Rethinking Reagan: Was He a Man of Ideas After All?

Mr. Heclo argued that Mr. Reagan “is among that handful of American politicians, and an even smaller group of presidents, who have conducted their careers primarily as a struggle about ideas.” Contrast that to what Mr. Patterson called the view of “virtually all students of Reagan’s ideas,” that the 40th president offered no more than “the well-traveled baggage of anti-statist, anti-Communist conservatism.”

I watched, with similar revulsion, as Nixon underwent a similar reappraisal in some quarters. Thinking about it, it isn’t really so surprising. Given enough time, it is virtually certain that some opinion contrary to the prevailing consensus will emerge from the woodwork; sooner or later someone slips the reins of inhibition against saying something sufficiently provocative and foolish. Reappraisal doesn’t inherently lend credence, despite the veneer of sober academic analysis and the imprimatur of the ‘judgment of history’. Decontextualization by distance in time may make understanding less, not more, accurate. Sometimes all that reappraisal represents is which ideological spin is in the ascendency at the time.