William Kristol rather eloquently expresses American conservatives’ yearning for a decisive, game-changing victory next year, a decisive victory capable of renewing both the country’s morale and economic prospects and delivering the country for another generation from socialism and the misrule of sophisters, calculators, and economists, but warns that the fates are not going to be as kind as we would wish.

For every Southern boy 14 years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a 14-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago .  .  .

—William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

For every American conservative, not once but whenever he wants it, it’s always the evening of November 4, 1980, the instant when we knew Ronald Reagan, the man who gave the speech in the lost cause of 1964, leader of the movement since 1966, derided by liberal elites and despised by the Republican establishment, the moment when we knew—he’d won, we’d won, the impossible dream was possible, the desperate gamble of modern conservatism might pay off, conservatism had a chance, America had a chance. And then, a decade later—the Cold War won, the economy revived, America led out of the abyss, we’d come so far with so much at stake—conservatism vindicated, America restored, a desperate and unbelievable victory for the cast made so many years ago against such odds.

But that was then, and this is now. Now is 2012, and it seems clear that 2012 isn’t going to be another 1980.

He’s right. We haven’t got a Reagan. I think we are going to have to hope that any Republican can decisively defeat Barack Obama and that any Republican (even one from Massachusetts) will be obliged to run and govern as an arch conservative. While we will not have a Reagan, we can have an administration, like Reagan’s, drawn heavily from the Conservative Movement and dedicated to bringing about a fundamental change in direction.

Fortunately, the democrats have not the ground, the advantage in strength, or the artillery that General Meade had, and if 2012 is not going to be 1980, I think we can feel safe that neither will it be July 3, 1863.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

-Ronald Reagan.

Ironically today, Reagan’s spectacular accomplishments and political legacy of reduced government and enlarged liberty are being directly challenged by a representative of the school of politics directly opposed to everything Ronald Reagan stood for and believed. The mismanagement of government by Ronald Reagan’s adversaries has brought the country to a state of economic hardship and has produced a sense of pessimism resembling the era of the late 1970s, shortly before Ronald Reagan’s nomination and successful campaign for the presidency changed everything.

This short video tribute is an excellent reminder of how badly America needed Ronald Reagan then, and how much many of us wish he were here and available to run all over again.

A more accurate version.

Daniel J. Mitchell posted the above chart from Heritage and offered the following observation.

This is a remarkable image, but let’s start with some disclaimers. There are lots of factors that impact economic performance, and many of them are outside the control of politicians. Moreover, it is impossible to know what would have happened in the past two years or in the early 1980s if Obama or Reagan had chosen different policies.

But even with these caveats, it is difficult to look at this chart and not conclude that Obama’s big government policies are much less successful than Reagan’s small government policies.

A very effective political advertisement from the Republican Study Committee.

2:18 video

Hat tip to Ace.

Appropriately enough, Ronald Reagan is a physician defending decency, home, and family. James Dean (who would get killed in an accident with his Porsche 550 Spyder a little over nine months later) plays a youthful criminal. 1950s criminality is represented as childishly impulsive, weak, neurotically insecure, and determined to express a transgressive subcultural identity by the use of hipster slang and a loud musical background of progressive jazz. The same dramatization would not be much different today in most respects. The criminal youth, of course, wouldn’t be white and blond. The music wouldn’t be jazz and the modernist patois would be different, but the same kind of childishness and the same sort of futile attempt to obtain respect through violence would work exactly the same way in an updated version just fine.

General Electric is airing a very nice and truly well-deserved tribute to the greatest president of the last century.

0:32 video

I remember the scene as Ronald Reagan’s funeral cortege wound its way up the narrow road to his resting place at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. One local woman was filmed by the news cameras holding up a sign which spoke for all of us. It read “WELL DONE.”

Ed Morrissey posted a picture of a Minnesota billboard which makes a telling political contrast. A lot of people, I expect, wish Ronald Reagan was still around and available as a candidate, now that we are living through the second, and even worse, Jimmy Carter presidency.

