Saturday, June 05, 2004
Reagan: A Great President
Lee Edwards on Ronald Reagan and Leadership on National Review Online
"Ronald Reagan is already being judged as one of the great American presidents. I predict that even as the first half of the 20th century is usually described as the Age of Roosevelt, the last half of the 20th century will be called the Age of Reagan.
Just as FDR led America out a great economic depression, Reagan lifted a traumatized country out of a great psychological depression, induced by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained by the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Carter malaise.
Reagan used the same political instruments as Roosevelt — the major address to Congress and the fireside chat with the people — and the same optimistic, uplifting rhetoric. But although Roosevelt and Reagan both appealed to the best in America, there was a major philosophical difference between the two presidents: Roosevelt turned to government to solve problems, while Reagan turned to the people.
Reagan led Americans to believe in themselves and the future again. He led them to accept that they did not need the welfare state to solve all of their economic and social problems. And he looked the Soviets in the eye and saw they were not ten feet tall."
"Ronald Reagan is already being judged as one of the great American presidents. I predict that even as the first half of the 20th century is usually described as the Age of Roosevelt, the last half of the 20th century will be called the Age of Reagan.
Just as FDR led America out a great economic depression, Reagan lifted a traumatized country out of a great psychological depression, induced by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained by the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Carter malaise.
Reagan used the same political instruments as Roosevelt — the major address to Congress and the fireside chat with the people — and the same optimistic, uplifting rhetoric. But although Roosevelt and Reagan both appealed to the best in America, there was a major philosophical difference between the two presidents: Roosevelt turned to government to solve problems, while Reagan turned to the people.
Reagan led Americans to believe in themselves and the future again. He led them to accept that they did not need the welfare state to solve all of their economic and social problems. And he looked the Soviets in the eye and saw they were not ten feet tall."
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