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"Timeless wisdom versus hopenchangy socialism"

"So how do conservatives hold on to power when the population has been trained for two or three generations of Left-tinged rule to reflexively expect 'government to fix it' — whatever it may be?" wrote The Barrister at Maggie's Farm presciently back in October of 2006 in what we called, in our own post on the topic, "a tour de force essay that puts its finger on what ails us." (Unattributed image of Maggie and Ronnie, deep in conversation, on a brisk walk through the woods at [presumably] Camp David.)

"I never liked soaring rhetoric, and coupled with creeping (leaping?) socialism, I like it even less," we wrote in the comments of Texas Rainmaker's inspired imagining of what a Reagan/Obama debate would sound like:

Timeless wisdom versus hopenchangy socialism.

We imailed the link to Goomp, who writes back "Excellent and scary." Roger Kimball has a transcript of exerpts to whet your appetite. Be sure to treat yourself to the whole thing early and often, a cautionary tale that resonates and rouses our better angels. Our own personal favorite is this little holier-than-thou lecture/sermon of First Lady Michelle Obama's from February of 2008:

And Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism, that you put down your division, that you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone, that you push yourself to be better and that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

"GAK. I couldn't even listen to the whole thing," imails our sis:

She: Good God, Ronnie must be spinning in his grave at how short a time it's taken to come to this.

We: I know. The phoniness of Obama's "soaring rhetoric" is what gets me . . . vs. the calm, measured rhetoric of OUR RONNIE.

She: "Soaring rhetoric" interspersed with plenty of "uh, uh, uh"s.

As Vladimir Lenin would have said, "The lie that an insufferable blowhard is a "brilliant speaker" told often enough becomes the truth.

Update: Maggie's remembers.

"The timeless truths he so eloquently gave voice to"

"Listen. Adapt. Be Positive." Michael Steele's prescription for what ails the GOP could have been written by Baby Cakes himself, above recharging his batteries in the afternoon sunlight during the countdown to supper.

"Ronald Reagan made it cool to be a Republican — it wasn't just his specific policies, but the timeless truths he so eloquently gave voice to, and upon which his policies were based. That's the Republican Party we must re-establish," writes Energizer-in-Chief Michael Steele in "Listen. Adapt. Be Positive" in today's WSJ:

Our challenge lies not in beating Democrats, but in uniting around a message that solidifies our ranks and attracts new people to our cause. We have to listen to what Americans are telling us about their hopes, desires and needs, and then translate that message into proposals for meaningful action squarely grounded on the values we Republicans have always stood for.

Our faith in the power and ingenuity of the individual to build a nation through hard work, personal responsibility and self-discipline is our uniting principle. That is the sacred ground upon which our Republican Party was built. For the sake of all Americans, it is the ground we must reclaim.

Steele's advice to "Listen. Adapt. Be Positive" came in handy last evening as Tiny found herself up a tree at the end of her tether. The line attached to her harness got tripped up in some loose-hanging bark as she tried to climb down head first. Adapting, she reoriented and started to back down. Fortunately, we happened upon the scene just then to help dislodge the line.

We were thrilled to learn from Fox News this evening that Steele, the "former lieutenant governor of Maryland, has decided to run for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee and is in talks with Newt Gingrich to win the former House speaker's endorsement":

Steele declined to comment, but a source close to the situation said Steele would announce his candidacy as early as Thursday.

The source also contradicted a report in Tuesday's Washington Times that Steele and Gingrich were competing for the RNC post [Phew!].

"There is no fight," the source said. "This tension between Michael Steele and Newt Gingrich is totally fabricated and, in fact, Gingrich and Steele are working together to create a new strategy for the direction of the GOP."

In a statement issued by the former House speaker, Gingrich said he was not interested in seeking the post of Republican Party chairman …"my job as an American first is to develop a tri-partisan approach to developing solutions for the challenges we face. I use the word tri-partisan to designate the concept of attracting Democrats, Republicans, and independents to solutions that unify most Americans."

We haven't felt this energized about the Grand Old Party since we saw that Ronald Reagan film that day last August when Sarah Palin emerged metaphorically from John McCain's brow. We've gotten to know Michael Steele's political philosophy, authenticity and easy manner through frequent TV guest appearances during this long election season, and we like the cut of his sail. Some fun facts from a US News series of profiles on possible McCain running mates last April:

He grew up in a family of Democrats. Steele credits his mother, Maebell, and Ronald Reagan with turning him toward the Republican Party. Reagan's pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps message recalled a trait Steele's mother exhibited after her first husband, Steele's father, died in 1962 of alcoholism-related liver disease. She refused to go on welfare. Instead, she went to work as a laundress earning minimum wage to support Michael and his sister.

One of the first in his family to go to college, he earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. Steele also spent a few years at the Augustinian Friars Seminary at Villanova University, in preparation for the priesthood, before deciding instead on a career in civil service.

In 2004, Steele was tapped to speak at the Republican National Convention, eliciting comparisons with Barack Obama's keynote address at the Democratic convention …

On Feb. 1, 2007, Steele was named the chairman of GOPAC, a political action committee working to elect Republicans to office (Newt Gingrich once held the same position).

