Can this Party be Saved?

Michael Cohen is right -- the filter of elections is the ultimate engine of de-mythology. That which is long-lasting and timeless will be remembered and that which is of transient nature will be pragmatically set aside. Will Bunch's effort is aimed at assisting us make this realistic effort at political discernment. It is a valuable contribution, even as I find far more reality to be cherished than that of the author. Reagan would have appreciated the honest assessments given with civility, even as Nancy being the keeper of a love greater than words likely -- well, has all your names.

Noting the current Republican refusal to engage with the Obama administration over addressing the present economic crisis, I recently penned an editorial essay for the Chicago Tribune entitled "the death of the GOP?" In 2009, the GOP has become a political party that has generally ignored the working class, that depends upon deploying an economic, supply-side theory that is ill fitting to the times, that has permitted sound deregulation to be transformed into economic looting by the well-connected, that has neglected the obligation to develop alternative energy resources and thereby jeopardized national security, and now thinks we should admire its leadership for sitting on its hands. The GOP deserves to be on life support if its modus Vivendi is pouting. It was particularly frustrating to read Judge Gregg's explanation for his withdrawal from the Commerce Department; specifically, that he could not see himself working on a team with people of different perspectives than his own.
I doubt very much whether Reagan would recognize his party, or if he did, the resemblance would be closer to the condition of the GOP in 1977 immediately following Jimmy Carter's election. Then, Republicans held only 38 Senate seats, not enough even to sustain a filibuster. In the House, the GOP had dwindled to 143 seats, just one-third of the total.

The Reagan Formula

This of course was the political party inherited by Ronald Reagan. Almost everyone doubted whether it could be revived, but Reagan didn't. Reagan asked his fellow Republicans whether it would be possible to meld two strands of voters: from the ranks of blue collar Democrats, those concerned with crime and social issues like abortion
and teenage pregnancy and from the stalwarts of traditionalism, the moderate but suburban Republican cohort. Reagan said: "I believe the answer is: Yes, it is possible to create a political entity that will reflect the views of the great, hitherto, conservative majority. Relying upon similar efforts in California while he was governor, he reached out to what would be called Reagan Democrats who he described as" the pro-life, anti-Communist voters who were more at home in bowling alleys than country clubs."

An Alliance Premised Upon Optimism

What made this unlikely alliance come together was Reagan's optimistic orientation toward the future, something that radically distinguished him from conservatives of the early 20th century, and distinguishes today from the awkward incoherence of George W. Bush. Mr. Bush may be a wonderful man in person; I assume he is a good husband and father.

President Reagan's manifest love for Nancy is one of America's great love stories, especially since it has been chronicled in published letters in his own hand. Given the mostly sad estrangement of Ronald Reagan from Patti Reagan and his son Ronnie Jr. whom the President loved but did not always allow such affection to be revealed in a complete or timely way, one cannot say the same without qualification about the Gipper's parenting, but with respect to all -- family and friend and stranger -- it simply must be stipulated that Reagan was extraordinarily articulate, likable, and welcoming as a person. I have already commented upon this, and none of the commentaries thus far have laid a glove on this point. Ronald Reagan's optimism and an ability to convey it was not a myth. Out of those personal strengths he was able to turn a political party that was in the wilderness of narrow minded economic considerations into a genuine conservative movement.

As has been noted in some incisive commentary here in the café, there were shortcomings in Reagan policy as well - Reagan did not fully comprehend or address the failures of the market or how hundreds of thousands could be excluded from its goods and services and opportunities. Reagan also failed to grasp how his eloquence had the unfortunate side effect of giving cover-plane to selfishness. Selfishness is a manifestation of being at liberty, but it is not the sum of it, and the President did not nearly enough emphasize our political and governance and personal obligations to the least of these.

Win one for the Gipper - Reagan did transcend communism as an idea

I was teaching at Notre Dame when Ronald Reagan came as our commencement speaker just weeks after surviving an assassination attempt in 1981. John Hinckley did not represent a foreign power attacking the country or its ideals, but he might have well have been. Prior to the assassination attempt, Reagan was a partisan; afterwards, he had a decent claim of being a USA patriot. America has a generous nature and she rallies around those who love her as much as Reagan did.

