Reagan at the Age of 100

When Ronald Reagan got to the White House and saw the Cabinet Room and its portraits of Jefferson, Lincoln and Truman, he called Chief Curator Clement Conger and ordered him to remove the third United States president and Truman and bring in Eisenhower and Calvin Coolidge. Conger, when he heard the order from his new boss, said: “It’s a new era.”

The best U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge had just arrived at the White House. A man who imposed, yes, a new era. Lincoln, with a revolutionary presidency, brought a long Republican political cycle that lasted until the late 19th century. Franklin D. Roosevelt marked a progressive era that continued, uninterrupted, until Carter. After Reagan, the prevailing political discourse in America is the one that led him to the presidency: Criticism about high taxes, excessive regulation. The need to believe again in the American people.

The 40th president of the U.S. would have been 100 years old this past Sunday, Feb. 6. If he had been with us all this time, we wouldn’t miss so much his deep sense of history, his lively optimism and the humor that accompanied him till the end. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to find a president of that country who has been more reviled by the press. Also by the ignorant press; or by the Spanish press, if you will. Today, progressive historians dispute his legacy with those who are conservative; they want for their causes the legacy of a man who is consistently considered to be one of the greatest presidents of the U.S.

One of those inspired by Ronald Reagan is Barack Obama, the fourth person to be in the White House after him. Obama, who took with him a biography of The Gipper on his last vacation in Hawaii, is not attracted to him because of his ideas, of course, but for being one of the few presidents that marked a new era. They both are great orators. But Reagan, unlike Obama, had a message to communicate. A message of optimism that stemmed from a sincere faith in his own people. Obama, meanwhile, picks the distrust bequeathed by George W. Bush to throw it against the Americans, themselves, who must be bailed out by tons of public money, regulations, and socialism. While Reagan wanted to restore the American people, Obama has sought to replace them.

But not only those in the left wing now claim themselves followers of his legacy, after being his fiercest critics. The neocons, who felt betrayed by Reagan and, because of his foreign policy, aimed at him their most severe critique, today assume his strongest speeches on foreign policy to justify their current proposals. No one will be surprised by criticisms from the neocons, then, if we remember that his three interventions, Grenada, Libya and Lebanon, were quick and effective. And he did not stay in any of these places to export democracy, but simply made it clear that you cannot play with this country.

And he never directly confronted the great Soviet enemy. No, he didn’t. He defeated it with a blatant and unequivocal commitment to domestic prosperity and for an arms race in which the USSR didn’t even make it to the starting line. In those years, when Galbraith, Samuelson and legions of pedants scattered throughout the world believed in the economic superiority of socialism, Reagan knew (because he had studied it) that socialism was a mistake and would end up collapsing on its own feet. And it did.

His speeches pierced the walls of Russian prisons, transmitted in Morse code, and gave encouragement to the victims of socialism. His speech at the Brandenburg Gate, two years before thousands of people went beyond the Berlin Wall, is still moving. For all these reasons and more, many of us will always remember Ronald Reagan.