Happy 100th Birthday, Mr. President, and thank you!

“That reminds me of a story,” said Ronald Reagan, in his warm, smooth, low-toned voice, that voice that didn’t have to fake strength. “Everything reminds me of a story.”

And the crowd gathered tightly around the monitor at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library chuckled, remembering.

I had the opportunity to usher in former President Ronald Reagan’s centennial year in his adopted home state. On New Year’s Day, I sat with the shivering crowd in the California cold at the Rose Parade, which featured a float honoring the great man.

Later, I visited his Library. After saying a brief word of thanks at his grave site, the first time I’d been in his presence since saying the same thing as he lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda, I stepped through the Library doors and back into the ’80s, back into a time when hope was more than a slogan.

While many of the exhibits were closed for renovation for the President’s birthday celebration, and there was little honoring his achievements in domestic economic policy, there was a great deal about his foreign achievements, especially his indispensable role in bringing the Evil Empire to its knees, like the requisite chunk of the Berlin Wall and the model of Checkpoint Charlie. It was fun to see the scale-model of the White House, and point out to my little niece the rooms I’d been in. And since it was just past Christmas, there was a decade-by-decade display of trees; my favorite ornament marked the 2004 victory of the Boston Red Sox over another evil empire (and their subsequent World Series win over the St. Louis Cardinals too).

But the best part was the warm appreciation of the visitors. I’ve been to a lot of presidential libraries and homes, and I’ve never felt quite the same affectionate admiration for the President being honored as I did at the Reagan Library. Even the Jelly Belly portrait brought smiles and words between strangers recalling his greatness.

In the Air Force One Pavilion, there was a video highlighting how President Reagan defeated the Soviets. The voice-over was taken from the audio version of his autobiography, An American Life.

The President explains that early in his Administration:

“I deliberately set out to say some frank things about the Russians, to let them know there were some new fellows in Washington who had a realistic view of what they were up to and weren’t going to let them keep it up.”

“Wow!” the woman to my right stage-whispered. Yes, ma’am, that’s what it was like to have a great man as President.

At other times, I overheard parents talking to their children about President Reagan’s accomplishments:

“There used to be a wall between East and West Berlin.” (In point of fact, there used to be an East and West Berlin.)

“Do you know what the Cold War was?” Just think about that for a minute. A generation of children now needs to be asked: “Do you know what the Cold War was?”

What greater tribute could there be?

Happy 100th Birthday, Mr. President, and thank you.

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About the author

Leslie Carbone

Leslie Carbone is the author of "Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform" (Potomac, 2009). Her writing has appeared in magazines including "The Weekly Standard" and "The American Enterprise", in newspapers from "The Philadelphia Inquirer" to "The San Francisco Chronicle", and on Web sites like "BreakPoint" and "National Review Online". She has appeared on more than 200 radio and television talk shows, been quoted in national newspapers including "The Wall Street Journal" and "USA Today", and spoken at venues across the United States from Tea Parties to college campuses, including Northwestern University, UCLA, and Cornell University. Ms. Carbone has served as Chief-of-Staff to the late Assemblyman Gil Ferguson of California, Executive Director of Accuracy In Academia, Director of Family Tax Policy at Family Research Council, Senior Writer at Koch Industries, Inc., and Speechwriter for former Secretary of Labor of the United States Elaine L. Chao.