In evaluating the absurdity of the Nobel Committee’s Peace Prize Award to Barack Obama, as Bruce Walker suggests, it really puts the whole thing into perspective when you look at who didn’t win.

Few spectacles so clearly show the politicization of life than the surreally silly award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama. The Nobel Prize has long been a reflection of the whims of those who run political correctness. ...

(For proof, consider) all the people who did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot, the greatest triumph for peace in world history. Pope John Paul II boldly reached out to end the historic distrust between the Catholic Church and Jews; he also showed how passive resistance could work in Poland; he also went around the world preaching peace and love; he also forgave the Moslem who tried to assassinate him. Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but not for Peace, even though he proved, perhaps more courageously than any man in modern history, that the pen could be mightier than the sword. Konrad Adenauer worked hard for a peaceful Germany at the end of the First World War; he opposed the Nazis and spent time in a concentration camp for that; after the Second World War ended, Adenauer reunited the three western sectors of Germany and reached out to Israel and offered, without being asked, for the Federal Republic of Germany to pay reparations to Israel. None of these magnificent champions of peace won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize, like the support of Code Pink is based upon ideology and nothing else. So Obama, Gore, Carter, and Wilson have won the Peace Prize, but Reagan, who dedicated his last term in office to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and who actually won a world war without violence, does not. Willy Brandt, a thoroughly unlikable socialist West German chancellor, who left office in scandal, wins the award, while a magnificently noble conservative West German chancellor does not. So two Soviets who buy the rhetoric of the chic left – Gorbachev and Sakharov – win the award, while a much braver and clear voice for peace, Solzhenitsyn, does not?

We should know by now, if we ever needed to know, that the awards, compliments, and honors which the establishment of the world offers is offered only to those who have first paid homage to the ideology of the left. Awards given to communist terrorists, like Le Duc Tho, or anti-Semitic ogres like Jimmy Carter, are no badges of achievement: such awards are evidence of moral surrender.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

-Ronald Reagan.

Peggy Noonan commemorates the installation of “The Only Statue That is Smiling” in the Capitol Rotunda, one of Ronald Wilson Reagan.

You are there.” The rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, that great, sandstone-walled, light-filled hall ringed with statues of the great of American history—Jefferson, Washington, proud Andrew Jackson in his flowing cape, Eisenhower, U.S. Grant, his eyes surveying the terrain as if he sees something out there in the wilderness. It’s 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 3, 2009, and Ronald Reagan marches in, surrounded by his peers. Actually his newly installed statue is unveiled there, in a ceremony attended by officials of both parties (including the speaker of the House and the leaders of the minority), his wife, Nancy, and a few hundred of his friends, appointees, staffers and cabinet members. It was standing room only.

The mood: mellow, proud and modest with the increased modesty of age. “How lucky was I to walk into history when Ronald Reagan was in the room?” The speeches ranged from the heartfelt to the appropriate, with two (James Baker and Mrs. Reagan) being outstanding. It is usual, after formal ceremonies with their frozen rhetoric, to come away feeling that no cliché was left untouched. In some cases here they were quite thoroughly molested, but no matter. The general feeling was that Ronald Reagan restored America to itself, and that’s what people more or less said. ...

Mr. McConnell had a good speech. Rather than recite a history lesson, he said, he’d note that in the 1980s, when the world said America was over, America said not quite, and when they said freedom was yesterday, America said I don’t think so. Reagan “stood taller than any statue.”

The colors were presented. The U.S. Army chorus sang the national anthem so beautifully, with such harmonic precision and depth, that some dry eyes turned moist, including those of the crusty journalist to my right. Congressmen hear choirs sing patriotic songs all the time and grow used to it. The rest of us do not and are stirred. Tourists walk through the Rotunda and think to themselves that they’d die for the signs and symbols of this place. Lawmakers experience the Rotunda as a connecting point between House and Senate that’s too often clogged by overweight tourists in shorts from Bayonne. We need term limits. When the music no longer moves you, you should leave. When you cannot leave, you should be pushed.

