After Reaganism

“THE commonest error in politics,” said the nineteenth-century British statesman Lord Salisbury, “is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies.” Conservatives have fallen headlong into this error. It is hardly possible to open an op-ed page or to listen to a conservative talk-show without hearing that we conservatives should return to the wisdom of Ronald Reagan. We should have, we are told, tax cuts on the Reagan model; at home we should go for growthmanship and shun the root-canal approach; abroad we need a Reaganite foreign policy; we should have his faith that America’s “shining city on a hill” can expand indefinitely to absorb and accommodate all the cultures of the world; and in all things we should exhibit the genial optimism that President Reagan exuded and that animated his successful campaign in, of all years, 1984.

Now, I count myself a Reaganite and greatly admire Mr. Reagan’s historic achievements and the solid political legacy he left to be squandered by his successor. But let us be clear: Reaganism was not an innovation in political thought. It was conservative common sense applied to the problems that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s. To the stagflation of the economy, it applied tax cuts and the monetary control of inflation; to the market-sharing cartel of OPEC, it applied price decontrol and the “magic of the marketplace”; and to the revived threat from the Soviet Union it applied a military build-up and economic competition.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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“THE commonest error in politics,” said the nineteenth-century British statesman Lord Salisbury, “is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies.” Conservatives have fallen headlong into this error. It is hardly possible to open an op-ed page or to listen to a conservative talk-show without hearing that we conservatives should return to the wisdom of Ronald Reagan. We should have, we are told, tax cuts on the Reagan model; at home we should go for growthmanship and shun the root-canal approach; abroad we need a Reaganite foreign policy; we should have his faith that America’s “shining city on a hill” can expand indefinitely to absorb and accommodate all the cultures of the world; and in all things we should exhibit the genial optimism that President Reagan exuded and that animated his successful campaign in, of all years, 1984.

Now, I count myself a Reaganite and greatly admire Mr. Reagan’s historic achievements and the solid political legacy he left to be squandered by his successor. But let us be clear: Reaganism was not an innovation in political thought. It was conservative common sense applied to the problems that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s. To the stagflation of the economy, it applied tax cuts and the monetary control of inflation; to the market-sharing cartel of OPEC, it applied price decontrol and the “magic of the marketplace”; and to the revived threat from the Soviet Union it applied a military build-up and economic competition.