The fact that Michael Steele is a "mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" is frosting on the cake, confounding the efforts of Obama & Company to play the race card against people like us who may take issue with his agenda.

Update: All things bright, clean and nice looking at Modulator's Friday Ark #217.

The most courtly and kind of men

One of the dearest and most honorable of men that ever lived is George Herbert Walker Bush, father of GW. He teared up, of course, when he spoke today of how Ronnie had taught him kindness. We were astonished to hear him say someone had taught him kindness. He has always seemed the most courtly and kind of men. ('Wish he had never asked us to read his lips and then caved to the oily George Mitchell, of course, but nobody's perfect.) What touched us most was his personal references and kind words that brought the poor little waif of a Reagan daughter, Patti Davis, to smile with heartfelt joy. She seems so needy, and his words seemed to feed her.

He celebrates his 80th birthday on Sunday with -- of course -- a parachute jump. Bar must be biting her lip. But it seems these awesome men always have awesome women beside them. That is how we know that GW is okay. Laura is beside him. We feel no such good vibes from John Kerry's mate.

"Not bad training for someone who goes into politics"

"The process, called empathy, is not bad training for someone who goes into politics (or any other calling)," wrote President Reagan in his autobiography, cited by Brian Micklethwait of Brian's Education Blog, recalling the high school English teacher who got him interested in acting:

Another newcomer in Dixon that year was a new English teacher, B. J. Frazer, a small man with spectacles almost as thick as mine who taught me things about acting that stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Our English teachers until then had graded student essays solely for spelling and grammar, without any consideration for their content. B. J. Frazer announced he was going to base his grades in part on the originality of our essays. That prodded me to be imaginative with my essays; before long he was asking me to read some of my essays to the class, and when I started getting a few laughs, I began writing them with the intention of entertaining the class. I got more laughs and realized I enjoyed it as much as I had those readings at church. For a teenager still carrying around some old feelings of insecurity, the reaction of my classmates was more music to my ears.

In fact, for a high school English teacher in the middle of rural Illinois, he was amazingly astute about the theater and gave a lot of thought to what acting was all about. He wouldn't order you to memorize your lines and say: "Read it this way . . ." Instead, he'd teach us that it was important to analyze our characters and think like them in ways that helped us be that person while we were on stage.

By developing a knack for putting yourself in someone else's shoes, it helps you relate better to others and perhaps understand why they think as they do, even though they come from a background much different from yours.

How lame Bubba's facile "I feel your pain" sounds by comparison.

[via Michelle Malkin]

"The great cause of cheering us all up"

Margaret Thatcher in videotaped eulogy to President Reagan presented this morning at Washington National Cathedral

"When the world threw problems at the White House, he was not baffled, or disorientated, or overwhelmed. He knew almost instinctively what to do," said Margaret Thatcher in an eloquent and moving videotaped tribute to her old ally on the world stage.  She attended the service at Washington National Cathedral but has given up public speaking after a series of small strokes. A full transcript is available at NewsMax:

Ronald Reagan knew his own mind. He had firm principles -- and, I believe, right ones. He expounded them clearly, he acted upon them decisively.

In his lifetime Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and invigorating presence that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he set himself. He sought to mend America's wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism. These were causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk.

Yet they were pursued with almost a lightness of spirit. For Ronald Reagan also embodied another great cause -- what Arnold Bennett once called "the great cause of cheering us all up." His politics had a freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every nation -- and ultimately from the very heart of the evil empire.

Yet his humour often had a purpose beyond humour. In the terrible hours after the attempt on his life, his easy jokes gave reassurance to an anxious world. They were evidence that in the aftermath of terror and in the midst of hysteria, one great heart at least remained sane and jocular. They were truly grace under pressure.

And perhaps they signified grace of a deeper kind. Ronnie himself certainly believed that he had been given back his life for a purpose. As he told a priest after his recovery, "Whatever time I've got left now belongs to the Big Fella Upstairs."

Nothing was more typical of Ronald Reagan than that large-hearted magnanimity -- and nothing was more American.

Such good words to hear from the Iron Lady.  Good, too, were the words of Former Polish President and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in today's Opinion Journal:

I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit. They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They're convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for. Otherwise they would consider their life and work pointless. Only such politicians are great politicians and Ronald Reagan was one of them.

Reagan's "secret weapon"

"Reagan's 'secret weapon' as a communicator was the depth with which he believed in what he was saying. Listeners could feel his sincerity, and it persuaded them," writes Rudolph Giuliani in the New York Post:

What anyone trying to understand Ronald Reagan must grasp is that everything about him was real. And that's what resonated with the American people. All this love he had for the country and the spirit of America, all his patriotism — it came from his heart and his soul.

Yes, he was an actor. But when he became president, the role he was acting was the essence of Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan's great contributions are defeating communism, liberating Eastern Europe, and changing the nature of domestic politics. All these are historical facts that make him a great president.

But Ronald Reagan's most lasting contribution was restoring the American spirit. Even more than the individual achievements themselves, he reminded us that we are capable of great accomplishments.

