LOOKING BACK AT REAGAN
October 2, 2003

by Joe Sobran

     Reading Ronald Reagan's newly published letters 
reminds me how much I've always liked him, even after I 
stopped admiring him as a president. He was always a 
modest, decent, good-humored man, with more common sense 
and a keener sense of proportion than most politicians. 
And he loved a good laugh.

     But the very qualities that made him charming and 
convivial underscored the absurdity of entrusting him, or 
any man, with the awful power of the American presidency. 
The superlatives his adulators heap on him seem as wide 
of the mark as the exaggerations of his detractors: he 
was really quite an ordinary man, and he never pretended 
to be anything else. He should never have had all that 
power, but who should? At least it should be in the hands 
of a man who didn't take himself too seriously and 
wouldn't abuse it as grossly as most.

     He only shocked me once. That was in 1983, shortly 
after the grisly bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in 
Lebanon, when he ordered the retaliatory shelling of a 
village that was said to be a terrorist stronghold. Such 
an act was bound to kill indiscriminately. It was murder! 
And the Ronald Reagan I knew wasn't a murderer! This 
couldn't be happening!

     But it did happen, and everyone seemed to take it 
for granted that a president had to "strike back" at 
terrorism, however wildly, in order to display American 
"resolve." It wasn't murder; it was part of the job 
description.

     I'd first paid attention to Reagan when I was in 
high school and I heard a recorded speech he'd given, as 
a spokesman for General Electric, contrasting American 
free enterprise with Communism. I thought he was 
terrific. I was delighted a few years later when he went 
into politics and got elected governor of California.

     By the time he ran for president in 1980 I had high 
hopes for him. I thought he would lead a repeal of all of 
liberalism's gains since the New Deal. I didn't stop to 
reflect that I was thinking like a liberal myself -- 
hoping for a president who would be a messianic leader, a 
charismatic one-man show.

     Well, there have been worse political messiahs. 
Whatever else he did, Reagan never lost his modest charm. 
I heard him speak at a few conservative gatherings, and 
he never failed to bring down the house with a great 
joke. As a British writer recently observed, Bob Hope 
couldn't hold a candle to Reagan as a raconteur. He 
really brought fun to the White House. I was never 
prouder than when I heard he'd roared at some of my own 
jokes.

     I was one of his true believers -- one of those who 
cried, "Let Reagan be Reagan!" in the conviction that 
those weaselly moderate Republican advisors, those 
disdained "men around the president," were holding him 
back from acting like the true conservative he was at 
heart.

     I was bound to be disappointed by his compromises. 
In time I was so disillusioned with him that I actually 
made a joke at his expense: "Let someone else be Reagan." 
But that wasn't until his second term.

     Many principled conservatives saw through Reagan 
long before I did -- if I ever did. He had a way of 
convincing sentimentalists like me that he shared our 
passions, despite any appearances to the contrary. I was 
a sucker for him, and maybe I still am. I think I know 
better now, but I'm not entirely sure.

     Strange, the way some men can make you want to 
believe in them. Whatever that quality is, Reagan had it. 
At one time, about half my friends were Reagan 
speechwriters, and every one of them worshipped him. 
They're still writing loving books about him.

     That was my generation. We'll never feel that way 
about another politician. Maybe you can be pardoned for 
getting carried away like that once in your life, but in 
any case it can't happen twice.

     If you're really wise, it won't even happen to you 
once. The U.S. Constitution defines the president's 
duties very narrowly, and they don't include running the 
economy, bombing villages, or even telling great jokes.

     Reagan wasn't a great president. "Great" presidents, 
as usually conceived, are unconstitutional. I like to 
think Reagan understood this. At least I'm pretty sure he 
was the last president who even glanced at the 
Constitution once in a while.

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