities: to remember what was to come.

One of the reasons that I keep coming back to Reagan is not just some deep political fascination that started in the 1980s when I was still in college. Beyond the political and historical aspects there is a trove of psychological insights that continue to give meaning to this unique and remarkable moviestar turned president. And Morris, in his highly controversial biography Dutch- from which I have learned a awful lot - came closest to unearthing the most important ones.

Kate McMillan's post made me realize I forgot to spend some time on the 25th anniversary of the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life.

There are two remarkable aspects of the incident worth noting. Over the past quarter century it has become clear how close to death the Gipper really was, something that the White House at the time had been very good at keeping under wraps. Reagan lost more than half of his blood supply which for anyone constitutes a deep physical trauma, let alone for a seventy-year old man. The other thing was of course Secret Service agent Jerry Parr, the man who landed on Reagan while they were pushed into the presidential limousine. Parr made the call to go directly to the hospital and thus saved the president's life. Did Parr somehow foresee this happening when he was a child? Judge for yourself:

Q: Tell us when you first wanted to be a Secret Service agent.

JP: In the in the late 1930s. My dad had been out of work a lot and so we went to a lot of movies, and one of the movies that I saw and paid particular attention to was called The Code of the Secret Service. I made my dad take me to that movie quite a few times. And there was a character in there called Brass Bancroft. And that really got me liking that job. And I never really forgot that job, but it turned out it wasn't until 1962 when the Secret Service came to interview for special agents that I sort of revisited that. I made an application and went into the Secret Service in 1962, October 1, up in New York City.

Q: Who was the actor playing Brass Bancroft?

JP: The actor was Ronald Wilson Reagan, and he later told me that was one of the worst movies he ever made. But for a young kid like myself, it was very exciting and it made me believe that an agent's life was not only exciting but meaningful.

Q: It seems like a huge irony.

JP: It is because 42 years later who would have thought? That is the distance between the time I saw the movie and the [1981] shooting of President Reagan. And so who would have thought we would have been
in a car hustling south on Connecticut Ave. and him really near death, and getting him to a first-class hospital where they had a great trauma team? The combination of those things saved his life.

Extraordinary.

Only hours following Lyn Nofziger's death another core member of the Reagan-crew has died, Caspar Weinberger at age 88.

It's interesting to note that the Washington Post in the first paragraph announcing his death mentions that Weinberger "was a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal". It's odd, but it would seem to me that there were at least a number of other Reagan era officials (McFarlane, Poindexter, North) who were central to the Iran-Contra disaster. It was the National Security Center that was the epicenter of Iran-Contra, not the Pentagon.

Although Weinberger was indicted the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about him were his ruthless budgetary skills, first in Governor Reagan's team in California and later in Washington as Secretary of Defense. The military build-up during the Reagan years that were instrumental in defeating the Soviet Union and which ironically created sizeable deficits can to a large extent be attributed to "Cap the Knife". May he rest in peace.

UPDATE: WaPo has now changed its first paragraph and it now reads that Weinberger "got ensnared in the Iran-Contra scandal". Ah, the beauty of online editing.

Lyn Nofziger, one of the earliest Reaganites and one of the Gipper's most solid advisers died earlier today of cancer at the age of 81. May he rest in peace.

Factoid: he was one of the few American political personalities that I've seen in person. In early 1999 I had breakfast at the Hay-Adams in DC and an American colleague of mine pointed across the room at a table and said: that's Lyn Nofziger, Nixon's Press Secretary. Quietly I continued my breakfast not sure how to repsond. Although Nofziger did indeed serve under Nixon as a deputy assistant to the president for congressional relations, I was quite surprised that someone my age would identify him with Nixon - and attribute the wrong position - and not Reagan.

Today it is the 95 years ago that Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, and as regular readers will know, I always do something extra on Reagan-related days. Today, not long after Martin Luther King Day and the death of Coretta Scott King, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the Gipper’s attitude to race. Interestingly, it was he who signed MLK Day into law, a move that has often been interpreted as politically expedient. There is probably some truth to that, but an incident during his years at Eureka College probably sheds some light on Reagan’s pure and original attitudes to race. Here’s a moving anecdote, excerpted from Lou Cannon’s Governor Reagan:

In 1931, the Eureka team traveled by bus to play undefeated Elmhurst. McKinzie left the bus and went inside to check the team into a hotel. This took so long that Reagan left the bus to find out what was happening. He found the coach arguing with the hotel manager, who told McKinzie that the hotel wouldn’t accommodate Burghardt and the team’s other colored player - and neither would any other hotel in town. McKinzie didn’t know what to do. The coach thought the entire team should sleep on the bus, but Reagan said that would embarrass the black players because everyone would be discomforted. He had a better idea, Dixon was nearby, Reagan told McKinzie, and Burghardt and Jim Rattan, the other black player, could come home with him. “Are you sure”?” McKinzie asked. Reagan insisted that the players would be welcome at his home and McKinzie provided the cab fare to Dixon.

