Ronald Reagan - Party Animal
by Timothy Noah
I've registered as a Republican exactly once in my life. The year was 1980, and Ronald Reagan, who died today at the age of 93, was seeking the GOP nomination for president. Teddy Kennedy was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination, and in Massachusetts, where I then lived, Kennedy was certain to win the primary. Better to cast my vote where it could do some good—in favor of John Anderson, who at that point was running as a Republican, and who seemed the only candidate capable of denying Reagan the nomination. Reagan was dangerous. He wanted to eliminate vast portions of the government indiscriminately, and he wanted to commit the military to ill-considered interventions abroad.
I couldn't have been more wrong. As an antigovernment crusader and as a warmonger, Reagan turned out to be all bark and no bite. In his first inaugural address, Reagan said:
It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people.
But that didn't happen. As Michael Kinsley has observed, after Reagan's two terms, spending by the federal government was one-quarter higher, factoring out inflation, than when he got there; the federal civilian workforce had increased from 2.8 million to 3 million; and federal spending, as a share of Gross Domestic Product, had decreased by one percentage point to 21.2 percent. "If Ronald Reagan and his 'Reaganauts' could only slow down the growth of government spending, not reverse it or eliminate wasteful programs, what hope is there for any other conservative president?" complained the conservative Heritage Foundation soon after Reagan left office. The only major government agency Reagan managed to eliminate was the Civil Aeronautics Board, which didn't have much to do after the Carter administration deregulated the airline industry. Fittingly, the Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, completed 10 years after Reagan left office, today houses 5,000 government employees and is the largest government building in Washington.
In the saber-rattling department, here's what Reagan said in his first inaugural address:
As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it—now or ever. Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will.
But the only hot war waged during the Reagan administration was to remove a comic-opera Marxist government from the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada. The United States retreated from Lebanon after a suicide bomber killed more than 200 American soldiers. It is seldom observed that Saddam's gassing of the Kurds, which George W. Bush rightly denounced prior to the Iraq war, occurred on Reagan's watch. In 1984, when the Reagan administration got its first inkling that Iraq was engaged in chemical warfare, it chose not to make a fuss. The most ambitious foreign intervention during the Reagan administration—the funnelling of aid to the Nicaraguan contras—was done illegally and, after it was discovered, embroiled Reagan's second term in a scandal from which it never recovered.
Reagan can probably claim some credit for ending the Cold War, but his principal weapon, characteristically, was spending—the Soviets bankrupted themselves trying to keep up with the Pentagon's weapons-buying binge through the 1980s. Reagan's greatest achievement in foreign affairs was therefore linked to his greatest achievement in domestic affairs. He taught Republicans that they could be even less responsible than Democrats.
Government spending is not (at least in my view) inherently irresponsible. What is irresponsible is spending money you don't have. Perhaps the most poignant passage in Reagan's first inaugural address is the one expressing what today seems a very old-fashioned Republican concern about deficit spending:
For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?
You know the rest of the story. The deficit, which stood at $74 billion in Carter's final year, ballooned to $155 billion in Reagan's final year. In the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, "Reagan taught us deficits don't matter."
Today, what does it mean to be a Republican? It means you can cut taxes indiscriminately and needn't worry about the debt you're piling up. It certainly doesn't mean that you want to shrink the federal government. Indeed, government spending under George W. Bush has increased faster than it did under Bill Clinton. Before Reagan, pandering was principally a Democratic vice. Today, it's principally a Republican vice. Ronald Reagan performed that transformation, and it remains his most enduring legacy.
Some Lines From Reagan
Ronald Reagan spent his formative years as a radio announcer and a film actor. Few presidents have demonstrated Reagan’s gift for delivering telling phrases that stuck in the public mind and defined issues in stark, simplified terms. Here is a selection of some of those phrases —some that made Reagan famous and others that he made famous.
‘One for the Gipper’
"Someday when things are tough, maybe you can ask the boys to go in there and
win just one for the Gipper." —Portraying football player George Gipp in the
film “Knute Rockne, All American,” 1940
'Shining city on a hill'
Let us resolve tonight that young Americans will always ... find there a city of
hope in a country that is free.... And let us resolve they will say of our day
and our generation, we did keep the faith with our God, that we did act worthy
of ourselves, that we did protect and pass on lovingly that shining city on a
hill." — Election Eve speech, Nov. 3, 1980
‘We have piled deficit upon deficit’
"For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our
children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this
long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic
upheavals.
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for
only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as
a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" —Inaugural address, Jan.
20, 1981
‘Tear down this wall’
“If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open
this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” —Speech at the Berlin Wall, June
12, 1987
‘Grown beyond the consent of the governed’
"We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this
makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power
except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth
of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the
governed." —Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981
‘A special interest group that has been too long neglected’
"We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special
interest group that has been too long neglected.
"It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers.
"They are, in short, 'We the people,' this breed called
Americans." —Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981
‘I forgot to duck’
"Honey, I forgot to duck." — 1981, Reagan to his wife, as he
recovered gunshot wounds after an assassination attempt by John Hinckley on
March 30, 1981
‘A time of reckoning’
"An almost unbroken 50 years of deficit spending has finally brought us to a
time of reckoning. We have come to a turning point, a moment for hard decisions.
I have asked the Cabinet and my staff a question, and now I put the same
question to all of you: If not us, who? And if not now, when? It must be done by
all of us going forward with a program aimed at reaching a balanced budget. We
can then begin reducing the national debt." —Second inaugural address, Jan. 21,
1985
‘Render nuclear weapons obsolete’
"For decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured
destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could
retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or
morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our
people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?
"I have approved a research program to find, if we can, a security shield that would destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target. It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons. It wouldn't militarize space, it would help demilitarize the arsenals of Earth. It would render nuclear weapons obsolete." —Second inaugural address, Jan. 21, 1985
‘Whatever else history may say’
“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....
“May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance and never lose your natural, God-given optimism.” —Speech to Republican National Convention, Aug. 17, 1992
‘Go ahead, make my day’
"I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day."
—March 13, 1985, in a speech threatening to veto legislation raising taxes.
‘You don't become president of the United
States’
"When people tell me I became president on January 20, 1981, I feel I have to
correct them. You don't become president of the United States. You are given
temporary custody of an institution called the presidency, which belongs to our
people." — Address to the Republican national convention. Aug. 15, 1988
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