James Baker, who served as Reagan’s Treasury secretary, was elegant in his remarks. To Mrs. Reagan he said, “You created that secure space from which he ventured forward to change the world.” And, “If anyone deserves to be in Statuary Hall it is Ronald Reagan,” a “principled pragmatist” who would fight for the right, push hard, get the best deal possible, accept it at a crucial moment, “declare victory and move on.” The Reagan that Baker presented was a romantic who lived in the real. The nation said goodbye to him when he lay in state in the Rotunda five years ago, but he stands now “a silent sentry in its hallowed halls.”

Mrs. Reagan had a bit of a one-minute masterpiece. Her face said it all. It was her first time in the Rotunda since her husband lay in state. History had come to endorse what she and her husband’s supporters long thought: that he was great. “The statue is a wonderful likeness of Ronnie, and he would be so proud.” And at the end she said, simply, “That’s it,” and the crowd erupted in applause. She turned, helped pull the big blue drop cloth down, and there he was. That was his posture, that was the way he held his arms as he walked, that was the two button suit. The Gipper will be the only statue in the rotunda that is smiling.

Byron York published a nice tribute to Ronald Reagan recently in the Washington Examiner. The GOP would be well-advised to ignore people named Bush and to return to fidelity to the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

You drive up a steep, rough and winding road to reach Ronald Reagan’s ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains. For eight years, from 1981 to 1989, this place north of Santa Barbara was the Western White House; Reagan spent nearly a year of his time in office here. Now, what he called Rancho del Cielo is pretty much deserted.

But the ranch, tended by a lone caretaker, is still much like it was when Reagan was alive. It’s not open to the public; these days, the old adobe house and 688 surrounding acres are owned and carefully maintained by the conservative Young America’s Foundation. The group doesn’t have the staff or resources to conduct public tours, but they were kind enough to take me on a visit one afternoon last week.

The first thing that strikes you as you approach the house is how modest it is. The main part of the building was constructed in 1871. Even after Reagan added a couple of rooms when he bought it in 1975, the whole house only measured about 1,500 square feet. ...

The house is nestled on the edge of a mountainside meadow. It’s idyllic, but if you drive about five minutes away, you’ll find another spot on the property, at the top of a hill, where the president could have built a new home, perhaps an impressive monument to himself, with fabulous views of the Pacific to the west and the valley to the east. Instead, Reagan preferred the little house by the meadow.

Walking around the ranch, you can’t help thinking about the current Republican party and its relationship to Reagan.

Sondra K. offers photographic evidence of the Change.

On the night that William F. Buckley met Ronald Reagan, the future president of the United States put his elbow through a plate-glass window. The year was 1961, and the two men were in Beverly Hills, where Buckley, perhaps the most famous conservative in America at the tender age of 35, was giving an address at a school auditorium. Reagan, a former Hollywood leading man dabbling in political activism — the Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin of his day — had been asked to do the introductions.

But the microphone was dead, the technician was nowhere to be found and the control room was locked. As the crowd began to grumble, Reagan coolly opened one of the auditorium windows, stepped onto a ledge two stories above the street and inched his way around to the control room. He smashed his elbow through the glass and clambered in through the broken window. “In a minute there was light in the upstairs room,” Buckley later wrote, “and then we could hear the crackling of the newly animated microphone.”

After Reagan, the candle glowed brightly, then it flickered, then it died. Why? The Old World has always been torn between the remnants of its ancient empires and the bold promise of human liberty. Its elites, its sophisticates, its nationalists have always whispered that America and its promises are lies. German culture, Japanese uniqueness, Chinese civilization, Islamic greatness, French grandeur and Russian tsars of myriad denominations—these were truth, and liberty was a lie.

For a few brief years, the East no longer believed the tale of its political and ideological bosses. Hong Kong, not Beijing, was the future of China. Bricks of the Berlin Wall were solid souvenirs of Marx’s folly. Russians dreamed of a joyful future. Reagan had been Washington again, and when Madison and Jefferson did their work, the world would be well, so it seemed.

Then nothing happened. When Reagan left office, it was like when Lincoln was shot. The keen mind and the wondrous soul which endured everything to emancipate men was gone. Small minds and smaller hearts scurried in. George H. Bush, famously, sacked the men of Reagan and replaced them with more sensible functionaries. ...

Anyone could see that the pressure which worked on the Soviets would work on the Chinese Communists as well. Students in Beijing begged the world for freedom in 1989, something unprecedented under the Soviets. The theme of liberty should have permeated every transaction between America and China. Not just government, but business should have resonated with the importance of human rights over commercial profits. If Clinton believed that, he might have been able to rally the nation, but Clinton emphatically rejected the value of liberty over comfort.

The Presidency in eight short years went from being occupied by a moral colossus to a moral dwarf. Clinton sold national security secrets for something as banal as campaign contributions. Although Yeltsin was President of Russia during all of Clinton’s administration, our clever Clinton was unable to prevent on August 19, 1998 – one decade ago – the collapse of Russian financial markets and the destruction of the hope of a Russian middle class. This was the midpoint between the presidential campaign to elect the successor to Reagan and our grim world today—ten years ago.

What was Clinton doing ten years ago? He was on national television, the very same day that the Russian economy collapsed and the rise of Putin was assured, explaining that he had an “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky and, by the way, he was ordering cruise missiles to hit aspirin factories in Sudan to combat a terrorist threat.

P.J. O’Rourke remembers the good old times when Good King Ronald ruled the land:

Weren’t the eighties grand? Cash grew on trees or, anyway, coca bushes. The rich roamed the land in vast herds hunted by proud, free tribes of investment brokers who lived a simple life in tune with money. Every wristwatch was a Rolex. Every car was a Mercedes-Benz. A fellow could romance a gal without shrink-wrapping his privates and negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. Communist dictators were losing their jobs, not presidents of America and General Motors. Women wore Adolfo gowns instead of dumpy federal circuit court judge robes. The Malcolm who mattered was Forbes. Bill Clinton was only a microscopic polyp in the colon of national politics, and Hillary was still in flight school, hadn’t even soloed on her broom. What a blast we were having. The suburbs had just discovered Martha Stewart, the cities had just discovered crack. So many parties and none of them Democratic…Back then health care was a tummy tuck, not an inalienable right. If you wanted a better environment, you went to Laura Ashley.”

From Samizdata via the Barrister.

Samuel Johnson once reported on a man who was privately stingy but publicly touted the merits of sharing. Dr. Johnson said sarcastically that the man was a “friend of goodness.” What he meant was that flesh-and-blood goodness is very different from supporting “Goodness” in the abstract.

Many modern liberals like to openly discuss their altruism. Garrison Keillor explains that “I am liberal and liberalism is the politics of kindness.” But it rarely seems to turn into acts of kindness, especially when it comes to making charitable donations.

Consider the case of Andrew Cuomo, current New York Attorney General and advocate for the homeless. He has, according to his website, “compassion toward the most vulnerable of us.” And this is how the New York Times described the courtship of Kerry Kennedy (of guess which family): “Ms. Kennedy-Cuomo, 43, said she fell in love with Mr. Cuomo, 45, when he took her on a tour of a homeless shelter on their first date and agreed to fast for the labor leader Cesar Chavez.”

But that advocacy should not be confused with actually giving to the less fortunate. Cuomo was a homeless advocate throughout the 1990s, but according to his own tax returns he made no charitable contributions between 1996 and 1999. In 2000 he donated a whopping $2,750. In 2004 and 2005, Cuomo had more than $1.5 million in adjusted gross income but gave a paltry $2,000 to charity.

Cuomo made no charitable contributions in 2003, when his income was a bit less than $300,000.

