Christmas 1983

President Reagan, December 24, 1983

My fellow Americans:

Like so many of your homes, the White House is brimming with greens, colorful decorations, and a tree trimmed and ready for Christmas day. And when Nancy and I look out from our upstairs windows, we can see the National Christmas Tree standing in majestic beauty. Its lights fill the air with a spirit of love, hope, and joy from the heart of America.

I shared that spirit recently when a young girl named Amy Benham helped me light our national tree. Amy had said that the tree that lights up our country must be seen all the way to heaven. And she said that her wish was to help me turn on its lights. Well, Amy's wish came true. But the greatest gift was mine, because I saw her eyes light up with hope and joy just as brightly as the lights on our national tree. And I'm sure they were both seen all the way to heaven, and they made the angels sing.

Christmas is a time for children, and rightly so. We celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace who came as a babe in a manger. Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great teacher and philosopher. But to other millions of us, Jesus is much more. He is divine, living assurance that God so loved the world He gave us His only begotten Son so that by believing in Him and learning to love each other we could one day be together in paradise.

It's been said that all the kings who ever reigned, that all the parliaments that ever sat have not done as much to advance the cause of peace on Earth and good will to men as the man from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth.

Christmas is also a time to remember the treasures of our own history. We remember one Christmas in particular, 1776, our first year as a nation. The Revolutionary War had been going badly. But George Washington's faith, courage, and leadership would turn the tide of history our way. On Christmas night he led a band of ragged soldiers across the Delaware River through driving snow to a victory that saved the cause of independence. It's said that their route of march was stained by bloody footprints, but their spirit never faltered and their will could not be crushed.

The image of George Washington kneeling in prayer in the snow is one of the most famous in American history. He personified a people who knew it was not enough to depend on their own courage and goodness; they must also seek help from God, their Father and Preserver.

In a few hours, families and friends across America will join together in caroling parties and Christmas Eve services. Together, we'll renew that spirit of faith, peace, and giving which has always marked the character of our people. In our moments of quiet reflection I know we will remember our fellow citizens who may be lonely and in need tonight.

``Is the Christmas spirit still alive?'' some ask. Well, you bet it is. Being Americans, we open our hearts to neighbors less fortunate. We try to protect them from hunger and cold. And we reach out in so many ways -- from toys-for-tots drives across the country, to good will by the Salvation Army, to American Red Cross efforts which provide food, shelter, and Christmas cheer from Atlanta to Seattle.

Churches are so generous it's impossible to keep track. One example: Reverend Bill Singles' Presbyterian Meeting House in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, is simultaneously sponsoring hot meals on wheels programs, making and delivering hundreds of sandwiches and box loads of clothes, while visiting local hospitals and sending postcards to shut-ins and religious dissidents abroad.

Let us remember the families who maintain a watch for their missing in action. And, yes, let us remember all those who are persecuted inside the Soviet bloc -- not because they commit a crime, but because they love God in their hearts and want the freedom to celebrate Hanukkah or worship the Christ Child.

And because faith for us is not an empty word, we invoke the power of prayer to spread the spirit of peace. We ask protection for our soldiers who are guarding peace tonight -- from frigid outposts in Alaska and the Korean demilitarized zone to the shores of Lebanon. One Lebanese mother told us that her little girl had only attended school 2 of the last 8 years. Now, she said, because of our presence there her daughter can live a normal life.

With patience and firmness we can help bring peace to that strife-torn region and make our own lives more secure. The Christmas spirit of peace, hope, and love is the spirit Americans carry with them all year round, everywhere we go. As long as we do, we need never be afraid, because trusting in God is the one sure answer to all the problems we face.

Till next week, thanks for listening, God bless you, and Merry Christmas.

Beirut Bombing, 40 Years Ago Today

Recent posts have discussed the Hamas terror attack on Israel. American officials fear that the conflict could spread to Lebanon.  Today we observe a grim anniversary. 

#OTD 40 YEARS AGO in Beirut "a truck smashed through doors of headquarters building in which our Marines were sleeping & instantly exploded. The 4-story concrete building collapsed in pile of rubble.
More than 200 of the sleeping men were killed in that one hideous insane attack" pic.twitter.com/Di6O9WbS0c

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) October 23, 2023

Biden and Reagan

Recent posts have discussed the Hamas terror attack on Israel.

 Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast:

I never thought the day would come when I, a die-hard Reagan Republican, would credit a Democratic president for being Reaganesque. Amazingly, it has. Don’t look now, but Joe Biden has been leading with moral authority in the struggle against violent authoritarianism and illiberalism at home and abroad.

While Donald Trump criticized the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden met with Bibi and declared America’s support for Israel to be “rock solid and unwavering.” And while Republican support for providing U.S. aid to Ukraine has eroded, Biden has steadfastly supported them in their plight against a brutal Russian invasion. 

This trend continued during his speech on Thursday night, where Biden sought to unite these two crises. “The assault on Israel echoes nearly 20 months of war, tragedy, and brutality inflicted on the people of Ukraine—people that were very badly hurt since Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion,” he said.

A Reagan Myth

Dan McLaughlin at NRO:

On the 112th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, we commemorate his many monumental accomplishments as the greatest president of the past century. But it is also a good occasion for correcting the record regarding the persistent, never-ending efforts to obscure those accomplishments with misleading smears. One attack on Reagan that has grown in the telling over the years is the claim that he invented a wartime story about having been present at the liberation of the Nazi death camps. The problem: The actual evidence of Reagan saying this is vague, thirdhand, and contradicted on the record by people who were there. It is also inconsistent with Reagan’s own public accounts of how he first came to see the reality of the Holocaust on film.

What Reagan actually said: Remarks at the First Annual Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust April 30, 1981

I'm horrified today when I know and hear that there are actually people now trying to say that the Holocaust was invented, that it never happened, that there weren't 6 million people whose lives were taken cruelly and needlessly in that event, that all of this is propaganda. Well, the old cliche that a picture's worth a thousand words -- in World War II, not only do we have the survivors today to tell us at first hand, but in World War II, I was in the military and assigned to a post where every week, we obtained from every branch of the service all over the world the combat film that was taken by every branch. And we edited this into a secret report for the general staff. We, of course, had access to and saw that secret report.

And I remember April '45. I remember seeing the first film that came in when the war was still on, but our troops had come upon the first camps and had entered those camps. And you saw, unretouched -- no way that it could have ever been rehearsed -- what they saw, the horror they saw. I felt the pride when, in one of those camps, there was a nearby town, and the people were ordered to come and look at what had been going on, and to see them. And the reaction of horror on their faces was the greatest proof that they had not been conscious of what was happening so near to them.

And that film still, I know, must exist in the military, and there it is, living motion pictures, for anyone to see, and I won't go into the horrible scenes that we saw. But it remains with me as confirmation of our right to rekindle these memories, because we need always to guard against that kind of tyranny and inhumanity. Our spirit is strengthened by remembering, and our hope is in our strength.

The Peaceful Transfer of Power

 Liz Cheney in the 1/6 report:

At the heart of our Republic is the guarantee of the peaceful transfer of power. Members of Congress are reminded of this every day as we pass through the Capitol Rotunda. There, eight magnificent paintings detail theearliest days of our Republic. Four were painted by John Trumbull, including one depicting the moment in 1793 when George Washington resigned his commission, handing control of the Continental Army back to Congress. Trumbull called this, “one of the highest moral lessons ever given the world.” With this noble act, George Washington established the indispensable example of the peaceful transfer of power in our nation. 

Standing on the West Front of the Capitol in 1981, President Ronald Reagan described it this way: 

To a few of us here today, this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

Every President in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one. January 6, 2021 was the first time one American President refused his Constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next.

Reagan at Westminster

 Forty years ago today, President Reagan spoke to the British Parliament:

No, democracy is not a fragile flower. Still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy.

...

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

This is not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy. Who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote, decide to purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers, prefer government to worker-controlled unions, opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it, want government repression of religious liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity?

...

During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain's adversaries, ``What kind of a people do they think we are?'' Well, Britain's adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, ``What kind of people do we think we are?'' And let us answer, ``Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.''

Sir Winston led his people to great victory in war and then lost an election just as the fruits of victory were about to be enjoyed. But he left office honorably, and, as it turned out, temporarily, knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than the fate of any single leader. History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future, as timely now as when he first uttered it, as opposition leader in the Commons nearly 27 years ago, when he said, ``When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have,'' he said, ``come safely through the worst.''

