He was the last unambiguously successful two-term Republican president in 64 years.
There’s a much simpler and straightforward reason than the ones that Michael Brendan Dougherty proposes for the resilience of Reaganism within the Republican Party.
“The whole of the American right is stalked by the suspicion that Trumpism is a phase — a fad — that depends entirely on Trump’s celebrity and that soon things will go back to normal,” MBD writes. “At conservative movement fundraisers, the Gipper’s influence is still lauded and celebrated in video montages.”
“I don’t think that Reagan’s political success alone explains it,” he continues. “I think there are three reasons why Reagan has cast such an unusually long shadow of influence, and all of them may be shifting soon.”
He identifies these three reasons as (1) The conservative movement itself, (2) The outsized influence of the Baby Boom generation, and (3) The power, money, and incentives behind cosmopolitan conservatism.
I am baffled by this reasoning.
MBD is of course correct that these factors have some relevance to the persistence of Reaganism on the right. But haven’t conservatives become painfully aware over the ten years of Trumpism that many, if not most, Republican voters don’t care a fig about what think tanker-types in D.C. think about conservatism? What these voters really care about is defeating Democrats and the left — not advancing movement conservatism, however much they might agree with certain principles of the movement, especially when advanced by charismatic leaders.
Reagan is remembered so fondly by Republicans because he was the last unambiguously successful two-term Republican president. That’s it. That’s the whole ball game.
Think about it: In the 64 years since Dwight Eisenhower left office (and, remember, less than one in five Americans alive today were even alive when Ike turned things over to JFK in 1961), there have been six Republican presidents: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, H. W. Bush, W. Bush, and Trump.
Richard Nixon left office in disgrace after Watergate. Gerald Ford, after rising to the vice presidency and then the presidency via resignations, lost his attempt at his own election. George H. W. Bush, although he oversaw the end of the Cold War and victory in the Gulf War, lost reelection in 1992. George W. Bush’s presidency ended with Iraq, the global financial crisis, and Barack Obama’s election. Trump’s first term ended with a pandemic-era crisis, riots and blood on the streets, a woke cultural revolution, social chaos, and January 6. (The jury is of course still out on term #2.)
MBD marvels at the fact that “when Reagan was becoming a political contender for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1970s, there was no giant messaging apparatus arguing on behalf of Hooverism.”
Well, yeah — Herbert Hoover left office after the 1929 Wall Street crash, the beginning of the Depression, and the landslide victory of FDR in 1932. Very few Americans looked back fondly at the Hoover years.
On the other hand, only Ronald Reagan served two consecutive terms, handed off the office to a Republican successor that was widely hoped to be “Reagan’s third term,” and oversaw remarkable success both at home economically and culturally and abroad in foreign affairs.
Reagan the man was a politician and a statesman of course, not a saint. And his presidency had its own errors, scandals, and missteps that should not be completely forgotten.
But the voting public then, as it does now, saw the Reagan years as an unambiguous success for America – and he’s the only two-term Republican president in 64 years to have pulled that off. That’s why Reaganism persists and that’s why the Gipper is remembered so fondly.