Reagan leaves big shoes to fill . . .

9 June 2004

I believed Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 would prove an unparalleled disaster for the nation.

Two months later, as he took the oath of office, I began to change my mind.

In the years leading up to that election, America seemed to lose its way, its confidence and its sense of purpose. That was the legacy of a series of demoralizing circumstances: the turmoil of the 1960s, Vietnam, Watergate, the OPEC oil embargoes, an unending Cold War, a stagnant economy and uncontrollable inflation. We were victims, it seemed, at the mercy of events outside our control.

The sense of helplessness was epitomized by the Iranian hostage crisis. On Nov. 4, 1979, after the fall of the U.S.-supported shah, so-called "student" militants (it was unclear they ever went to school) seized 52 hostages from the U.S. embassy. President Jimmy Carter, obsessed with the safe release of the captives, negotiated with the kidnappers. The nation obsessed along with him: yellow ribbons adorned trees, every night newscasters marked each day of the crisis. In April 1980, Carter authorized a rescue effort. It was an embarrassing failure: U.S. aircraft bogged down in a sandstorm, eight lives were lost and no one was freed.

And when were the hostages released? Jan. 21, 1981 - 444 days after it began and, not coincidentally, the day Reagan took office. Many credited Carter's unrelenting negotiations. But those of us watching knew something else was at play. The Iranians cared not a whit about Carter. But they feared Reagan.

It taught all of us some lessons.

Unlike Carter, whose diagnosis of America's ills was that there was "malaise" and a "crisis of spirit" in the land, Reagan strode forth with clear beliefs, a strong sense of right and wrong, and an unbending willingness to get his way, no matter what the cost. His was a philosophy of sunny optimism, not grim moralizing. And his sense of sureness was so powerful that people followed.

He was - and is still - widely hated, mocked for his simplicity, derided for his failure to understand the complexities of geopolitics and economies. Opponents called him an addled actor, a man who could read a good speech but never wrote his own lines.

Perhaps that is true. Nevertheless, he turned the nation around.

There are many examples, some small (such as his speech following the Challenger explosion), some large (almost single-handedly moving the centerpoint of the political pendulum to the right). Two in particular stand out.

Reagan began his term in office by intentionally pushing the country even deeper into recession. Unemployment jumped from 7.1 percent in Carter's last year to a high of 9.7 percent two years later. This was recession with a purpose, however - a tight monetary policy dictated by the Federal Reserve that was intended to kill inflation.

At great cost, it worked. Within a year, inflation was beaten, tumbling from 12 percent to 4 percent. The economy bounced back, with unemployment slowly dropping to 5.5 percent by the last year of his term.

Meanwhile, and in a sharp break with his predecessors, Reagan refused to consign Eastern Europe to perpetual Soviet domination. He called the USSR an "evil empire" - a shockingly gauche thing to do - and embarked upon a policy intended to bring about its collapse.

It was crazy, Pollyannaish and utopian. Sages assured us it wouldn't succeed.

Except of course, that it did.

By the time Reagan left office in early 1989, the U.S. economy was humming. The Soviet collapse was imminent. And the nation had a dramatically different sense of itself. Indeed, Reagan's 1984 election proclaimed "Morning in America." We believed it to be true because, frankly, it was true. American renaissance had begun.

Which brings us to the present and to a nation that is yet again uncertain about itself and the role it should play in the world. In 1980, Reagan asked two telling questions: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" and "Is America as respected throughout the world?" Most answered "No."

And today? It's hard to argue that the answer to either question would be "Yes." But it may be those aren't the right questions - now or then. In 1980, people weren't looking for someone to blame. They wanted someone with vision, someone who could lead. They found those qualities in Ronald Reagan. In 2004, the needs may well be the same. Is either George W. Bush or John Kerry equal in measure to the man each now mourns?

Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.