What always struck me is that it was Reagan, out of a full bus, who took the initiative to salvage the situation and in doing so acted without any agenda or any political need to do so. It was a totally natural response that instinctively opted for the ‘good’ over the clear and apparent ‘wrong’. Of course Reagan’s response can also been explained by looking at his upbringing by Jack and Nelle Reagan. Both parents abhorred intolerance up to the point where young Ron and elder brother Neil were at one point barred from attending a screening of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation because of its favorable treatment of the Ku Klux Klan.

Reagan with mother Nelle and father Jack.

Burghardt stayed in touch with Reagan over the years and contributed to his 1980 election campaign. He made another appearance in one of the Gipper’s speeches on race at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in 1986:

And one day we played a team that didn't have any mix in its lineup. And playing opposite Burgie -- his name was Franklin Burghardt, but my nickname for him was Burgie -- playing opposite Burgie was a fellow that was filled with hatred and prejudice, and it was very obvious. And he was very vocal about it when we would line up against each other. He also played dirty against Burgie. In the huddle I looked across once and saw Burgie, and his lip was bleeding where he was biting it. He had already an injured knee before the game, and this fellow had found out about it -- evidently he groaned at the wrong time -- and he was using his dirty tactics to further hurt that knee. And Burgie was biting his lip to not show the pain. And in the huddle, we were so mad -- and all of his teammates -- we wanted to go after the fellow. And Burgie said, ``No, this is my problem; this is my fight.''

William Franklin Burghardt died in 1981.

UPDATE: James Na elaborates on race in the Midwest and has another remarkable Reagan anecdote while Marathon Pundit has more about Reagan's native village, Tampico.

Or as OpinionJournal argues, Still Morning in America.

It was a big construction site when I visited last Christmas, but on Friday George Bush formally opened the latest exhibition in Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Library in Simi Valley. Visitors can now visit the Air Force One that served seven US Presidents, the last one of which was Ronald Reagan. Despite the grandeur and spectacle of the current 747, aircraft connoisseurs and history buffs alike generally agree that there’s nothing like the real original bird, the 707.

It's a year ago today that Ronald Reagan died. Here's an anecdote that encapsulates the essence of Reagan's appeal as a leader, an appeal that continues to this day.

It was a few months ago while zapping TV-channels, that I caught the tail end of an interview with former vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Talking about her and Mondale's loss in the 1984 election she reminisces how during that campaign her team entered a blue-collar, unionized and thus Democratic stronghold and started asking why so many of them voted for Reagan. The answer they got, said Ferraro, was that "he made us stand tall again" to which she added with an apologizing and somewhat confused smile: " ... and we couldn't fight that".

UPDATE: Trey Jackson has a comprehensive tribute.

One of the things on my wishlist is making a feature length documentary about Reagan's life of significantly better quality than what has emerged on film so far. Even the documentaries available on DVD at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley are very average productions that fail to do the former president justice. It's not an easy subject to tackle objectively and that is probably also the reason why Hollywood to date hasn't tried anything meaningful and with that I discount James Brolin's journey into a terribly subjective abyss.

But we may have to wait for a few more years as new documents continue to emerge and yesterday it was announced that the diary the Gipper kept during his White House years will be published by HarperCollins. Don't expect any spectacular revelations or new facts, but it will still make for an interesting contribution to history:

Still, scholars are greeting the publication with anticipation: "We've known of these diaries for a long time, and it'll be interesting to see if they tell us anything that's new," said Lou Cannon, a former Washington Post reporter and author of several books about Reagan, including "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime," his biography. "One of the things all of us who write about Reagan know, no matter how much we thought we knew him, there's always something else to learn."

Can't wait.

The champion of freedom and democracy dismounts from his horse to talk about recent developments to his former speechwriter, Peter Robinson. (hat tip: Powerline).

