President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday would have been Sunday. Within this weekend’s celebrations of this much-discussed president was an easily detected note of nostalgia.
There are obvious reasons for this. Reagan’s eight years in office are probably the seminal moment of modern conservatism. His was an enormously consequential presidency, and even his detractors admit he changed the way Americans think about government.
But Reagan’s timeless appeal is too often reduced to policy particulars and recycled sayings. Conservatives honor, quote and remember Reagan — and too often, end up missing why Reagan was successful.
Hero worship is never the mark of a healthy political movement. The never-ending Democratic quest for John F. Kennedy’s heir has been unseemly at best. Even the more recent veneration of President Barack Obama revealed weaknesses that became apparent in his party’s disillusionment when his campaign persona was confronted with the realities of governing.
What conservatives show when they pine for Reagan — competing to be his heir and asking, “What Would Reagan Do?” — is an inability to cast their own vision for the future.
One of Reagan’s more obvious traits was his good old morning-in-America optimism. But what is now taken for mere optimism was actually a relentless belief in America’s future.
Reagan valued the future more than many conservatives, of both now and then. His evocation of Thomas Paine’s saying, “We have it in our power to begin the world again,” still rankles some more ardent traditionalists. But Reagan didn’t mean the past had no relevance. A traditionalist himself, he referenced the past often, and believed in the lessons of American history.
Instead, he meant that the past should only inform our future, not dominate it.
The real genius of Reagan was in how he positioned his politics as a culmination of a long American story. He had an ability to make the principles he believed in — most of which were not exactly new — seem relevant and timely.
Conservatives rightly emulate Reagan. He did change the trajectory of American life, as even Obama has admitted. He is a personal hero of many conservatives, and rightly so.
But if he were here today, he’d be looking to the future, not to a presidency that ended 22 years ago. He knew how we are.
We are a people of the future. We lean forward, and we’ve always believed the wind is at our backs. You can see it in our advertising, our utopias and our dreams. The past matters to us only so far as it helps us make sense of our own lives, and our own times.
A political movement that is of the past can only captivate us momentarily. What Reagan should mean to conservatives is that the old and tested can seem new and bold when it is presented with humor and grace.
Conservatives can best honor the principles of the founding — and the legacy — of Reagan by speaking about what the future should look like, not about what we like most about the past.
Well, when the next Reagan comes, he or she won’t sound like Reagan. He’ll speak about politics in a new way. She’ll capture the American imagination differently, and in a manner that fits the times.
The next Reagan won’t talk much about Reagan.
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu
