NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER Our Giant BY ALFRED S. REGNERY HEN RONALD REAGAN was nearing the end of w his presidency, he quipped to his staff that he had come to Washington to change the...
...He was optimistic, and therefore convincing in what he said, because in his mind there was no question that he was right...
...There is no question that he had an optimistic personality and he could be very persuasive, but more important, unlike most politicians, and in fact unlike most presidents, he believed in what he said...
...4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2004...
...Those hopes and dreams were fulfilled, at least for me, as I worked in his campaigns and subsequently served in his administration...
...There were buttons which said "Let Reagan be Reagan...
...Senior staff members tried to keep him from reading his American Spectator, and our circulation people had to devise a scheme to sneak a copy to him every month...
...From those first encounters, for those of us whose lives would be spent working for what Reagan stood for, he was the standard bearer, the benchmark, the one we put our hopes and dreams behind...
...As obituaries and reminiscences are written, as the commentators reflect on what he did, and as the recalcitrant lefties try with all their might to deny his stature, it is clearer than ever that he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams...
...We were no longer viewed as just a step removed from fascists or racists...
...We were no longer refused entry into polite society...
...For conservatives, he turned the world upside down or, perhaps more accurately, right side up...
...No longer would the liberal presumption prevail, acquired after 50 years of post-New Deal control, that government would always grow, that taxes would always increase, that the government's job was to regulate, that Communism was not so bad and was here to stay, and that the United States should not be the dominant force for good in the world...
...And much has been written of Reagan's infectious optimism...
...After the Reagan years, we conservatives were no longer on the outside looking in...
...For all of this, Ronald Reagan was a giant...
...He believed in the American ideal, he believed in the strength of the individual, he believed in free markets, he believed that peace in the world would best be achieved through a strong military force, and he believed that Communism really was evil and unworkable...
...There were, of course, arguments and criticisms of what he was doing and not doing...
...I recall listening to that famous speech Reagan gave near the end of the Goldwater campaign in 1964, and meeting him for the first time soon thereafter...
...That he was not conservative enough, that too many things were slipping through the cracks, that too much was being left undone...
...Ronald Reagan transformed the idea of smaller government, a strong defense and confident foreign policy, lower taxes and less regulation into the new standard...
...NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER Our Giant BY ALFRED S. REGNERY HEN RONALD REAGAN was nearing the end of w his presidency, he quipped to his staff that he had come to Washington to change the country, but was leaving having changed the world...
...There was no longer a presumption that what we stood for was wrong, and that liberalism was right...
...The pundits have spent the days since his death talking about how Reagan defeated Communism and won the Cold War, how he fixed Jimmy Carter's broken economy, and how he returned civility to government...
Vol. 37 • July 2004 • No. 6
