The Secret of Ronald Reagan was that he was

The Secret of

Ronald Reagan

was that he was..

The Secret of Ronald Reagan was that he was actually much more moderate than we are remembering? He instinctively sat down and cut a deal and if you aren’t cutting deals, are you not misinterpreting what he stood for?

The four pillars of Reagan’s economic policy were to:

1. reduce the growth of government spending,
2. reduce marginal tax rates on income from labor and capital,
3. reduce government regulation of the economy,
4. control the money supply to reduce inflation.

Ronald Reagan’s principle were simple, but he was always able to reach consensus, despite the Conservatism of some of his positions, he was moderate and worked for the best deals he could get, compromising if needed to get things done. There is nothing wrong with the basic ideas (they are actually in many ways common sense) he set forward but they were guidelines not a rigid doctrine in practice, so how can we justify rigid adherence to them in 2008?

Remember how he left everyone wondering if Sandra Day O’Connor was conservative enough, he liked her and they talked about horses and he decided to appoint her. Hardly the position of a rigid hard liner?

Remember, he was initially opposed to John Lennon’s entry into the United States, but reversed his efforts after finding out it was upsetting many people. He could have stayed on his position, after all John Lennon had a marijuana possession charge on his record. Once again, he moderated his position.

Newt Gingrich was a young, up and coming conservative at that time and he actually accused Reagan of selling out and appeasing the Russians at Reykjavik, is this really the correct person to interpret the Reagan legacy. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort deconstructing the Reagan Legacy, but in this post I have decided to remind people what Ronald Reagan was really like for a change. I hate attacking the guy and then having to tell everyone that I really like Reagan as a person. He never, in office gave me the skin crawling sensation that some of the people who claim to carry his legacy do.

I don’t think Ronald Reagan wanted to destroy organized labor at the time of PATCO, he merely wanted to win his first conflict in office and PATCO at the time was probably overplaying it’s hand to see if the new guy could be made to back off.

Ronald Reagan’s vision was a healthy domestic auto industry and negotiating with overseas companies to assemble autos here adding to the domestic jobs. It was never one or the other. Reagan also believed that the mandates for fuel efficiency were hampering our manufacturers and was against it. I think he would have seen that this led eventually to the market going after the bigger models and the SUV boom that was not done to consumers at gunpoint I hate to say. Our market prefers larger vehicles and gas price spikes hit us that much harder for it. But Reagan’s vision was both Domestic Big Three health and additional jobs through the transplants and the Mitsubishi plant in Normal Illinois is a Union shop. He would have been OK with BMW being in non union Alabama, but he wanted Detroit as well. And one of Iaccoca’s ideas was the minivan, which was a great wave for awhile and helped put Chrysler back in the black. As to the Chapter 11,  he might have liked that, but considering his moderate nature, I think he would have ended up being more like Bush and Cheney on the issue than the current crop of senators opposing helping Detroit. Don’t you think sometimes we remember his rhetoric more than the actual things that he did?

In discussing his legacy, Ronald Reagan stated that one of the things he was least happy with was the perceptions of the Minority communities to his ideas, he felt he had failed. I think that Ronald Reagan was probably more conservative than Colin Powell, but he would have made every effort he could have to have brought more African American and Hispanics into the big tent and he probably would not have been in favor of any overt persecutions of people for sexual orientation, even if he might not have championed their cause. He was essentially more moderate than the vision that many now conjure up about him, I remember.