Cuomo IS NOT alone in this Scroogery of course. Barack Obama has a rather poor track record when it comes to charitable contributions. He consistently gave 1 percent of his income to charity. In his most charitable year, 2005, he earned $1.7 million (two and a half times what George W. Bush earned) but gave about the same dollar amount as the President.

The last two Democratic Party nominees for President have come up short on the charity scale. Al Gore has been famously stingy when it comes to actually giving his own money to charities. In 1998 he was embarrassed when his tax returns revealed that he gave just $353 to charity. ...

According to his tax returns, Reagan donated more than four times more to charity—both in terms of actual money and on a percentage basis—than Senator Ted Kennedy. And he gave more to charities with less income than FDR did. In 1985, for example, he gave away 6 percent of his income.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have continued this Reagan record. During the early 1990s, George W. Bush regularly gave away more than 10 percent of his income. In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney gave away 77 percent of his income to charity. He was actually criticized by some liberal bloggers for this, who claimed he was getting too much of a tax deduction.

The main point of liberal compassion appears to be making liberals feel good about their superior virtue. Such are the rewards of being a “friend of goodness.”

(Reagan) was a conservative first and a politician second, a National Review and Human Events reader first and an elected official second.

This is exceedingly unusual. The normal American president is a politician, with semicoherent ideological views, who sometimes becomes a vehicle for an ideological movement. ...

This year’s GOP field is, in this sense, normal.

Sigh.

Kristol is witty, but I think his neocon perspective is wrong. Republicans electing non-ideological-conservatives, Nixons and Bushes, only results in more liberal policies, a larger federal government, and, finally, a Republican electoral debacle.

He is right in observing that, in this presidential election, and in recent American politics generally, no obvious unquestionably conservative leader has emerged in the nation and the Republican Party. We need to ask ourselves why. And we need to start producing them again, not settling for substitutes.

His democrat opponents, Billary and Edwards, have been hissing like drenched cats over his heresy, since Barack Obama frankly admitted in Reno:

I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

Obama even told the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board that:

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.”

John Edwards responded: “I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change.”

Hillary, too, was quick to respond in predictable terms.

I have to say, you know, my leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last ten to fifteen years. That’s not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years.

“I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to Medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.”

NBC:

Bill Clinton joined his wife in targeting Barack Obama’s statement about Republican ideas, saying that his “legs fell out” when he read it.

Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs.

Reagan was perfectly right back then. The cost of food is derisory in the United States, and even welfare provides more than enough income to preclude “going to bed hungry.”

And George W. Bush was perfectly right to veto that manipulatively-titled bill today. And, yes, conservatives are Ronald Reagan’s heirs and proud of it.

Ilya Somin at Volokh Conspiracy quotes Reagan’s 1989 Farewell Address:

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. (emphasis added)

and concludes himself:

Reagan’s positive attitude towards immigration was not just an isolated issue position, but was integrally linked to his generally optimistic and open vision of America. I would add that it also drew on his understanding that America is not a zero-sum game between immigrants and natives – just as he also recognized that it is not a zero-sum game between the rich and the poor. Immigration could promote prosperity and advancement for both groups in much the same way that free trade benefits both Americans and foreigners. Reagan probably did not have a detailed understanding of the economics of comparative advantage which underpins this conclusion. But he surely understood it intuitively. Those who reject Reagan’s position on immigration must, if they are to be consistent, also reject much of the rest of his approach to economic and social policy. Today’s conservatives can argue for immigration restrictions if they so choose. But they should not claim the mantle of Reagan in doing so.

Let me describe what I think is an attractive conservative vision. It begins with supporting and respecting our President and all his accomplishments. And since I and many others still have unflinching support and admiration for the man, I decided to steal some from the commenters here and dub this conservative view “Bush Conservatives”.

Bush Conservatives not only believe in Reagan’s 11th commandment to not speak ill of fellow conservatives – we live it. From the Gang of 14, to Harriet Miers, to Dubai Ports World and to the immigration issue – there has been a brand of Republican which eschewed the 11th commandment. So let the Republicans be defined by that group – Bush Conservatives will be defined by their antithesis. Bush conservatives are not afraid of the word ‘compromise’. They despise the word ‘failure’. If there is a good idea, we do not care what party gets credit – we care that the good ideas get enacted. It is not Party uber America anymore.

