WHAT WOULD REAGAN DO? – AT 9:34 P.M. ET:  It's what Republicans always ask.  Steven F. Hayward, a historian of the Reagan presidential years, asks the question in today's Washington Post, and comes up with some intriguing answers:

Reagan was the most popular and successful Republican president of the past century, so it makes sense that he would be the shining model for conservatives, just as FDR has been the gold standard for liberals. (No small irony, since Reagan voted for FDR four times and modeled his statecraft after the Democrat's.) But as the current occupant of the White House could warn, measuring yourself against historical icons is a recipe for disappointment. These days, President Obama is more likely to draw comparisons to Jimmy Carter than to Lincoln or FDR.

And those comparisons are accurate.

Hayward holds that there are two elements of Reagan's statecraft that those who wish to emulate him might want to study:

The first is the deliberate but unseen crafting of Reagan's public profile. As we have come to learn with the opening over the past decade of Reagan's personal papers, his public style was a product of enormous discipline, hard work and calculation. Long before Palin was ridiculed for writing reminders on her hand, Reagan was derided as the 3-by-5 note card candidate (actually, he used 4-by-6 cards) -- but his cards were his means of staying succinctly on point and delivering his message in a compelling way. Reagan's speeches, including his State of the Union addresses, were typically much shorter than average. He knew from show business the power of leaving your audience wanting more. Is there a politician today who you wish gave longer speeches?

And...

The second underappreciated aspect of Reagan's statecraft is his idiosyncratic ideology -- entirely a product of his self-study, much of which he concealed. Some of it was orthodox, small-government conservatism (he once stated that "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism"), but it was leavened with an older liberalism, part of which he inherited from FDR.

This is the complex part of Reagan.  He was, unlike some grim conservatives, very much an idealist.  He grew up during the Depression.  He understood suffering.  He'd experienced it.  He was a conservative with a warm heart, which is why many Americans, even those who disagreed with him on many things, came to admire him.  His arch-opponent, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, described him as "a beautiful man."  Hayward cautions:

...his belief in America's dynamism was at the core of his optimism, and that dynamism can have profoundly un-conservative effects.

Don't sweat it.  Great presidents all have a bit of the opposition in them.  Roosevelt the liberal did more to save capitalism than most of its practitioners.  Lincoln, who fought the civil war, had "Dixie" played at the White House when victory came. 

I am certain that Reagan would have been an enthusiastic supporter of the tea party movement. While the tea partiers confuse the media and annoy the establishments of both political parties, Reagan would have seen them as reviving the embers of what he called the "prairie fire" of populist resistance against centralized big government -- resistance that helped touch off the tax revolt of the 1970s.

And...

And who might be able to tap into the potent brew of the tea party? Right now the leading candidate is undoubtedly Palin, whom Reagan would probably have cheered on and surely would have had no problem voting for should she secure the GOP presidential nomination.

Okay, we can debate that, but hear the man out:

Virtually all the criticisms of Palin -- calling her an anti-intellectual lightweight who can't name a magazine she reads or a founding father she admires -- were lobbed at Reagan before and during his time in the White House, and the critics hailed from both sides of the aisle. The GOP establishment was very uncomfortable with Reagan, even after he'd won two presidential elections in landslides -- and who can forget Clark Clifford's "amiable dunce" label? 

But...

But while the parallels between them are evident, it is far from clear that Palin appreciates Reagan's discipline and substantive grand strategy. In many of her speeches and media appearances she tends to ramble on, with none of the crispness and rhetorical force of Reagan's formulas.

I'm afraid that's right.

Wittingly or not, Palin hit the nail on the head in her keynote address at the Tea Party Convention last month: "Let us not get bogged down in the small squabbles; let us get caught up in the big ideas. To do so would be a fitting tribute to Ronald Reagan." Meaningful limits on the size of government is one such idea, and it offers a substantive opening for Palin and other would-be heirs to Reagan. To pull it off, one thing above all is required: Do your homework. Reagan did his.

COMMENT:  We tend to forget how controversial Reagan was, even within his own party.  When he was nominated in 1980, many Republicans urged him to take former President Gerald Ford as his vice president, and pledge a "co-presidency."  It was an absurd idea, but it reflected the establishment's uneasiness with Reagan.

In 2012, Republicans have a shot at the White House.  But Barack Obama, if he runs again, may well be much more difficult to defeat than was Jimmah Carter in 1980.  Carter was an unpleasant man, a scold.  It was hard to think of anyone marrying him. 

Try to read Hayward's entire piece.  The man makes a lot of sense.

March 7, 2010