Reagan of course did not spend a great deal of time in convalescence. When he came to Notre Dame, he bounded upon the stage with a presence that dominated the 14,000 or so in attendance. Certainly his words were memorable. He proclaimed boldly: "The West will not contain communism, it will transcend communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." Jack Kemp has called those "prophetic words," and indeed they were, but on that afternoon in South Bend Indiana they seemed more incredible than not. There was a good deal of scoffing among my sophisticated political science friends. Yet, while no single person or a set of efforts can be given credit for the fall of communism, Reagan played more than his part in his strategic arms control and spending efforts vis a vis the Soviets. As a public teacher, and a darn good one, he advanced the cause of freedom as I have already noted in speech after speech, action after action, demonstrating that the freedom associated with democracy was more likely to allow men and women to pursue their happiness than the central planning of ideas that essentially were cynical of the human condition.

Kyle Longley's thoughtful comments and research demonstrates that in many parts of the world outside of the Soviet Union, the President had a utilitarian, not a principled, foreign policy. This was the story of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, but the President accepted her judgment and those like Allan Gerson and John Bolton, whose idea of diplomacy is very much in the same highly pragmatic mold. The America-centric point of view has isolated us from the international community, and Reagan must share part of the blame for the idea that whatever is in America's interest is in the interest of the world. The legal counsel who advised George H.W. Bush after me doubted whether international law was even real law, and the price for such parochialism came due in the son's administration, and the bill remains unsatisfied.

Nevertheless, in the now public letters of Reagan to Breshnev one sees how when Reagan writes in his own hand he reverts to a more principled analysis than the Machiavellian advisors he allowed without sufficient oversight to conduct covert CIA operations that indeed tolerated and worsened injustice in Central America. Commentator David Bowman makes this point, and others do as well, often in anger. Anger is well directed at injustice if it is the first step to wisdom and a commitment not to stay on the same path. Have we made this commitment as a nation?

Reagan was convinced by Kirkpatrick that the Soviet hand was behind unrest in our hemisphere, and that frankly, blinded him to the poverty and disease that was often the more ready and sure recruiter in NIcaragua and Cuba and Panama. Unlike Bush, however, as Will Bunch has illustrated, Reagan was not an interventionist, and again, his correspondence is peppered with repeated admonitions to the Soviets to, for example, withdraw from "Afghanistan since it remains a majaor obstacle to progrress, beclouding the international atmosphere." (Letter of November 17 1982 to Breshnev)

A President of Letters

We know that one of the reasons why Ronald Reagan's challenge to communism as an idea was so successful was because he was able to put his own thoughts down on paper in his own hand regularly and systematically. All of us who write for a living, or teach, know that the strength of ideas depend upon expression in written form not until then are they understood or their implications fully digested. More than a few books have now utilized Reagan's abundant written notes for radio broadcasts, speeches, university lecturers, and books of all type. Reagan would not want it overstated, but it is fair to call Ronald Reagan, even as a humble self-deprecating graduate of Eureka College, a man of letters. He certainly left a thoughtful legacy, and again, an optimistic one. For example, in one essay speculating about life in the United States in 2076, Reagan saw a bright future provided that we recognize that the cost of government is often our liberty, and while that the cost we agree to accept be evaluated carefully wherever individual freedom is "sacrificed" for the common good.

Liberty and the Common Good?

I will confess here is a real concern; a lacunae in the Reagan philosophical approach that if left unattended contains the seed for his Grand Old Party's destruction. Reagan inevitably favored liberty over community and saw them as antagonistic. This does not recognize that in working together for common objective we can often facilitate by public means our individual liberties . As noted earlier, Reagan's formulation of liberty was heavily skewed toward selfishness. It was well received in the 1980s because Jimmy Carter had made the government seemed feckless -- a point emphasized by long gasoline lines and inconsequential public relations efforts to lick inflation, but Reagan's antidote of extreme libertarian isolation is not the answer to this.