Well, the task I've set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best -- a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Alito's 1985 Job Application

In 1985, Samuel Alito applied to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Attorney General Edwin Meese during the Reagan Administration.  This statement is from his application:

I am and always have been a conservative and an adherent to the same philosophical views that I believe are central to this Administration. It is obviously very difficult to summarize a set of political views in a sentence but, in capsule form, I believe very strongly in limited government, federalism, free enterprise, the supremacy of the elected branches of government, the need for a strong defense and effective law enforcement, and the legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values. In the field of law, I disagree strenuously with the usurpation by the judiciary of decisionmaking authority that should be exercised by the branches of government responsible to the electorate. The Administration has already made major strides toward reversing this trend through its judicial · appointments, litigation, and public debate, and it is my hope that even greater advances can be achieved during the second term, especially with Attorney General Meese's leadership at the Department of Justice.

When I first became interested in government and politics during the 1960s, the greatest influences on my views were the writings of William F. Buckley, Jr., the National Review, and Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment. I discovered the writings of Alexander Bickel advocating judicial restraint, and it was largely for this reason that I decided to go to Yale Law School.

After graduation from law school, completion of my ROTC military commitment, and a judicial clerkship, I joined the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey, principally because of my strong views regarding law enforcement. Most recently, it has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan's administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly. I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.

As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics. However, I am a life-long registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to Republican candidates and conservative causes, including the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Rep. Christopher Smith (4th Dist. N.J.), Rep. James Courter (12th Dist. N.J.), Governor Thomas Kean of N.J., and Jeff Bell's 1982 Senate primary campaign in N.J. I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a regular participant at its luncheon meetings and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group. During the past year, I have submitted articles for publication in the National Review and the American Spectator.  

How Presidents Mention Their Predecessors

Amnon Cavari, Benjamin Yoel, Hannah Lowenkamp have an article at American Politics Research titled "In the Name of the President."  The abstract:

Presidents often make references to their predecessors in their oral remarks—a rhetorical tool that can advance support for their policies, define their presidency, and achieve political gains. And yet, despite the frequency that this rhetorical tool is used and its possible impact, references to former presidents have so far defied a systematic empirical research. To fill in this void in the literature, we examine the frequency of references to presidents, the identity of referenced presidents, and the policy context of each reference in all oral references made by presidents Reagan through Trump. We demonstrate that mentioning former presidents is a political tool that presidents use routinely in their public speeches. We find that presidents use this tool strategically—controlling the timing and identity of references and in connection to their policy appeals.

Reagan mentioned JFK more than any other president, even Lincoln.

 

Bush, Reagan, Discrimination, Founding Principles

 Farhat Popal and Christopher Walsh at the George W. Bush Presidential Center:

Attacks against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders grew so bad in the early days of the coronavirus that the Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council launched a website to track them. In its first two weeks, the STOP AAPI HATE website received over 1,100 reports of physical assault, verbal harassment, and shunning of Asian Americans...

Current events highlight the pitfalls of sacrificing precision in order to create “bumper sticker” talking points that crudely shape public perception for political purposes. Sadly, this is a tactic used across the political spectrum, but that doesn’t excuse it. The American people should hold their leaders accountable on such issues, regardless of political affiliation, and not allow “whataboutism” to compromise principles. And while it’s unrealistic to attribute a single cause to any rise in discrimination related to the global pandemic, having clear, consistent, empathetic, and trusted leadership is a factor.

While such leadership qualities foster stability in any time, their importance increases in a crisis because societal tensions are higher. Used together, they steer frightened and frustrated people away from fear, suspicion, and paranoia.

Look at the example of President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Angry people were channeling their rage through unacceptable violence against Muslim-Americans. Six days after 9/11, President Bush appeared at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., flanked by Muslim American religious leaders, and offered a strong rebuke of this persecution.

In doing so, President Bush stripped away any cloak of “patriotism” that some individuals might have used to justify bigotry and violence, stating, “Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.”

Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.President George W. Bush, September 17, 2001

Unfortunately, leaders aren’t always quick to acknowledge and repudiate violations of our founding principles.

More than 40 years after Japanese Americans – having been stripped of their dignity and rights as citizens – were released from World War II-era internment camps, President Reagan offered reparations from an ashamed nation. He stated: “We gather here today to right a grave wrong… 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps. This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race...”

Bad Conversation Between Nixon and Reagan

Tim Naftali at The Atlantic:

The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.