A week from now we’ll be watching the Academy Awards and in addition to wondering what movie will end up grabbing most of the Oscars, my question is how Ronald Reagan will feature in the traditional obituary part of the evening. Last night the Dorsman household watched The Reagans after I discovered it at our local DVD store and remembering the fuss about it a year ago - CBS cancelled its release - I decided I had to see it. It was almost painful to sit through the three-hour factually incorrect slanderous smear directed at the former President and his family. There was absolutely nothing redeeming in the entire film other than the fact that the producers managed to find an actress who was the spitting image of Betsy Bloomingdale, and that was about it. From beginning to end it was a deliberate attempt to discredit Ronald and Nancy Reagan and misrepresent their entire record in Sacramento and Washington.

Look, artistic freedom is fine and I guess someone had to break the hagiographic spell that has accompanied Reagan throughout his life, but isn’t it a sad irony that the industry of which he was such an important part has not been able to take a stab at a more balanced portrayal of the Gipper? Will Hollywood ever pay homage to one of its most famous sons? Let’s see what happens next week, but I am not very optimistic.

Today is Ronald Reagan’s birthday and following the visit to the library a number of weeks back, I have now immersed myself in Lou Cannon's two-volume comprehensive biography, one book dealing with the Sacramento years and one with the White House years. It’s a great read and I recommend it for it is not only an excellent chronological account of Reagan’s life; Cannon keeps enough distance to maintain a decent measure of objectivity and put the Gipper’s life in context. What struck me is how much George W. Bush’s vision as it has taken shape over the past four years is not just an extension of what Reagan laid out forty years earlier but it is in essence what Reagan had in mind. This is not what Bush came out with during his initial bid for the presidency - remember the “humble foreign policy” - but events during his first term have driven him to Reagan's ideological blueprint.

That vision was condensed in what became known as the “The Speech”, Reagan’s visionary exploit called “A Time for Choosing” delivered to support the Goldwater campaign in 1964. It was a turning point in American politics and established the conservative movement as we know it in America today. If you look at it closely you will notice that it might as well have been delivered by Bush a few weeks ago rather than by Reagan four decades ago. Here’s his take on Social Security:

And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.

His suspicions about the UN:

I think we're for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we're against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population.

And then there’s what we now call the Bush Doctrine, fighting totalitarianism and terror by spreading freedom and democracy:

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender.

Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face -- that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender.

There you have it, the pillars of George Bush’s presidency formulated four decades ago by the founding father of present day conservatism. Something tells me that Reagan’s impact on America and the world at large keeps growing and so will his stature as a visionary statesman. Reagan himself expressed his hopes as to how future generation would see him (at the RNC of 1992), as follows – personally one of my all time favorite Reagan lines:

And whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way.

My fondest hope for each one of you -- and especially for the young people here -- is that you will love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism. May each of you have the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute works that will make the world a little better for your having been here.

Well, it is a lot better because Reagan was here but something tells me that we still have a lot of work ahead of us to fulfill his dreams.

UPDATE: others remembering Reagan: Michelle Malkin, Trey Jackson and Craig Westover remembers the Speech too. And here's how I remembered my favorite president shortly after he died last year.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Powerline reports how a resolution honoring President Reagan in Minnesota's state legislature fared.

If you haven't already, read Edmund Morris' reflections on the Gipper, a lengthy piece with some remarkable forays into Reagan's life and personality from his official biographer. I can lift out a few parts that struck me but having read it, combined with what I know about Reagan, it leaves me with only one real train of thought. It's amazing that Reagan, given the time he grew up in, the environment in which he shaped his political career as well as some of the setbacks he encountered in life, was so confident and thoroughly at ease with himself. It was something unique, a centerpiece of his psyche, that not only extinguished any self-doubt, it also fueled his decisive optimism. This was likely the key to his success, I think, and Morris highlights an important feature of that ability:

Reagan was not introverted, yet from infancy he had the same kind of "happy" self-centeredness that Bradbury speaks of, the same need to inhabit an imaginative construct in which outside reality was refracted, or reordered, to his liking.

It structured the world for him into a navigable chart where anything was possible. I know that for a fact, because I recognize it. Although there’s some naivety in there we should not judge it as a negative, if you are able to shape the facts of the world around you into a construct that enables you to realize your dream or vision, then it’s a huge positive. Think about it, if you have all the cold hard facts available, wouldn't it be a truly sobering event, preventing you from taking a bold, risky course? Combine that self-shaped map of the world with unrelenting optimism and you have a pretty good chance at success. Reagan had it in spades, which is why we’re still talking about him.

Bagpipes always accompany movement and last night in Simi Valley the lone piper’s rendition of Amazing Grace accompanied Ronald Reagan to his final resting place. It was the conclusion of a memorable and emotional week with a number of deeply touching ceremonies and that’s why I decided not to update the blog but leave you with my farewell to Reagan below.

It was of course also the week of Nancy Reagan and when she broke down last night it was also the moment that Irene and felt tears welling up in our eyes, it was really a heartbreaking moment. In a way it is telling that only now, after ten years of braveness and hard work for someone suffering from Alzheimer’s and before that decades of support and partnership, that the media are giving Nancy the recognition she deserves. From harridan to heroine, apparently you need to be old, frail and suffering from a deep loss before the media is able to extend the sympathy and recognition you deserve. Needless to say the positive influence, importance and character of Nancy were long recognized in the Dorsman household. There’s no successful career that is not shaped by strong spousal support, it’s always a team effort, and Nancy’s strength and intellect not only helped navigate Reagan through the most difficult patches of his presidency, they were also instrumental in Reagan’s greatest successes. And by the way, we were also deeply impressed with her escort Maj. Gen. Galen Jackman, what a moving display of support. He was the pillar of this emotional week.

With that I will leave the Reagan week behind me and regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

Yesterday President Ronald Reagan passed away. In the weeks ahead we will all discuss his legacy and the impact he has had on our lives. The effect he’s had on my life is indelible. Here’s why.

In the Beginning
When Ronald Reagan became President of the United States I was a teenager, had heard about him, but he did not really ring a bell, other than that he was an older guy with a background in Hollywood. Within a few years after Reagan taking office, I embarked on my journey in life, left the elderly home to go to university and discover the world. My journey took place against the backdrop of a western world that was stuck in recession, overtaxed, overregulated, uncompetitive and facing many social ills that at the time seemed beyond resolution as a left-of-center political correct atmosphere had stifled real debate. At the same time many people in Europe rallied the streets on a regular basis to demonstrate against deploying American cruise missiles on European soil as a counterweight to the Soviet missile build-up. Many of my friends joined in these protests, unwilling to see the rationale of the “peace through strength” philosophy that was coming out of Washington. It was in those days that I mentally departed from Europe and saw the deeper values underpinning “Go out there and win one for the Gipper” and “the Shining City on a Hill”, sentences that drew ridicule in Europe. Yet they represented and appealed to profound human emotions, crossed boundaries and inspired many around the world, not least of all myself. So my journey that turned out to be driven by optimism, a strong need for self fulfillment and a deep belief in the ability of the individual to shape his or her own destiny coincided with a period in which the White House was occupied by an inspirational, visionary, wise, and charming man who very effectively communicated the same values to the rest of the world. That man’s term in office spanned my departure from home, college; graduation and my departure from my native grounds. Ronald Reagan helped me shape my destiny.

The Vision
The ideology supporting Reagan’s political ascent was simple, but was lost in years where the makeability of society by government had become accepted wisdom. And for many of the post-war years it seemed that on both sides of the Atlantic an active government that taxed and redistributed worked. By the late 1970s however it had become evident that it could wreck dynamic societies and that a return to a deregulated, low tax environment where the economic freedom of the individual has precedence over collective arrangements would be the best way to revive a broken economy. That a free-market system had serious shortcomings was not lost on Reagan, but as he would eloquently put it, mankind had not come up with anything better so far. The tenet of individual freedom also infused Reagan’s foreign policy and it established the notion that taking a principal ideological stand vis-à-vis the Soviet Union would be the only way to deal with that adversary. Appeasement was not part of the Reagan dictionary. It turned out Reagan was right and with that he not only ended the Cold War, he gave a new generation a handbook of how to deal with international conflict. The current war on terror will to a large extent be defined by Reagan’s view of the world.