Read the whole thing.

Beth agrees with him, and takes a firmer line with the Paleocons:

I’m still very, very angry at the Buchanan Conservatives/neo-right/cannibals/whatever you wanna call ‘em. It is THEY who I blame more than anyone for the GOP/conservative loss in the election. I suppose it’s irrational to blame them first, but they are the ones with whom I have the most contact, if you will, or at least the most in common (in that we are bloggers). They worked for over two years, slandering everyone on their own side whenever there was a point of disagreement. How the hell did they think the media wouldn’t lap that up? Dissension within the conservative ranks? A gift to the liberal media! And as a result, rather than putting real pressure on those who needed it, they simply allowed the left’s sound-bite slogans, “culture of corruption” and “pork-loving Republicans” to penetrate the usually-disengaged voters’ minds.

CNSNews reports:

In his book, which came out this week, Kengor focuses on a KGB letter written at the height of the Cold War that shows that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan’s foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts.

The letter, dated May 14, 1983, was sent from the head of the KGB to Yuri Andropov, who was then General Secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party.

In his letter, KGB head Viktor Chebrikov offered Andropov his interpretation of Kennedy’s offer. Former U.S. Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) had traveled to Moscow on behalf of Kennedy to seek out a partnership with Andropov and other Soviet officials, Kengor claims in his book.

At one point after President Reagan left office, Tunney acknowledged that he had played the role of intermediary, not only for Kennedy but for other U.S. senators, Kengor said. Moreover, Tunney told the London Times that he had made 15 separate trips to Moscow.

“There’s a lot more to be found here,” Kengor told Cybercast News Service. “This was a shocking revelation.”

It is not evident with whom Tunney actually met in Moscow. But the letter does say that Sen. Kennedy directed Tunney to reach out to “confidential contacts” so Andropov could be alerted to the senator’s proposals.

Specifically, Kennedy proposed that Andropov make a direct appeal to the American people in a series of television interviews that would be organized in August and September of 1983, according to the letter.

“Tunney told his contacts that Kennedy was very troubled about the decline in U.S -Soviet relations under Reagan,” Kengor said. “But Kennedy attributed this decline to Reagan, not to the Soviets. In one of the most striking parts of this letter, Kennedy is said to be very impressed with Andropov and other Soviet leaders.”

In Kennedy’s view, the main reason for the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s was Reagan’s unwillingness to yield on plans to deploy middle-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, the KGB chief wrote in his letter.

“Kennedy was afraid that Reagan was leading the world into a nuclear war,” Kengor said. “He hoped to counter Reagan’s polices, and by extension hurt his re-election prospects.”

As a prelude to the public relations strategy Kennedy hoped to facilitate on behalf of the Soviets, Kengor said, the Massachusetts senator had also proposed meeting with Andropov in Moscow—to discuss the challenges associated with disarmament.

In his appeal, Kennedy indicated he would like to have Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) accompany him on such a trip. The two senators had worked together on nuclear freeze proposals.

But Kennedy’s attempt to partner with high-level Soviet officials never materialized. Andropov died after a brief time in office and was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev.

In his attempt to reach out the Soviets, Kennedy settled on a flawed receptacle for peace, Kengor said. Andropov was a much more belligerent and confrontational leader than the man who followed him, in Kengor’s estimation.

“If Andropov had lived and Gorbachev never came to power, I can’t imagine the Cold War ending peacefully like it did,” Kengor told Cybercast News Service. “Things could have gotten ugly.”

The Wall Street Journal celebrates the twenty fifth anniversary of Ronald Reagan signing the Economic Recovery Tax Act by noting the significance of the impact of Reagonomics on the US and World economies and the breadth of his philosophy’s current acceptance. Russia today has a 13% flat tax.