[via Lucianne]

"Ronald Reagan departs, a victor"

"The ethos of Ronald Reagan and LBJ represent the two great political ideologies of our lifetime," writes Daniel Henninger in Opinion Journal:

The bitterness of our politics now is a phenomenon admitted by all. People ask whence it arrived. The answer will not be found in George W. Bush's west Texas accent or in his decision to depose Saddam Hussein. Ronald Reagan himself fired the first volleys -- and hot lead it was -- in his first inaugural speech, in 1981.

Next to Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan was perhaps the most divisive president in the nation's history. Lincoln ended a way of life for the American South. Reagan said that he was ending a way of life for American liberalism. As with Lincoln, the challenge Reagan posed to his opposition was not merely political or economic. It was profoundly moral -- and so worth a death-struggle. The tensions and bitterness evident in the body politic today, and in the current presidential campaign, arrived in Washington in 1981 with the 40th president. This quiet week of remembrance is a temporary truce.

The substantive disagreements that put these factions in opposition is not that of the mundane contests between Ford and Carter or Clinton and Dole. It was more like a religious war and remains so to this day.

"Did Ronald Reagan succeed?" asks Henninger:

He had more measurable success against the Soviet Union. It's gone. Much of the Great Society endures, no longer exciting the brilliant young, and smoking with inefficiencies. But the basic tenet of Reaganism, "the individual genius of man," now has a moral claim in our politics at least equal to the Democrats' distributive justice. The Reagan wars persist in our time because his professed heir, George W. Bush, also cut taxes. Tax revenue is the holy water of liberalism -- what they use, they believe, to work social miracles. Ronald Reagan said individuals are the source of miracles, not the government. Those were fighting words. Ronald Reagan departs, a victor.

Class will out

"In America, we have the right of Freedom of Speech. We can say pretty much anything we like, when we like, but there is a time and a place to say it. When you say something tells as much about you as what you say, sometimes more," writes Deborah of My Little Corner of the World, a blog we discovered in our stats this morning. A thoughtful and touching tribute:

I imagine that I, like most Americans, and most of the world, watched the State Funeral for President Reagan last evening. I remember Kennedy's funeral, but for some reason don't remember Eisenhower or Johnson's. I know I had to have watched them.

I found myself breaking down in tears. I'm not sure what brought it on. Maybe it was memories of my own parents' funerals. I didn't know Mr. Reagan, except as a President. I didn't have much feeling one way or the other for him at the time. I'm sorry to say I was too wrapped up in my own little world to understand just what he was doing and what he stood for.

But what really got me was the quiet respect. The only time I heard voices was when Mrs Reagan appeared. There was a scattering of applause and people called out to her saying, "We love you, Nancy" and "God Bless you." She acknowledged all this with a slight, sad smile and a wave. I noticed as she rode in the limo behind the caisson that she would wave to the crowds. I thought it showed just what a classy lady she is.

How'm I doing?

"I thought President Reagan’s reference to the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire' was a sublime phrase. But he was attacked by many of the cognoscenti who like to think of themselves as intellectuals and academics, as well as by editorial writers, who labeled Reagan and his comment as puerile, says Former New York City Mayor Edward Koch in commentary for Bloomberg radio republished in NewsMax:

They did the same to President George W. Bush when he referred to Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the Axis of Evil. Bush was as correct in his phrasing as was Reagan.

I remember when Reagan’s intellectual capacity was questioned by the same crowd that now questions the mental ability of George W. Bush. They attack Bush with the same catcalls and brickbats they used on Reagan.

When he was mayor, Mr. Koch's catchphrase was "How'm I doing?" Well, Mr. Mayor, we'd say you're doing just fine.

A time for choosing

"Ronald Reagan's legacy is clear. It can be seen in the twin philosophies of peace through strength and security through the spread of liberty, from the liberation of Iraq to the larger push for democracy in the Middle East as a way of combating terrorism," writes Brendan Miniter in Opinion Journal:

There is a time for choosing between standing up and fighting for liberty or sitting back and allowing evil to triumph. This is no quaint notion, but something that is at the heart of our politics today and central to our foreign policy and our security . . .

Reagan understood that those who oppress others around the globe eventually come to threaten Americans at home. That's why he liberated Grenada a few days after the Lebanon bombing, crossed Moammar Gadhafi's "line of death" and in a thousand other ways signaled to the world that America was no longer ashamed to take a stand for freedom, through force of arms if necessary.

This week President Bush is meeting in Sea Island, Ga., with the leaders of the industrialized world. At the meetings the president is pushing for a resolution demanding democracy, equal rights for women and a greater respect for human rights in the Arab world. Of the many tributes to Reagan, this is perhaps the most fitting. Reagan helped liberate millions in Eastern Europe and fought to save millions more in Latin America and elsewhere from the oppression of communism. Today's struggle against the tyranny of terrorism and Islamism is in line with the fight Reagan waged. Fundamentally both are moral struggles. Mr. Bush is picking up where Reagan left off and using individual liberty to undermine the tyrants who attack us.

As we said here yesterday, the opposition was/is shrill and self-serving and short-sighted. Are we strong enough to stay the course?