Following his most recent State of the Union address, the fawning media was quick with the accolades for Barack Obama. It wasn't as much the substance of the speech as it was the performance, the aura, and the delivery, that the press said put this President in very unique company.
For their Feb. 7 issue, Time magazine photo-shopped a smiling, confident side-by-side image of the two Presidents for their cover with a feature article about the "Bromance" -- a clever play on words meant to answer the question, "Why Obama loves Reagan."
Historian Doug Brinkley has opined that, "Obama is approaching the job in a Reaganesque fashion."
Using Reagan metaphors in flattering terms strikes some of us as peculiar enough, when throughout most of the Gipper's life the media claimed he was too detached, too old, too incompetent, too naïve, too stupid for the job of President.
The appreciation of true greatness does seem to come with time. Reagan left the Oval Office 22 years ago. With the disclosure that he had Alzheimer's disease in late 1994, he left public life and prepared for his "long good-bye." He died ten years later in 2004, and was memorialized and saluted by global leaders as well as average Americans in unprecedented style. More than 100,000 people paid him final respect in the Rotunda of the Capital as he lie in state, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan's Soviet counterpart during the Cold War that would become one of his greatest admirers. Earlier this month, Reagan's 100th birthday was celebrated throughout the nation.
Barack Obama might want to emulate his magic, but the admiration for Ronald Reagan went well beyond his ability to give a good speech, his inviting personality, or handsome ruggedness. It was the courage of his convictions, his ideals, and his ability to communicate them to the rest of the world in unmistakable fashion.
Barack Obama began his presidency with a tour around the world delivering speeches in which he apologized for American "arrogance and derisiveness." He went to the U.N. and proclaimed that no nation or group of nations was better than any other. Of American greatness he said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British Exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism." His administration won't identify radical Islam by name, nor even speak of a War against Terror.
Reagan, on the other hand, went to Normandy. After recounting the bravery and sacrifice of the heroes that fought there, Reagan honored them all by reference to a gathering of D-Day veterans in front of him;
"These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor."
No apologies.
Reagan didn't apologize to our enemies; he called them an "evil empire" because he believed it was true. When faced with tyranny, Reagan starred it down, demanding "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." And, the wall came down. As for the outcome of the Cold War, he was unequivocal – "We win. They lose."
The great dissident Natan Sharansky, for whom Reagan personally appealed to Gorbachev to release from the Gulag, in The Case for Democracy wrote of the two great leadership challenges: first, to find the "inner strength to confront evil" and the other "is finding the moral clarity to see evil." Reagan possessed both in great abundance.
On the day Reagan took office in January, 1981, Iran freed 52 American hostages that had been held prisoners for 444 days over attempts to free them by an impotent Carter Administration. Iran knew there was a new sheriff in town. In 2009, Obama publicly chastised Iran for violently cracking down on protestors. Instead of respecting this American President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Obama to "apologize." Where do you suppose he got that idea?
Reagan inherited an economy in shambles, too. But, rather than believe that more government was the solution, Reagan saw government as the root of the problem. So, he slashed away at it, reducing taxes dramatically. "Government is like a baby," he said, "an alimentary canal with a big appetite on one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." Feeding government's excess only promotes further irresponsibility.
Reagan was a gifted speaker; the Great Communicator, as he became known. But, of that label in true self-deprecating style, Reagan said, "I wasn't a great communicator; I just talked about great things." Yes, he did.
Obama seems fully committed to the inevitability of the decline of America, which as Charles Krauthammer has explained is a basic tenant of Obama's "New Liberalism." Reagan, however, always saw greatness ahead. He often used the metaphor of a "shining city on a hill" to characterize the American future he envisioned and our nation's place in history. It was imagery he said he borrowed from John Winthrop, one of the early Pilgrims. In his farewell address from the White House January 11, 1989 Reagan spoke of the shining city again:
"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.
"And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home."
Reagan made us feel proud and believe in ourselves as individuals and as a great nation. Lots of people can deliver a good speech, but with Reagan, you knew he believed with all his heart the principles behind his rhetoric. They were more than words to him; they lived in his soul.
Of all the deserved praised heaped on Reagan, perhaps no one summed it up better or more succinctly than his fellow conservative, Cold War warrior, and close personal friend British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she penned in his funeral memorial book, "To Ronnie: Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
A friend of mine who was barely a teenager when Reagan was President described him this way, "Reagan lifted up a country that needed lifting." And, then adding what we all feel, he said, "We need that again."
Reagan's kind of greatness is rare. A circular debate continues as to whether history gives rise to great men, or if great men define history. While the answer forever eludes us, America finds herself at another critical moment with enormous challenges to overcome both domestically and abroad. The time for great leadership is once again upon us, but will our leaders rise to the occasion?
