My friend Jason passes along a Newsweek piece in which a liberal, Sean Wilentz, and a conservative, George Will, discuss the legacy of Ronald Reagan. It's an interesting conversation in its own right, not least because Wilentz has a lot of admiration for Reagan and suggests that he's becoming more universally recognized as a historic president. I urge any reader interested in recent history to give it a look.
The thing about it that I found most fascinating, however, is that almost everything both men say about Reagan could also be said about George W. Bush. I've said before that I believe Bush will go down in history as a much more consequential president than Ronald Reagan, especially if Iraq and Afghanistan are long-term successes. I don't like everything that George Bush has done, but most people forget that there was a lot about Reagan that even members of his own party didn't like (Will and Wilentz mention a few). People point to Bush's approval numbers and scoff at any suggestion that he'll be vindicated by history, but they forget that Harry Truman, who is widely respected by historians today, had even lower numbers than Bush does.
Bush's legacy, especially among conservatives, will someday eclipse that of Ronald Reagan who is justly regarded by contemporary conservatives as an icon. Bush's impact on the Supreme Court and on tax policy, the relative health of the economy despite terrific shocks (9/11, Katrina, the lending crisis), his liberation of 50 million people from oppression, his success in preventing further terrorist attacks on our soil, his stand for life, his compassionate outreach to the poor around the world, especially in Africa, the culmination under his leadership of Reagan's dream of a ballistic missile defense, his personal grace, virtue and faith, his appointments of minorities to positions of power, all of these and more are either the equal of RR or exceed what Reagan was able to accomplish.
Anyway, read the article. It's well worth the ten minutes it'll take you to do it.
RLC