Reagan's Last Speech as President

Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/253440

 Now, tomorrow is a special day for me. I'm going to receive my gold watch. And since this is the last speech that I will give as President, I think it's fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: "You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American."

Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world. For it's the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America's triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond. Other countries may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.

This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America's greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength-from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.

A number of years ago, an American student traveling in Europe took an East German ship across the Baltic Sea. One of the ship's crewmembers from East Germany, a man in his sixties, struck up a conversation with the American student. After a while the student asked the man how he had learned such good English. And the man explained that he had once lived in America. He said that for over a year he had worked as a farmer in Oklahoma and California, that he had planted tomatoes and picked ripe melons. It was, the man said, the happiest time of his life. Well, the student, who had seen the awful conditions behind the Iron Curtain, blurted out the question, "Well, why did you ever leave?" "I had to," he said, "the war ended." The man had been in America as a German prisoner of war.

Now, I don't tell this story to make the case for former POW's. Instead, I tell this story just to remind you of the magical, intoxicating power of America. We may sometimes forget it, but others do not. Even a man from a country at war with the United States, while held here as a prisoner, could fall in love with us. Those who become American citizens love this country even more. And that's why the Statue of Liberty lifts her lamp to welcome them to the golden door.

It is bold men and women, yearning for freedom and opportunity, who leave their homelands and come to a new country to start their lives over. They believe in the American dream. And over and over, they make it come true for themselves, for their children, and for others. They give more than they receive. They labor and succeed. And often they are entrepreneurs. But their greatest contribution is more than economic, because they understand in a special way how glorious it is to be an American. They renew our pride and gratitude in the United States of America, the greatest, freest nation in the world—the last, best hope of man on Earth.

What Makes an Effective President?

At The Washington Examiner, David Drucker asked former Secretary of State George Shultz: what makes an effective president?

A key is to have a strategy. Nixon was a strategist...Ronald Reagan was a strategist. He was long-headed and I'll give you an example. I was chairman of his economic policy advisory panel during the primaries, during the election campaign, and for the first year and a half of his time in office, before I was secretary of state. And, he came into the office and he knew that we couldn't have a decent economy with the kind of inflation that was going on. And we all knew that, and we all said that.

And there was [Federal Reserve Chairman] Paul Volcker over at the Fed. Paul had been my undersecretary when I was secretary of the treasury so I knew Paul well. And, he was doing what you had to do, namely, discipline the money supply. And people would run into Reagan and say, Mr President, Mr President, we're going to cause a recession, we're gonna lose seats in the midterm election. And, Reagan basically — he didn't say this, but basically he said, if not now, when? If not us, who? And he basically put a political umbrella over Paul. And, I let Paul know that.

But Paul told me, I was talking to him recently, he said, I remember seeing many occasions when reporters dished up a question to Reagan, sort of inviting him to come down on the Fed, and he never did. So what happened? We did have a recession, we did lose seats. But by early '83, inflation was under control and everybody could see that it was going to stay that way. And the incentive that had been put into the economy kicked in, and the economy as you remember took off like a bird in 1983. But that was a president taking a long-headed deal and saying the country has to get rid of the inflation if we're going to be healthy. That means we're going to take a short-term hit for a long-term objective. That's strategic thinking — and acting on it. And, that takes guts, political guts. And, the ability to stand up to things.

Reagan on Free Trade

Ronald Reagan: "Radio Address to the Nation on the Canadian Elections and Free Trade ," November 26, 1988. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=35207

This week, as we prepared for Thanksgiving, Canada held an important election, and I'm pleased to again send my congratulations to Prime Minister Mulroney. One of the important issues in the Canadian election was trade. And like our own citizens earlier this month, our neighbors have sent a strong message, rejecting protectionism and reaffirming that more trade, not less, is the wave of the future.

Here in America, as we reflect on the many things we have to be grateful for, we should take a moment to recognize that one of the key factors behind our nation's great prosperity is the open trade policy that allows the American people to freely exchange goods and services with free people around the world. The freedom to trade is not a new issue for America. In 1776 our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, charging the British with a number of offenses, among them, and I quote, "cutting off our trade with all parts of the world," end quote.

