Editorial: Reagan’s legacy surely will endure

Tuesday, June 8, 2004 | 9:56 a.m.

President Ronald Reagan's conservatism -- especially his belief that government is the problem, not the solution -- provoked strong passions among both Democrats and Republicans during the 1980s. Not many Americans were passive when it came to Reagan's often polarizing ideas, including his hawkish foreign policy. Still, Reagan's boundless optimism and belief that America's greatest days were just ahead earned him the public's admiration and disarmed many of his critics.

Ultimately, if it hadn't been for the success of the Reagan Revolution, it's hard to imagine conservative Republicans subsequently getting elected governor in states that were solidly Democratic or Republicans capturing control of the House of Representatives in 1994. The popular two-term president, who died over the weekend, was one of the most important figures of the 20th century, transforming American politics. Indeed, Reagan's standing as a leader in the modern-era Republican Party rivals that of Franklin Roosevelt's role in establishing the Democratic Party's dominance in American politics from the New Deal through the 1960s.

In the area of foreign policy, Reagan's greatest achievement was his resoluteness in standing up to, and working to end, the spread of communism engineered by the Soviet Union. The ultimate breakup of the Soviet Union was accelerated by the president's willingness to engage it in an arms race, which helped bankrupt an already unstable, state-run Soviet economy. There were some missteps in foreign affairs, though, most notably the Iran-Contra scandal. But Reagan's resolve in fighting communism -- something he had in common with Democrat Harry Truman and which helped him politically, earning him the votes of conservative Democrats -- endeared him to tens of millions of people living in those former totalitarian countries in Eastern Europe.

The sharpest break from his predecessors in the Oval Office -- including Democrats and Republicans -- was in the area of economics. Reagan was an ardent believer in supply-side economics, a theory that holds that economic prosperity is tied to huge tax cuts. Congress did pass Reagan's tax-cut package in 1981, and the economy ultimately rebounded, setting the stage for his landslide re-election win in 1984. But while taxes were being cut, it was at the expense of true fiscal conservatism: The federal debt, even after some subsequent tax increases to try to stem the flow of red ink, nearly tripled during Reagan's administration. Reagan's Republican successor, George H.W. Bush, was forced to raise taxes, which made him a one-term president. Bush's successor, Democrat Bill Clinton, showed that economic prosperity can be gained in other ways, too, by raising ta xes and restraining government spending to seriously cut the deficit. Clinton's fiscal policies created an economic boom th! at lasted until George W. Bush took office in 2001.

While Reagan spoke about the need for sweeping cuts in government, he was a pragmatist and never really fought to slash government spending, something that shouldn't be too surprising. Americans like to talk about less government, but when it gets right down to it, they want Social Security to be there for them and their children when they retire, they want Medicare to be there for them when they're sick and elderly, they want decent funding for education to make sure that our nation's children have the same opportunities that they did, they want a strong military to make sure that we're protected and they want people who pose a threat to society to be locked up. But all those essential programs at the federal, state and local level require money -- in the form of taxes.

Nevertheless, Reagan, with his ability to masterfully communicate his conservative ideas, changed the nature of the political debate in Washington and in statehouses all across the country. The burden, more and more, has fallen on Democrats to prove why more government spending is necessary -- even for programs as vital as public education and Social Security -- a sea change in American politics due largely to Reagan.