Follow the Gipper

With only two policies, the most successful Republican president of the last century won two terms in the White House for himself, paved the way to victory a third consecutive time for his successor -- his very own VP, and set the stage for his party's stunning Congressional electoral victory during the administration of the most popular Democratic president since Kennedy and perhaps since FDR. Ronald Reagan's simple strategy was to cut taxes and beef up the military. So successful was he with these two ideas that he nearly put his own party out of business when communism fell in Russia and Eastern Europe and it briefly appeared that the GOP had lost its raison d'etre. Even the eventual balancing of the budget during the Clinton years was Reagan's doing, resulting from all the extra cash floating around after our (Reagan's) economic death-grip choked the Soviet Union out of existence.

The playbook, then, for all future GOP executives, especially after the one-term example of George H.W. Bush despite his resounding success in the Gulf War, is clear: Follow the Gipper to Victory. One could say that even Bill Clinton understood this when he declared that the "era of big government is over," stealing Reagan's thunder when no Republican savvy enough was around to reclaim it.

For many months now it appears that this is precisely the playbook George W. Bush has been using. For example, his administration has jettisoned, if not nearly eviscerated from memory, Condoleeza Rice's silly speech with which she accepted the nomination as National Security Advisor and in which she said that the United States is "not the world's 911" -- meaning, of course, a call for support, not the day on which we were attacked (how ironic). Reagan's defense build-up was a moral venture, dedicated not only to protecting us from attack but also (take note, Patrick Buchanan) to supporting freedom-seeking and oppressed people wherever possible. Reagan's policies were so different from those of his predecessors, Democrat and Republican alike, especially in their willingness to support freedom abroad, to be "forward-leaning," that they required a new name (eventually given by Charles Krauthammer) -- the Reagan Doctrine. The continued success of the Bush administration depends upon whether it can maintain similar policies -- and not just because we were savagely attacked but because it recognizes our duty, the example (spoken of by our founders) of our experiment with ordered liberty to the world, our "rendezvous with destiny."

The recent appointments of Henry Kissinger and John Snow may not indicate definitive wavering from the Reagan blueprint, but they are not necessarily encouraging either. In Kissinger's appointment, the Wall Street Journal and IA's own Jacob Golbitz , with whose interpretations I will not quibble, have detected a certain wisdom. However, it has been more difficult to detect the wisdom in Snow's nomination. The president's instincts appear to be to cut taxes, following Reagan's supply-side policies his father once dubbed "Voodo Economics." It is not clear that he has found a Treasury Secretary to support him in this effort.

Finally, the recent stupidities of the Senate Majority Leader have not been met with the rebuke they deserve. The silence is understandable perhaps, though inadequate, from members of the GOP who'd rather put the embarrassing remarks behind them.

In the aftermath of its astonishing electoral victory, the GOP needs its great models now, from Lincoln to Reagan, to maintain its momentum.