In Reagan’s earliest days as a public speaker he was invited to deliver a commencement speech at a little known women’s school then called William Woods College located in Fulton, Missouri. It was the same college where, at an earlier time in 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his lengthy and now iconic “Iron Curtain” speech. This address gave a name—the Cold War—to the rising noncombat aggression then stirring. This was how Churchill stated it:
“The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with this primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. As you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done, but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement. Opportunity is here now, clear and shining, for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the after-time.
“It is necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose, and the grand simplicity of decision shall rule and guide the conduct of the English-speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must, and I believe we shall, prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement.”
Six years after Churchill addressed the student body there, Reagan began his own speech with a call on America never to abandon its global leadership responsibility amid rising tensions with the Soviets. As Reagan spoke to the graduates, he drew on his years in Hollywood in the heat of debates over communism. Even then Reagan was on fire about his conviction that the communism referred to by Churchill was an active and evil force. That may be what motivated him to show these graduates an early version of Reagan the evangelist. In his speech, lost and disregarded for decades, Reagan started by calling America, significantly, “less of a place than an idea,” and continued by answering what this idea might be:
“It is nothing but the inherent love of freedom in each one of us… [which is] the basis of this country… the idea of the dignity of man, the idea that deep within the heart of each one of us is something so godlike and precious that no individual or group has a right to impose his or its will upon the people,… so well as they can decide for themselves.”
Forty years later, Reagan returned to this theme of a nation of ideas and ideals when, as ex-President at age eighty-one, he addressed the 1992 Republican Convention:
“There was a time when empires were defined by land mass, subjugated peoples, and military might. But the United States is unique, because we are an empire of ideals. For two hundred years we have been set apart by our faith in the ideals of democracy, of free men and free markets, and of the extraordinary possibilities that lie within seemingly ordinary men and women.”
For Reagan, American goodness and exceptionalism were not the whole story. It was America’s historic and special purpose, its Constitution, its place in the forward march of civilization and human progress that mattered most to him. He viewed history in a dynamic way and saw every aspect of it as deliberate and fundamental to its future. Reagan was always hopeful, so it would be natural for him to think that America’s best days were always ahead and something to expect and strive for. I think he viewed history like a conveyor belt moving the world toward better days and social and economic improvement, and to the degree that anyone got on this conveyor belt and rode that engine, they benefited from its forward progress into the future. And why not adopt this view? It may seem simplistic to some but for those whose lives had been saved and improved by the American way of life, and there have been many millions who fall in this category, every word of Reagan’s belief had meaning, but more importantly it had its proof. For those who had not yet benefited from it, it was just as important to keep the prospect of economic improvement in front of them. That is one reason Reagan had a reach and appeal across the political and economic spectrum, as seen in the number of Democrats who voted for him. Political parties may be adrift today because they have done a poor job of adopting this big-tent approach. Optimism can result in empowerment. Reagan himself was an example of that.
Reagan was a product of America, and America was in his blood. He could have had a permanent tattoo on his forehead saying, “Made in America.” He was raised in a series of small towns, in a semirural civic culture with Midwestern values of honesty, neighborliness, and hard work at the core. In the Reagan family’s circle of friends, everyone was at the same economic level: poor and struggling. Outside of the moral support of his family, church, and community, he had nothing given to him. He had to earn every opportunity. He was also brought up in and influenced by a tradition of faith in a church that was founded in America. He lifted himself up professionally and economically from the poverty of his parents, and he had to create a new identity for himself as he went along.
While he carried the values and experiences of his boyhood with him throughout his life, at each stage of his career he had to assume a slightly modified persona to fit the requirements of the jobs he performed. He had natural leadership and communication abilities and was the second in his family, along with his older brother, Neil, to receive a college education. The first home his parents actually ever owned was in retirement—the one he bought for them in California after he became a film actor. Reagan lived the American dream. He was blessed by the opportunity his country afforded him, and he knew and acknowledged it. He felt he owed a debt to his country, and he wanted to pay it back by serving. This is how most members of the Greatest Generation felt about America.
