The American Presidency: Reagan Restored Patriotism Overnight
As this coming Monday is President’s Day, The National Review Online has published an article titled “A Great and Mighty President”. The article features the commentary of three historians who discuss the nature of the American presidency and the men who have held the office.
Each president has left his mark on the office, but the NRO story points to several who were particularly influential in shaping the scope and responsibility of the presidency. While noting the contributions of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt, the author, Brian Bolduc, notes the impact of one modern president - Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Bolduc writes:
“The most obvious and dramatic effect of his inauguration was the restoration overnight — it really was overnight — of American self-confidence and patriotism,” Morris argues. “It’s one thing he and TR had in common: It was a personal dignity and they embodied the national dignity as well as its force.”
The other quality Morris emphasizes is Reagan’s courage. “Before him, every president seemed to be scared of the Soviet Union — terrified of it,” he says. “Reagan seemed to instinctively understand that it was a ramshackle system, a house of cards that just had to be tipped over and then it would crumble.”
Reagan was the last president who strengthened the office, Morris says: “Clinton was much more accommodating with Congress and the latest Bush was much more controversial. But Reagan somehow managed to hold it all together.”
In a time when the world is as unstable a place as it has ever been, one can’t help but hope that our next president is, once again, an individual who displays that Reagan-esque sense of self-confidence (not to be construed as conceit) that simultaneously embodies our “national dignity as well as its force.”
Indeed, perhaps it is appropriate that we ask whether one can exist without the other.
- tdc
*Photo credit: thehistoryplace.com