The Man
But there was more to Reagan than just his vision. There was the person, the man Ronald, and it has often been said that he was aloof and remote, to the point that he had strained relationships with his children. The gregarious Bushies never connected with what seemed like a distant man, a claim that his critics often used to point out that it was impossible to write a credible biography about Reagan. There was in their view no way of getting close to him and understand what he was about. The reality was that most of Reagan’s emotional and inter-human needs were fulfilled by only one person, Nancy. Ronald and Nancy were the embodiment of an almost perfect relationship that includes love, friendship and a very strong professional partnership. As odd as it may sound, they did not need anyone. But that doesn’t mean Reagan was distant or aloof, he was just harder to read for the outside world as he didn’t embody the standard social traits that many expect of others. Reagan: A life in Letters reveals what an extremely nice and amicable man he was. Concerned, engaged, almost humble. If you combine that with his engaging humor, the twinkle in his eyes and the trademark Reagan gait you can not come to any other conclusion than that he was an incredibly cordial and loving man. A nice man, a good man but not everyone was always willing to see that.

The Secret
But a great vision and a good man do not make automatically make one of the greatest presidents. There’s more and let me tell you that Ronald Reagan prompted me to do something else: to buy a TV. When I had just arrived in Hong Kong in the summer of 1992 the newspapers where covering the Republican convention and Ronald Reagan had apparently taken the stage by storm with a vintage speech. I was disappointed that I had missed it, but I wasted no time in ensuring that that would not happen again and I bought myself a new TV, however I was too late to see a rerun of the Gipper’s speech. I clipped the editorial of the Asian Wall Street Journal, Reagan’s Secret, and I have kept it to this day in my files as it captures the essence of the man. Reagan’s secret was his ability to not define the political debate in terms of the problems of today, it said, but in terms of tomorrow’s potential. That is also why men like Carter and Mondale were essentially walkovers for Reagan. Reagan was about freedom, the human spirit, achievement and entrepreneurial drive. He was a master in unleashing these sentiments and by offering everyone in to share in his optimism. The editorial concludes:

“Optimism, at any time, resides somewhere inside nearly every voter. We doubt there’s a politician who more masterfully explored the potential of this powerful human need than Ronald Reagan”

And that was the essence, the secret if you will, of his presidency. He was a great man with a compelling vision and he was also able to convince us that we too were great and that we could all fulfill our dreams. Very few politicians have that ability and therein we find Reagan’s greatness.

The End
There can be no doubt that the booming 1990s were therefore a direct product of the Reagan years, and so is the current age where it seems that we are far better than ever equipped to deal with economic adversity and armed struggle. Much of what Bush today is laying out as his vision comes straight from the Reagan textbook, although there are certain nuances. Reagan saw government in general as the problem whereas Bush is not afraid to use government as a tool for social change, something that would conflict with Reagan’s quest for personal freedom and liberty.

It is impossible to fathom what must have gone through Reagan’s mind when he slowly succumbed to Alzheimer’s. It was a harsh and painful way to conclude a phenomenal life. We can not judge whether he was able to access the optimism that he so effectively appealed to in others. Many have quoted from his letter to the American people, and there are numerous quotes that will pass the limelight in the weeks ahead. My favorite farewell lines from Ronald Reagan however come from his last speech before he left the oval office in 1989. In it he summarizes the achievements during his years in office but he rightly gives credit to those that were responsible for the hard work that made it all possible: the American people, and in doing that calling them what they were to Ronald Reagan: “My Friends” :

We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.

It’s now up to all of us who loved Ronald Reagan, in America and beyond, to live up to that legacy. We probably know how to achieve prosperity, but we should also realize that the tools to fight the war against terror have been given to us by the man whose compelling request to go out there and win one for him in the end contains the message that we are really winning one for ourselves.

We must not and can not fail a man who put freedom and the human spirit at the center of his political platform. To me he will always be a great inspiration as my journey continues. Farewell my friend.

Ronald Reagan passed away today at age 93. His political career, vision and deep rooted optimism have had an incredible impact on my life and career. I will be back with a more comprehensive analysis of Reagan and his place in history in the next day or so.

For now the only thing I can say is: rest in peace Mr. President.

Today’s commissioning of the USS Ronald Reagan reminds us not only of a great President, but also what he stood for and why it is important to defend the values he embraced. The Gipper stood up for freedom and democracy, but above all, he stood for unending optimism and a passionate belief in a better tomorrow. There have been few, if any, presidents or other politicians in my lifetime that were able to appeal to that basic human instinct to strive for advancement and betterment, to look into the future and tell oneself that things can improve if we work for it. It is precisely that sense of purpose that gives people the ability to deal with adversity and darkness. Reagan not only knew the importance of that message, he knew how to bring it across, and he knew that it should be defended at all cost.