The Greatest President of the 20th Century

The eulogies for Ronald Reagan are already abundant, but I cannot resist offering my own.



I believe that Ronald Reagan was the greatest President of the 20th century. The only competitor is Franklin Roosevelt, who gets credit for leading the country during World War II and for helping the US persevere through the Great Depression. But Roosevelt’s accomplishments were marred by his enormous failures, including significantly expanding government control of the economy, undermining traditional constitutional restraints, failing to actually end the economic downturn until World War II, and not appreciating the dangers of Soviet Communism.



By contrast, Reagan’s accomplishment were tremendous in both the domestic and foreign spheres, and they were not undermined by any significant failures. In the domestic sphere, Reagan inherited an economy plagued by stagflation and bequeathed one with both low inflation and strong economic growth. In foreign affairs, Reagan took a nation that was paralyzed by Iranian students and transformed it into one that persuaded the Soviet Union that it could never win the Cold War. Reagan’s failures, such as trading arms for hostages, pale in comparison.



Perhaps President Reagan’s greatest accomplishment was that he achieved these goals even though elites, especially liberal elites, regarded his policies as dangerous if not absurd. The elites claimed he practiced voodoo economics, and in 1982-1983 in the midst of a severe recession, lesser men would have despaired. But the President’s courage and wisdom prevailed, and the Reagan boom soon emerged.



The elites believed that one had to coexist with the Soviet Union, that calling it an evil empire would provoke it, and that building SDI would be a waste of money. Yet, Reagan again had the vision to see that the US could actually win the Cold War, which was accomplished in no small part due to Star Wars.



These accomplishments were significant, but he had others as well. It was Ronald Reagan who really started the Supreme Court on its slow path towards, at least some of the time, taking the original Constitution seriously. And it was Reagan who helped to give the country self-confidence and to communicate the great truths of freedom and responsibility to ordinary Americans.



I had the privilege of working for Ronald Reagan twice, first in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Meese Justice Department, and then in private practice, helping Ted Olson to represent the former President during the Poindexter trial. Both times it was an honor to serve him.



Ronald Reagan’s passing yesterday was sad. But the world can be grateful that he left the earth when he did rather than in 1981 as a result of John Hinkley’s bullets.

Update:

Brian Leiter collects the comments on Reagan of liberal and left bloggers. They still don’t get it. My “favorite” is from William Rivers Pitt: “The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.” (The link is not registering: To see Leiter’s collection, go to the Leiter Reports.)