Reagan knew the rules and he respected them, learned how to play by them, and how to use them for advancement. He never expected that just because he was raised with meager financial means, he would have to remain at that level. His mother made sure that her son Dutch, as he was nicknamed, knew that there was plenty of opportunity waiting for him if he would live a good life and aspire to greater things. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that anyone else who wanted it and was able could not achieve as he did. He saw opportunity as an equal benefit for everyone. This led him to write, years later:
“The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.”
Americans are generally aware of the significant advantages of their country and are mindful of its shortcomings—while expectant that they can be remedied. But Reagan looked out at America and Americans, and where some leaders might see a nation’s failings and are apologetic because of them, he saw a great nation founded on remarkable principles as well as people who were overwhelmingly kind, inventive, neighborly, and inherently good—and needing no apology. He talked about this in his speeches even before he assumed the presidency. To him the future held promise for its citizens and their families, and he set about telling Americans how good they were and how great their country was whenever he could. He saw his job, in part, to build up a nation’s confidence in itself, in its ability to achieve and to make good on providing opportunity for everyone. What he believed in was American Exceptionalism.
Reagan said in 1985 at a ceremony celebrating Hispanic Heritage Week:
“At the root of everything that we’re trying to accomplish is the belief that America has a mission. We are a nation of freedom, living under God, believing all citizens must have the opportunity to grow, create wealth, and build a better life for those who follow. If we live up to those moral values, we can keep the American dream alive for our children and grandchildren, and America will remain mankind’s best hope.”
Reagan spoke of America as the “last best hope of man on earth,” that “our country’s best days are ahead,” and that America has a “special purpose” in world history. For him these were not just comforting and quaint aphorisms of a bygone era. They illustrated the pride and esteem in which this President held his country. This belief wasn’t just a turn of phrase for Reagan. It formed the basis for every policy and every action he took while in office. He was an evangelist for America, not for imperialist reasons but for idealistic ones. He fought for the spread and expansion of democratic freedoms throughout the world, but not for political annexation or territorial expansion. He genuinely felt that the hallmarks of American-style democracy would accord every human being on the face of the earth the personal freedoms and the liberty they deserved. He wanted the whole world to share in it. He was an unrepentant, unapologetic idealist and optimist. He loved his country.
Reagan did not believe in the superiority of the American people, its culture, its business, industry, or art relative to other cultures. He believed in the superiority of the principles on which American democracy was founded, and in the structure of its representative form of government with its transparency and checks and balances, and he wanted these to be accessible to any nation that sought them.
This is a critical distinction lost on some who debate the Exceptionalism issue. Some have maintained that Exceptionalism means that Americans feel they are superior to people in other cultures around the globe in a chauvinistic or nationalistic way. This did not figure into Reagan’s reasoning at all. He was a champion for worldwide democracy movements, but only because of what he believed they could achieve for everyone in the world. One specific example of this was his Caribbean Basin Initiative, which was designed to promote economic opportunity and to bolster fledgling democracies. This would both benefit the people of this region and also protect U.S. security interests in what was at that time a politically volatile part of the world, close to American shores and its economic interests.
National polling has consistently revealed that at times as many as 80 percent of all U.S. citizens believe in American Exceptionalism. When asked to define it, however, there were many different interpretations of it—ranging from superiority at sports and science to the values of freedom and liberty protected by the U.S. Constitution. Even though American Exceptionalism can be misinterpreted or distorted for political purposes, this belief brought President Kennedy to make the commitment to land a man on the moon and allowed an entire generation to dream of reaching that far-off destination. As Russel B. Nye noted in his book This Almost Chosen People, “The search by Americans for a precise definition of their national purpose, and their absolute conviction that they have such a purpose, provides one of the most powerful threads in the development of an American ideology.” Americans do not have to go farther than our national Constitution to find that purpose—to see a country founded on nothing but ideals, the breadth of which had not been seen before.
Reagan felt that if the guiding light of American Exceptionalism were to dim, weaken, or go out entirely, the whole world would suffer from that darkness. He felt that America had no choice but to spread its light. To him it was a key ingredient in its founding principles and an obligation from which it gained its justification and strength as a nation. In other words, to him freedom for Americans without the prospect of freedom for every human being might constitute a threat to the security of the freedoms Americans themselves enjoy. This was a key point for Reagan. Isolationism was not an option for him. The global interventionism of American ideals was his primary goal, but he imagined the results in practical terms. Reagan kept up an unapologetic drumbeat of what America stood for in all his dealings with other nations, touting the ability of our democratic form of government to provide opportunity for anyone to lift themselves from poverty into economic stability.
