National Journal | December 5, 2009
RONALD REAGAN, though dead, has not lost his sense of humor. Told that some conservative Republicans have proposed a "Reagan test" whose effect would be to drum moderates out of the party, the former president chuckled. "You know, I know Ronald Reagan. I am Ronald Reagan. And believe me, I'm no Reaganite."
Nodding to Reagan's precept that an 80 percent friend is not a 20 percent enemy, James Bopp Jr., a member of the Republican National Committee, circulated a draft resolution last week requiring that GOP candidates be solid on at least eight of 10 litmus-test issues in order to draw RNC support. It was a matter of minutes before left-leaning commentators and bloggers pounced, gleefully pointing out that Reagan himself could not have passed Bopp's proposed test.
Smaller government, smaller national debt, and lower deficits? Reagan expanded the federal payroll (Bill Clinton shrank it), and the deficits he ran almost tripled the national debt. No on gun control? Reagan favored the Brady bill. No amnesty for illegal immigrants? Reagan signed one. Contain Iran? Reagan sold weapons to Tehran.
I decided to ask Reagan about the fuss, something I could do as a result of the fugue state frequently induced by column deadlines.
"Oh, it's politics," Reagan said. "The liberals think they can get a twofer. Make the Republicans out as extremists and make me out as a hypocrite."
So, I asked, it's just nonsense?
"Now, I didn't say that," he replied. "I have to tell you, I'm against a 'Reagan test.' It's not the way I governed, it's not the way I did politics, and it doesn't reflect the kind of conservatism I stood for. Today's Reaganites have concocted a mythical Reaganism that just about turns me upside down.
"Take taxes. Never raise them, always cut them: That is what I'm supposed to have stood for. How could anyone believe that? I raised taxes. My tax increases in 1982, 1983, and 1984 rolled back a sizable portion of my 1981 tax cuts. In the 1982 Social Security rescue, I raised payroll taxes in a big way. As governor of California, I reversed myself on state income-tax withholding, saying, 'The sound you hear is the concrete cracking around my feet.'
"Of course, I cut federal income-tax rates dramatically, from a top rate of 70 percent when I entered office to less than half that when I left. But I was more interested in low rates than in low revenues. Both matter, but the essence of my supply-side program was to relieve the economic suffocation that high rates caused. I was never a mindless tax cutter, and it would never have occurred to me to drum out Republican candidates who supported some tax increases.
"Reaganites think that the essence of Reaganism is to reduce the size of government. I didn't do that, at least not in any significant way. Federal spending was 22.2 percent of gross domestic product when my presidency began and 21.2 percent when it ended. Nothing fundamental changed.
"I never made much effort to cut spending, as David Stockman, my first budget director, will be happy to tell you. I used to let Dave propose headline-catching cuts, which made me look tough, and then I abandoned him on Capitol Hill. When Republicans in the Senate tried to trim Social Security cost-of-living increases, I abandoned them, too.
"Reaganites complain about George W. Bush's prescription drug program, the biggest entitlement expansion since LBJ. Well, I'm the guy who bailed out Social Security, with a large tax increase, and then boasted about it. 'This bill demonstrates for all time our nation's ironclad commitment to Social Security,' I said.
"So does that mean I was a liberal? No, it means I was not a Reaganite. I was a conservative. I was an admirer of FDR and the New Deal, and I was interested in conserving its best elements, not dismantling it -- as if that could ever be done!
"Reaganites remember one line from my 1981 inaugural speech: 'In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.' It's a pity they don't remember another line from the same speech: 'Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work.'
"To understand me, you have to remember that I was a denominator guy, not a numerator guy. I wanted to reduce the burden that government imposes on the economy, but I always believed that the realistic way to do that was to grow the economy -- the denominator in the government-to-economy ratio -- and not to shrink the government. It's not that I didn't care about the numerator, but I always realized it was better politics to widen the river, not to blow up the dam.
"You know, it's ironic, but today's Reaganites are a lot like those 1960s radicals I spent so many years arguing with. They're in love with a romantic image of themselves as swashbuckling revolutionaries. In trying to stuff me into their fantasy, they reduce me to a caricature.
"In my 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, I said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' Reaganites have turned that speech into an symbol of a true-believing, tough-talking conservative's triumph over State Department appeasers and peaceniks.
"Well, it's true that the State Department didn't like that line. But the part they objected to wasn't 'tear down this wall,' it was 'Mr. Gorbachev.' As James Mann explains in a recent book about me (The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War), 'Calling attention to the evils of the Berlin Wall was not something original or unique to Reagan; it was a regular refrain in speeches by U.S. officials.' Other presidents had denounced the Wall before then, and so had I.
"In fact, the State Department's own first draft for my Berlin speech called for tearing down 'the ugly wall which divides this great city.' What worried Foggy Bottom was that, by addressing the exhortation specifically to the Soviet leader, I might push him into a political corner and make it harder for him to give us concessions.
"What I really did with that speech was earn enough political credit with my conservative base to do a major arms control deal with the 'Evil Empire.' But then, I was never interested in confrontational diplomacy for its own sake. I was interested in world peace.
"Social issues. I am against abortion, and I am pro-family. But it should be common knowledge, even among Reaganites, that I signed California's path-breaking no-fault divorce law and liberalized California's abortion law. Of course, I came to regret both of those measures. But the fact is, I was a flexible politician, not a rigid ideologue. Neither my spotty social-conservative credentials nor my flexible approach to governing could pass muster with Reaganites today.
"You know, a guy I feel for sometimes is George W. Bush. Reaganites blame him for straying from the true path of Reaganism. It's true he was a bigger spender than I was, but he had two wars and a recession to fight. He didn't raise taxes the way I did. He was more conservative on social issues. I ran away from Lebanon, but he stood firm on Iraq. Yet he's the guy who supposedly wasn't a pure enough conservative."
So why, I asked Reagan, do conservatives insist that you're the hero and Bush the disappointment?
"I've had occasion to give that some thought," the former president replied. "Of course, dying is always good for a fellow's reputation, and I didn't have Hurricane Katrina or the financial meltdown. But I think that there's more to it. Nothing succeeds like success, and my brand of conservatism was successful. I spoke inspirationally and governed flexibly.
"Well, that and one advantage which Bush, for the most part, didn't have: a Democratic Congress. Although we fought like cats and dogs, the Democrats trimmed my excesses, guided policy back toward the center, and prevented my presidency from being captured by my right-wing base. If Bush had had Democrats running Capitol Hill for most of his presidency, as I did, he might have expanded his party instead of shrinking it.
"In fact, it was probably because I was not a Reaganite that I left office so popular. What the public saw, after eight years of real Reaganism, was a growing economy, a stabilized Social Security program, and a new partnership with the Soviets. They liked me for governing well, not for attacking government. I do believe that if I had been the kind of hard-liner who now dominates the Republican political class, the public would have hated me.
"Funny. I used to say I never left the Democratic Party, it left me. Now the Republican Party is leaving me -- and doing it in my own name! I never thought I'd live to see it. Fortunately, I didn't."