And that same year, a Scottish economist named Adam Smith launched another revolution with a book entitled "The Wealth of Nations," which exposed for all time the folly of protectionism. Over the past 200 years, not only has the argument against tariffs and trade barriers won nearly universal agreement among economists but it has also proven itself in the real world, where we have seen free-trading nations prosper while protectionist countries fall behind.

America's most recent experiment with protectionism was a disaster for the working men and women of this country. When Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, we were told that it would protect America from foreign competition and save jobs in this country—the same line we hear today. The actual result was the Great Depression, the worst economic catastrophe in our history; one out of four Americans were thrown out of work. Two years later, when I cast my first ballot for President, I voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who opposed protectionism and called for the repeal of that disastrous tariff.

Ever since that time, the American people have stayed true to our heritage by rejecting the siren song of protectionism. In recent years, the trade deficit led some misguided politicians to call for protectionism, warning that otherwise we would lose jobs. But they were wrong again. In fact, the United States not only didn't lose jobs, we created more jobs than all the countries of Western Europe, Canada, and Japan combined. The record is clear that when America's total trade has increased, American jobs have also increased. And when our total trade has declined, so have the number of jobs.

Part of the difficulty in accepting the good news about trade is in our words. We too often talk about trade while using the vocabulary of war. In war, for one side to win, the other must lose. But commerce is not warfare. Trade is an economic alliance that benefits both countries. There are no losers, only winners. And trade helps strengthen the free world.

Yet today protectionism is being used by some American politicians as a cheap form of nationalism, a fig leaf for those unwilling to maintain America's military strength and who lack the resolve to stand up to real enemies—countries that would use violence against us or our allies. Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogs who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends—weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag. The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion; it is an American triumph, one we worked hard to achieve, and something central to our vision of a peaceful and prosperous world of freedom.

After the Second World War, America led the way to dismantle trade barriers and create a world trading system that set the stage for decades of unparalleled economic growth. And in one week, when important multilateral trade talks are held in Montreal, we will be in the forefront of efforts to improve this system. We want to open more markets for our products, to see to it that all nations play by the rules, and to seek improvement in such areas as dispute resolution and agriculture. We also want to bring the benefits of free trade to new areas, including services, investment, and the protection of intellectual property. Our negotiators will be working hard for all of us.

Yes, back in 1776, our Founding Fathers believed that free trade was worth fighting for. And we can celebrate their victory because today trade is at the core of the alliance that secure the peace and guarantee our freedom; it is the source of our prosperity and the path to an even brighter future for America.

Until next week, thanks for listening, and God bless you.

Presidents on Trade Wars

Too often policies designed to preserve jobs in one industry reduce competitiveness and employment in other industries. A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world, not trade wars that close doors, create greater barriers, and destroy millions of jobs. We should always remember: Protectionism is destructionism. -- Ronald Reagan, January 10, 1989

When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018

Trump, Reagan, and the Klan

Unlike Donald Trump (whose father apparently was in the Ku Klux Klan), Ronald Reagan (whose father was a Catholic) knew how to criticize the KKK directly:

Letter to the Chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights Concerning the President's Views on the Ku Klux Klan 
April 30, 1984

Dear Morris:

While in China, I have been distressed to learn that some individuals back home have questioned whether my views on the Ku Klux Klan have somehow changed since 1980. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In 1980, I said that I have no tolerance for what the Klan represents, and would have nothing to do with any groups of that type. If anything, my feelings on this subject have only grown stronger. The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood. Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse.

I firmly believe that there is no room for partisanship on this question. Democrats and Republicans alike must be resolute in disassociating ourselves from any group or individual whose political philosophy consists only of racial or religious intolerance, whose arguments are supported only by intimidation or threats of violence.

We must, and will, continue our unified rejection of such elements of hate in our political life, for while there are many issues which divide us, it is fundamental principles such as this which will always draw us together.

Sincerely,
RONALD REAGAN

[The Honorable Morris B. Abram, U.S.. Commission on Civil Rights, 1121 Vermont Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20425]

Reagan and the Law

At Bloomberg, Cass Sunstein recalls his time as a young lawyer in the Justice Department.  The Reaganites, he said, came in and did two smart things.

First, they reassured an anxious civil service. Within the Justice Department, for example, no one doubted that important policies were going to shift, sometimes in dramatic ways. But William French Smith, Reagan’s incoming attorney general, made it clear to career staffers that he deeply admired their traditions and their professionalism. Far from giving federal employees a sense of opposition and suspicion, he said (and demonstrated every day) that he liked and respected them.