For Reagan the role of the United States in the world originated from the teaching of man being his brother’s keeper, the rule of law, and the responsibility to help advance the freedom that he felt was the innate right of every man, woman, and child. This policy also had its ramifications for the safety and security of Americans, because the more democracy there is in the world, the safer the United States may be from potential aggression, harm, and terror. The less freedom and democracy, the greater the threat to American security and its way of life, and the higher the cost—in dollars and human life—of defending it. Promoting and supporting democracy and freedom abroad are an effective defensive strategy and a good investment policy in our future.
I do not believe that Reagan saw America as the world’s exclusive unilateral peacekeeper, even though he was skeptical of multilateral initiatives whereby the United States could possibly lose control of the governing principles. I think Reagan saw the United States as a peace igniter and in a standard-bearer role. Reagan held more bilateral meetings and worked harder at developing relations with the heads of other countries than most nonwartime Presidents. A record number of heads of state came to the White House during his eight years. At any given time we had long lists of requests through the State Department and the National Security Council of countries who wanted their heads of state to be welcomed by Reagan at the White House. It was a challenge to fit them all in the schedule, and some had to be accorded lesser-level “working” visits rather than official state visits with all the honors and ceremony they were accorded. Reagan’s personal diplomacy skills were expert and critical to his achieving ambitious foreign policy goals. He was adept at establishing productive friendships with other heads of state. Communication with these leaders was a high priority for him, and he knew developing strong ties between leaders could improve the world condition and lessen the threat of strife.
The Reagans hosted at least one foreign head of state at the White House per month. My office managed many elements of these visits and it was my responsibility to direct aspects of the events that occurred during these visits. During these ceremonies, I worked closely with the President. We would discuss the details prior, during, and after the state visits. I saw his pride at introducing his guests to American hospitality and White House tradition. I also saw his genuine interest in his guests and their backgrounds, human interests, points of view, and of course bilateral and multilateral diplomatic agendas. I could also see his guests warming to Reagan and appreciating his invitations.
In 1974 Reagan said: “We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, ‘The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hand of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.’”
In some ways Reagan was really a gentleman of an earlier era, and he identified with earlier American Presidents much more than his more immediate predecessors. After all, many of these earlier leaders were, to him, legendary thinkers and doers working in the national interest. They glimpsed the possibilities the new country offered and strove to achieve them. Some of his heroes served when America was nothing but an undeveloped land of opportunity facing a promising but uncertain future.
Because Reagan valued the lives and record of the Founders and earlier American leaders, it was natural for him to adopt as his own the image of America put forth by one of its Pilgrim leaders. The “shining city on a hill” metaphor, pronounced on the deck of the tiny ship Arabella in Plymouth Harbor by a future Governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, was a natural and convenient one for Reagan to take as his own. It was also purposeful on Reagan’s part. He was employing a parable and someone else’s words to convey a message in ways that were both symbolic and visually engaging. By depicting what he saw as America’s destiny, he was also drawing a distinction between the United States and governments that did not earn his respect. He felt that the more people knew about and understood the American model of democracy, the easier it would be for them to abandon those forms of government not based on the ideals of individual freedom and liberty.
The “shining city” quote is a reference, not only to John Winthrop, but to the book of Matthew, chapter 5, verses 14–16. These verses refer not only to the light of the metaphoric city but also to the responsibility of the follower to carry and reflect this light for the benefit of the world. For Reagan, this linking of light and of American destiny was not his own brand of ardent nationalism. For him this gift of freedom and light was never bestowed by the state but was inherent in its founding principles and sustained by the spirit of its people.
