Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels elicited several hushed gasps and raised eyebrows late last week as he lectured a conservative crowd that it was “time to let Ronald Reagan go.”
He's right.
During the entire GOP primary season, all we heard from conservatives was Reagan this and Reagan that. Every candidate was measured against the Gipper, none of them were close.
What does this tell us?
Let's start by saying that I thought Reagan was the man we needed, for the time we were in. Carter had this country in such a mess in 1980. The nation's collective self-esteem was in the tank, with double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, and a foreign policy that is still haunts us. Despite Reagan's mistakes, he turned America's thinking around. His policies were tough sells and bitter pills to swallow.
But times have changed. None of these guys were like Reagan because we are not in the 80s, we are in the new millennium. Tax cuts are good, and he loved them. But with those cuts in taxes, came cuts in spending. A tough a negotiator he was (with the Soviets), but today's enemy will not negotiate in good faith. If they do, it's only used as a ruse to re-arm. So, using the same model with terrorists would not work either.
Conservatives simply must understand that not all of Reagan's ideas would work in 2008. Some would, but those aren't the kinds of things that the current GOP has the guts to implement.
2 comments:
This story is, in fact, very misleading. Here’s the exact quote:
“I want to share a thought, because I don’t get this opportunity and might not again to visit with old friends and new who are as influential and as involved and as committed to this project as you are. I hope very much not to be misunderstood. I think it is time to let Ronald Reagan go. Not from our reverent memory, of course. Not ever, but as our touchstone, as our icon, as our hallmark and our reference point. Let me please explain what I mean.
When I was the age or a little more than today’s Fellows and summer participants, it used to strike me so odd that the Democrats of that day, or other public figures of that viewpoint, couldn’t quit obsessing about FDR. And what it told me as a young person at that time was they were looking backwards. They had nothing new to offer, nothing new to say. Nothing to say to me. It was a dead giveaway that they were living in the past.
Ralph Emerson once wrote that “In any place, any political system ultimately divides between the party of hope and the party of memory.” And hope is always, of course, about the future and the next generation, and that’s what The Fund for American Studies has always been about. People come and go. The greatest of leaders come and go, but ideas and ideals and principles endure. This is what The Fund communicates and holds sacred and preserves and transmits. I don’t think anyone understood that better than Ronald Reagan, who was always fixed on the future, who always spoke to the next generation, who always believed that somehow, someway, against the apparent odds of the present America, the things that we stand for would advance, and progress and prevail.”
Anonymous,
Thanks for the extended remarks. As is usually the case with short articles (such as the one I linked to), much gets left out and the message sometimes gets lost. Be that as it may, I think Governor Daniels recognizes, there are many conservatives that are not embracing the future, but rather the past.
I am not an overly religious person but there is a scripture that certainly can be applied to this topic:
Proverbs 22: 28
Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.
Good advice, but nowhere does it say to pitch a tent at that landmark. This tells me to not remove it, but don't camp out there either.
The only constant in this world is change. The question we have to ask ourselves is, which form of change is the BEST form of change?
Change for change sake is unwise and those that claim they are for change oftentimes seek not change, but reversal of things that have been set in order.
Again thanks for commenting, and I hope you do so again.
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