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, Ronald Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act. The bill cut personal income tax rates by 25% across the board, indexed tax brackets for inflation and reduced the corporate income tax rate. The anniversary is worth commemorating as a seminal moment that continues to influence policy for the better in the U.S., and around the globe.

The achievement of Reaganomics can only be fully understood by recalling the miserable state of affairs a quarter-century ago. Newsweek summarized the national mood when it wrote in 1981 that Reagan “inherits the most dangerous economic crisis since Franklin Roosevelt took office 48 years ago.”

That was no exaggeration. The economy was enduring a cycle of rising inflation with growing levels of unemployment. Remember 20% mortgage interest rates? Terms like “stagflation” and “misery index” entered the popular vocabulary, and declinists of various kinds were in the saddle. The perception of American economic weakness encouraged the Soviet empire to ever bolder adventures, as reflected by Soviet tanks in Kabul and Communists on the march in Nicaragua and Africa.

The reigning Keynesian policy consensus had no answer for this predicament, and so a new group of economic ideas came to the fore. Actually, they were old, classical economic ideas that were rediscovered via the likes of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, Arthur Laffer, Robert Mundell, and such policy activists in Washington as Norman Ture and Jack Kemp, among others. These humble columns under our late editor, Robert Bartley, led the parade.

For every policy goal, you need a policy lever, Mr. Mundell likes to say. Monetary restraint was needed to break inflation, while cuts in marginal tax rates would restore the incentives to save and invest. With Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve and Reagan at the White House, those two levers became the essence of the “supply-side” policy mix.

The results have been better than even some of its supporters hoped. The Dow Jones Industrial Average first broke 1,000 in 1972, but a decade later it was barely above 800—one of the worst and most enduring bear markets in history. In the 25 years since Reaganomics, however, the Dow has climbed to about 11,000, accounting for an increase in national wealth on the order of $25 trillion. To match that increase in percentage terms, the Dow would have to rise to some 150,000 in the next quarter century. American living standards have risen steadily, and U.S. businesses have created entire industries that didn’t exist a generation ago…

Adherents of Rubinomics—after Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin—are still not converts, arguing that tax increases are virtuous if they reduce the deficit. We’ve addressed that argument many times and will again. But even the Rubinites haven’t dared to repeal indexing for inflation (which pushed taxpayers via “bracket creep” into ever-higher tax rates), and even the most ardent liberals don’t propose to return to the top pre-Reagan income tax rate of 70%. They also now understand that, at some point along the Laffer Curve, high rates begin to yield less tax revenue. The bipartisan consensus in favor of sound money has also held.

Thus today, the top marginal personal and corporate tax rates are 35%, compared with 70% and 48% in 1981. In the late 1970s the tax on dividends was 70% and the capital gains rate was 50%; now they’re both 15%. These reductions have increased the rate of return on capital, and hence some $3 trillion more was invested by foreigners in the U.S. between 1981 and 2005 than was invested by Americans abroad. One result: 40 million new jobs, more than the rest of the industrialized world combined.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, has followed the Gipper down the tax-cut curve. Daniel Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation finds that the average personal income tax rate in the industrialized world is now 43%, versus 67% in 1980. The average top corporate tax rate has fallen to 29% from 48%. This decline in global tax rates has been the economic counterpart to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most of Eastern Europe has adopted flat tax rates of 25% or lower, and the Russians now have a flat income tax of 13%. In Old Europe, Ireland’s corporate and personal income tax rate cuts have helped generate the swiftest economic growth in the EU.

Not bad for a President dismissed as a dreamy former actor. In his 1989 farewell address, Reagan said that “People say that I was a great communicator. It would be more accurate to say that I communicated great ideas.” He was right, and a remarkable global prosperity has followed in his wake. The challenge for current and future political leaders is not to forget it.

6. “How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” —Remarks in Arlington, Virginia, September 25, 1987

5. “The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business, August 15, 1986

4. “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” —Said often during his presidency, 1981-1989

2. “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” —The New York Times, September 22, 1980