In the same 1992 speech where Reagan defined Exceptionalism, he told the audience a story about optimism. After referring to America as a country that is “forever young,” he said, “A fellow named James Allen once wrote in his diary, ‘Many thinking people believe America has seen its best days.’” The trouble with that pessimistic sentiment, according to Reagan, was that Allen had written that in his diary on July 26, 1775! Perhaps for James Allen, the American Revolution had gotten off to a good start at Lexington and Concord, but by July the patriots were outgunned on land and at sea. They were fighting the mightiest empire on earth, and they were doing that with a ragtag bunch of militia men and without a real navy. It was no wonder Allen was pessimistic. But look at what had happened since then! Reagan went on in this speech to catalog a history of accomplishments, struggles, and triumphs that would convince any pessimist to reverse course and become an optimist.
This 1992 speech was called “America’s Best Days Are Yet to Come,” and while he was winding down his own life personally, he wanted to communicate the optimism he would forever associate with his country and to help imbue it with this eternal conviction. He implored,
“America’s best days are yet to come. Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious achievements are just ahead.” According to the way Reagan saw it, he shared Ralph Waldo Emerson’s view that America was “the country of tomorrow.”
One of the central planks in the Reagan 1980 presidential campaign platform was that government serves the people and not the other way around. To this end Reagan said:
“Let us all remember, ideas do matter. We didn’t come to Washington to be caretakers of power. We weren’t elected to become managers of the decline or just to see if we couldn’t run the same old shop and maybe do it a little more efficiently. We were sent here to move America forward again by putting people back in charge of their own country, to promote growth… to give individuals the opportunities to reach for their dreams, to strengthen institutions of family, school, church, and community, to make the United States a stronger leader for peace, freedom, and progress abroad, and, through it all, to renew our faith in the God who has blessed our land.”
For Reagan, the idea of government predominance, domination, or control, especially in a well-established, committed, and formal democracy, was anathema. In his mind it was the first step toward socialism and tyranny because it diminished the responsibility and thereby the capacity, fulfillment, and self-determination of the individual. He felt that freedom was built and maintained by individuals and that government gained its legitimacy from them collectively, not the other way around. He felt that only through preserving the rights and the power of the individual could freedom and progress be protected and passed down from generation to generation. His roots in the liberal Democratic Party and his clash with communism early in his career while serving as head of the Screen Actors Guild gave him a taste of something he saw as threatening to American-style democracy and government by the people.
What made Reagan’s perspective unique was that to him the greatest evil of a government grown dominant over its people could be its potential to separate a man from his God and to deny access to Divine Providence by replacing it with dependence on and allegiance to an all-powerful state. This had occurred in his lifetime under communist regimes, where atheism was the state deity. His experiences in Hollywood after World War II directly affected his beliefs about welfare, government overregulation, and runaway spending, and they led to his policy initiatives designed to rein in the size and reach of government.
Reagan was not a policy wonk. He saw government or public policy as a derivative of and subordinate to the will of the people in a democratic context. He effected policy but did not steep himself in it. He was more in the idea business and his idea was that the growth of government had to be eclipsed. He told the American people that at every opportunity he had. It was not an easy task, however, to rein in the sprawl and span of overreaching government, and his success at it as President was limited and his efforts for reform met with mixed results. What he can be credited with is bringing the idea to the forefront of the public debate and keeping up an unyielding drumbeat for these principles. By employing these principles he launched a Reagan doctrine that lives on but is not completely understood or adhered to by politicians today.
During his two terms, there were commissions and studies on reducing the size of government, initiatives to improve government efficiency, campaigns for the presidential line-item veto, and some of these met with modest success. There were government hiring freezes, agency size reductions, furloughs, RIFs (reductions in force), budgetary congressional showdowns where the government was actually shut down, and other specific tactics to conquer this problem. Some measure of success could be accorded to Reagan, but what is remembered was his hammering these positions into the political history of America and its collective consciousness. Looking back, it could always be said that Reagan stood for limited government and individual freedom.
In his farewell address from the Oval Office in January 1989, he was ready to claim a limited victory over government’s unending expansion. In his parting remarks he said:
“Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words… ‘We the People’ tell the government what to do; it doesn’t tell us… ‘We the People’ are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast.”
In this last address, Reagan chose to talk about the relationship of a people to its government just as he had in his 1981 inaugural address. Before he closed his remarks he went back to the Constitution and repeated again and again the phrase that gave this belief its lifeblood: “We the People. We the People.” He had started out in this first inaugural address laying down the gauntlet: Government must “work with us, not over us; [it must] stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government… must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”