Theodore Olson, the new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, where I worked, did the same thing -- and more. Charming and warm, he offered an immediate sense of humility, emphasizing how much he had to learn.

Within a month, lawyers who had faithfully served a Democratic administration had become fiercely loyal to Smith and Olson, and were proud to work for them. That was critical for the new president, because he had to depend on thousands of career staff for both information and execution.

Second, Reagan and his team sent unambiguous signals about the primacy of law. Many of Reagan’s supporters wanted him to venture some pretty dramatic changes -- for example, overruling Roe v. Wade (which protects the right to abortion) by congressional enactment; stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction in controversial areas; getting federal judges out of the business of school desegregation; and restoring school prayer.

Early on, however, the White House made it clear to the government’s lawyers that it wanted objective legal advice. Even more important, the ultimate authorities (including the president) bowed to that advice, even if it turned out to be a firm “no.” If the Department of Justice said that a particular course of action was legally unauthorized, the White House wouldn’t pursue it.

Trump and Reagan

A couple of weeks ago, Mike Pence compared Trump to Ronald Reagan.  Indeed, there are some superficial similarities.

• An entertainment background. Reagan became famous at the movies. Trump starred in reality TV and owned casinso. (Some Trump-branded facilities have strip clubs.)
• Outsiderism.  Reagan launched his 1976 campaign by denouncing the Washington "buddy system." Trump talks about corrupt political insiders.
• Age.  At 69, Reagan was the oldest person ever to take the oath for the first time.  At 70, Trump would be even older.

The differences, however, are much more significant.

The Wall.  Trump wants to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it.  In 1980, Reagan explicitly rejected that idea:

Rather than making them, or talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems. Make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit and then while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here. And when they want to go back they go back. And open the borders both ways by understanding their problems.

In 1986, Reagan signed legislation for comprehensive immigration reform.

Trade.  Trump opposes trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.  To a large extent, NAFTA was Reagan's idea.  From his 1979 announcement of candidacy:





American Exceptionalism.  Reagan believed in it, as he said in 1982:

But like you, I've always believed that we were put here for a reason, that there is a path, somehow, a divine plan for all of us and for each one of us. And I've also always believed that America was set apart in a special way, that it was put here between the oceans to be found by a certain kind of people, based on a quality that these people had in that they came from every corner of the world.

Trump rejects the idea:

 I don’t like the term. I’ll be honest with you. People say, ‘Oh he’s not patriotic.’ Look, if I’m a Russian, or I’m a German, or I’m a person we do business with, why, you know, I don’t think it’s a very nice term. We’re exceptional; you’re not. First of all, Germany is eating our lunch. So they say, ‘Why are you exceptional? We’re doing a lot better than you.’ I never liked the term.

Inclusion.  Trump insults his intraparty critics.  At a "unity meeting" during the summer, Trump predicted Senator Jeff Flake would lose his primary this year: Flake replied that he was not up for reelection in 2016. Reagan, on the other hand, strove to bring his GOP foes into the fold, naming primary opponent George H. W. Bush as his running mate and making Bush campaign chief Jim Baker his chief of staff.

Party shift.  Reagan gradually moved from the Democrats to the GOP, supporting Ike in the 1950s, and changing his registration in 1962.  Trump, by contrast, has flitted like a butterfly:

• July 1987 Republican
• October 1999 Independence Party
• August 2001 Democrat
• September 2009 Republican
• December 2011 No party affiliation (independent)
• April 2012 Republican 

Ideas.  Books shaped Reagan's thinking.  Steve Hayward writes:

If Reagan wasn't the most intelligent or intellectual politician of his time, he instinctively grasped not only the power of ideas, but also the crucial relationship of ideas to power. It is a great injustice to suggest that Reagan got his ideas secondhand or in a superficial way. Lee Edwards recalls being once left along in Reagan’s study while then-Governor Reagan went to the kitchen to prepare cocktails. Edwards began browsing Reagan’s bookshelves, and was astonished to find dense works of political economy by authors such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek heavily underlined and annotated in Reagan’s handwriting.

Trump does not read books.  The Washington Post reports:

Trump’s desk is piled high with magazines, nearly all of them with himself on their covers, and each morning, he reviews a pile of printouts of news articles about himself that his secretary delivers to his desk. But there are no shelves of books in his office, no computer on his desk.
...
He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.

