The President's record on foreign affairs will make his successor's job easier. But his economic bequest is sure to bedevil George Bush.
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On January 20, when Ronald Reagan stands on the West Front of the Capitol during our democracy's most sacred rite, he will be making his last appearance at center stage. Shortly after noon, former sidekick George Bush will become the titular leader of the free world, and by sunset Ronald Reagan will be back among the retirees in California, his 3,000-day odyssey at an end. What then will posterity make of this uncomplicated Everyman with the bad ear and the resonant voice? And what legacy does he leave behind for his successor?
The answer to the first question may require a longer lens: Presidents usually find themselves subject to the revisions of history. But the answer to the second has already come into sharp focus. Reagan's tangible bequests include an economy in the midst of the longest expansion in U.S. history, an expansion that has created more than 16 million new jobs without the inflationary excesses of the past. Regulatory and spending restraint are the order of the day; free markets are doing more of the job of allocating the nation's resources. But there is a dark side to the domestic legacy. He also passes on a huge federal-budget deficit, a trade gap draining productive capital, a nation that is now the world's biggest debtor–cumulative debts and imbalances that almost certainly will haunt his successors for years to come.
His record in foreign affairs is less problematical. Reagan said America should "stand tall"–and for the most part, it has. He has rewritten the rules of engagement with the Soviet Union and, surprisingly, negotiated the first real cutback in the history of the nuclear-arms race. In the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, by demonstrating that America was prepared to act alone, he has made it easier for his successor to make the tough decisions that inevitably fall to democracy's superpower.
Reagan has also made life easier for his successor in a host of intangible ways. Through the sheer force of his ebullient, can-do personality, he has restored the confidence of most Americans in themselves and the Presidency. Whether they agreed with him or not, everyone knew where he stood, from the very earliest days when he broke the back of the air-traffic controllers' union and sent a strong signal that government would no longer be a party to blackmail by illegal strikers. Perhaps as important, the 40th President often seemed the very exemplar of what Americans most like in themselves–and their best friends.
Certainly, few men who have sought the White House did so less to enhance their egos. He did not seek the Presidency in order to be somebody. He already was. And few men have come to the Presidency owing less to the traditional forces of power within his party. Reagan stood outside the mainstream of the party from the beginning, the successor to Barry Goldwater as the symbol of its most conservative wing. Yet he brought into office an extraordinarily eclectic set of political ideas. His less-is-more philosophy of government, embodied in his New Federalism, was pure Jefferson; his economics, a contradictory mixture of Keynes and Kemp; and despite the bellicose rhetoric of his early Presidency, his foreign policy often seems to have as much in common with the idealism and innocence of Woodrow Wilson as it did with the big stick of Teddy Roosevelt.