Barack Obama understands the government to be a type of public entrepreneur. Ronald Reagan would not. For Reagan, the government's essential failing is that it has no resources of its own. The government, Reagan would say, invests your money and thereby deadens itself to opportunity born of real risk. That said, President Obama contends that he does not see government as the solution to every problem, although the initial weeks consumed by the massive spending stimulus measures necessarily leave one wary of the relative size of public and private sectors. Here, the Reagan benchmarks will be useful to have. A good deal of public money, as we know, is being put in private hands. Reagan would be very skeptical, however, and he would caution us to be as well.

Federalism?

Another achievement of Ronald Reagan is claimed to be the revival of federalism. Federalism as an idea as attractive insofar as it reduces cultural tensions that would be more pronounced were there only one answer rather than 50. The best illustration of what we lose when we disregard federalism occurs in the abortion context. The nationalization of this issue by the Supreme Court is the precipitating cause of the culture war: The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v.Wade took this issue over even when there is far too much division for an imposed a single perspective that is directly at odds with the views of many for religious and scientific reasons alike.

On close examination, it turns out that Reagan really didn't revive federalism in any long-lasting way. He certainly talked about it; had me draft executive orders ostensibly designed to ensure it; and encouraged litigation in the Supreme and lower courts to bolster the sovereign authority of the states. In truth, however, federalism exists only in name, as the Supreme Court has resisted this effort and without a judiciary patrolling the boundaries between what is national and what is local, matters are inevitably national. Indeed, given the interdependency of our economic and political future with the nations well beyond our borders, the concept of federalism needs to be re-oriented to account for the United States as a sovereign, federalist unit in an international setting.

The Judges

Another claimed achievement for Ronald Reagan is a return to judicial restraint. Here, conservatives uniformly overstate the problem of judicial activism and only partially identify or resolve it. Concepts like Originalism only tend to hide the personal judicial choices of the judges in the reliance upon historical source. Nevertheless, Reagan's careful assessment of judicial candidates coordinated by OLC in the Department of Justice identified hundreds of men and women of integrity and ability for lower court appointment who have since distinguish themselves further -- and importantly, not just in a single minded ideological way. President Obama is admiring of the intellectual qualities that Reagan was able to emphasize in judicial selection, but he wishes to supplement the noted intellectual qualities in judges like John Roberts and Samuel Alito with even greater attention paid to the personal empathy of the judicial decision-maker. As a constitutional law professor, the President recognizes that there is often a range of answers to statutory and constitutional interpretive questions and the answers given ought to be sensitive to the needs of the least advantaged.

There is more to be said. The Reagan years suggest the depth of the confidence deficit we presently feel. Some would say, with plausible reason, that Reagan re-built our confidence upon premises of selfishness fueled by credit and borrowing practices that got far worse during his tenure and catastrophic a generation later. There is some painful truth here as the maldistribution of wealth and opportunity illustrates. Will Bunch is convinced that we cannot work our way back without understanding a truer, less adulatory portrait of Ronald Reagan. My own sense is that the problem lies less with Reagan than with us. In particular, the manner with which we chosen to invest our personal freedom, in terms of both time and resources. Have we stayed true to family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom, or have we personally delayed family formation or ignored the needs of even our own family? Have we understood work as a matter of co-creation or as a burden to be minimized and avoided? Is our neighborhood really a community of neighbors or just anonymous, atomistic souls thrown together by chance with no need or interest to know, let alone, help each other?

As he left us, Reagan himself said he wanted to be remembered as someone who ''appealed to our greatest hopes, not our worst fears, to our confidence rather than our doubts.'' Given our imperfection, certainly mine, that appeal, itself, was premised upon an indulgence of myth, but one in which Reagan knew that asking more of us would likely yield exactly that -- a greater commitment to the things that really matter from each of us. You might say Reagan was the first President in modern time to have an "audacity of hope" - in us. Thank you, Will Bunch, for the opportunity to reflect on your work and what Ronald Reagan may (or should) continue to mean in the life of our Nation.