Conventions: The Majority Rules

Trump is saying that the candidate who enters the convention with a plurality of delegates must get the nomination even with less than a majority.  He is wrong. Several former GOP national chairs write at The Wall Street Journal:

Because many of our fellow citizens have never experienced a “contested” convention, one which went beyond the first ballot, there is some confusion about how this works. Only an absolute majority of the delegates assembled in the convention can select an individual as the party’s candidate for the presidency.

It is not correct that a candidate who enters the convention with a plurality of delegates, although short of a majority, must receive the nomination. Such an interpretation would be a gross violation of the essential purpose of the nominating process.

If that were the rule, Abraham Lincoln would never have been president. He came in second on the first ballot at the 1860 Republican convention, but won the nomination—with a majority of the delegates—on the third ballot. In 1976 Ronald Reagan got a million more votes than President Ford in the primaries. But Reagan did not win a majority of the delegates, President Ford did, and so he received the nomination.

Reagan understood the rules. Without complaint, he supported the winner. That’s how it works.

Religion and Presidential Elections

At The Los Angeles Times, John-Clark Levin writes:

Reagan's success was driven by the defection of evangelicals from Carter's camp. Although they favored Carter by 21 points in a Gallup poll two months before the 1980 election, many began to feel that he had drifted too far to the left. Two-thirds of white evangelicals ultimately cast their ballots for Reagan.

Yet a striking thing happened. In 1984, Democrats did not make a serious bid to win back religious voters. Instead, they nominated Walter Mondale, Carter's vice president, who never brought his faith into the public sphere. To the contrary, he told voters that politicians should keep their "nose out of religion." Reagan, running his Morning in America campaign, handed Mondale the most devastating electoral college defeat in American history, 525 to 13.

The demographics remain abundantly clear. Even though religiosity is dropping in the U.S., according to the Pew Center, more than 70% of Americans still consider themselves Christian, and about 6% follow other faiths. Republicans have vigorously pursued religious voters since Carter's day, and whenever the Democrats have run candidates uncomfortable with the language of faith, they have been defeated.

Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry were all privately religious, but they did not justify their positions through religious morality or references. By contrast, the two Democrats since Carter to secure the White House were adept at using their religious worldview to connect with voters. Bill Clinton often deployed Scripture to reinforce his arguments about poverty, while Barack Obama famously saved his candidacy with a speech tracing America's present racial discord to the "original sin of slavery."

Trump, Faith, and the Family Leadership Summit

At The Washington Examiner, Byron York tells why Trump bombed at the Family Leadership Summit:

A candidate who seeks to make a good impression should also probably refrain from describing Holy Communion in the way Trump did: "When I drink my little wine — which is about the only wine I drink — and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed. I think in terms of 'let's go on and let's make it right.'"

A senior Iowa Republican who was in the room, sitting with a group of grassroots activists as Trump spoke, was dumbfounded by the candidate's views of religion. "While there were audible groans in the crowd when Trump questioned whether McCain was a war hero," the senior Republican said via email, "it was Trump's inability to articulate any coherent relationship with God or demonstrate the role faith plays in his life that really sucked the oxygen out of the room.."

The senior Republican continued: "Milling around talking to activists in the hallways/lobby after Trump's speech, THAT is what those Iowa conservatives were discussing, not the McCain comment."

New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alan Rappeport noticed the same thing: "It was these comments, not his attack on Mr. McCain, that prompted the most muttering and unease in the audience."

Compare and contrast Trump's remarks with those of two candidates for the 1980 GOP nomination.  In With God on Our Side, William Martin tells of former Texas governor John Connally meeting a group of evangelicals. One asked what he would say to God in order to get into heaven.  “Well, my mother was a Methodist, my pappy was a Methodist, my grandmother was a Methodist, and I’d just tell Him I ain’t any worse than any of the other people that want to get into heaven.” The group’s leader told Martin: “Well, that fell like a stone on all these Christian leaders.” A little later, Ronald Reagan met with them and faced the same question. “I wouldn’t give God any reason for letting me in,” said Reagan.  ”I’d just ask for mercy, because of what Jesus Christ did for me at Calvary.” The group leader recalled:  “BOOM! To a man and a woman in that room, they said `Let’s go!’ and they went all out for him.”