Rethinking Reagan . . . and How He Changed the World

When I was a kid in elementary school and Carter was president, I began to believe, as many others did, that America had entered a phase of terminal economic and political decline. The advance of Communism everywhere seemed irreversible. I saw the same worry in my parents, who represented both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, both bought into the myth that Reagan was an “extremist” and threw their votes away on John Anderson as a protest vote (they knew Anderson was a goof, but they wanted him to get FEC matching funds).

Of course, my parents had been wrong and knew it by 1984. I remember the almost immedate sense that things would change after the Iran hostages were released. By 1983, the economy has recovered, Grenada had blown the first small hole in our nation’s post-Vietnam paralysis, and I first felt the hope that I would inherit a world in which it would be worthwhile to live. This was not the feeling that “we are proud again!” that so many in Europe would recognize; it was real optimism that we would remain free. I thank Reagan for that, and not even the spineless disappointment of George H.W. Bush and the circus years of Clinton were enough to undo all the good that Reagan did for our country. Reagan was not like his successor. Like everyone who stands for something, everyone seemed to either love him or hate him. The verdict of history will be that he won the Cold War and turned the economy around. In that order.

Today, even Europeans who once hated and feared Reagan have figured this out, at least according to this WaPo story. Of course, I expect a light dose of charity from the media this week, but deep down, they despise him, and we’ll be seeing more of that next week. Expect to see them ardently praise him as a speaker, actor, Great Communicator. All of this is a nice way to say, “all style, no substance.” Which is like saying “Nixon was a crook”–half false and half meaningless in the context of Clinton.

I have often thought that the Reagan Doctrine could offer the best available situation in North Korea. Our pullback there could pave the way for us to apply it. In Afghanistan, for $500 million a year, we defeated the Soviet Army and completely demoralized the Soviet population (Bush I, not Reagan, deserves blame for the failed aftermath). For a much lesser sum, we now have democracy and rising standards of living in Central America. Regan’s efforts in Angola didn’t result in a better government because we backed a fundamentally undemocratic leader, Jonas Savimbi, but Angola was a major setback for Cuba as a Soviet proxy force and set the stage for peaceful handovers of power to less radical opposition movements in Namibia and South Africa. And of course, the Reagan Doctrine was not all Contras and stingers. It was also working with the Vatican and the AFL-CIO to peacefully subvert the Warsaw Pact. Are the North Koreans desperate and brave enought to resist? Isn’t it time to consider similar tactics in North Korea, given Kim Jong Il’s intransigence, mendacity, and sheer dangerousness?