Time to stop looking for the next Reagan

Normally, we want contributors to respond to other contributors in the comments here on Bearing Drift, but after reading Ken Falkenstein’s post and drafting a response that was way too long for the comments, I chose to turn this into a separate post. I think this topic is an important discussion point and one we don’t seem to be having within the Republican party.  The issue at hand is simply this – why are we constantly comparing our potential leaders against nearly impossible to replicate standards?  Why do we keep looking for great when the guy we’re trying to beat isn’t even fair?

It is simply time for us to stop looking for the next Ronald Reagan. It is also time for us to stop judging every presidential candidate against Reagan.  Doing so simply isn’t realistic, nor is it fair to those candidates.

We can all debate what it was that made Ronald Reagan great.  Regardless of where you stand (or even if you disagree with the idea all together), most Americans – especially folks in our party – recognize that he was the greatest president in the latter half of the 20th century, and probably one of the top three in the entire century.  If I had to rank them, I’d put Theodore Roosevelt on top, his cousin at #2 and Ronald Reagan in third place.   The things each of them did have far outlasted their presidencies.  They each deserve to rank up there with Washington and Lincoln.

That’s why searching for the next Reagan is so futile.  He’s a once or twice a century figure.  He was an extraordinary figure and those of us who were alive to remember him in office recognize that we were lucky to have lived through his presidency, and many of us feel the same way that Democrats feel about Kennedy and FDR.  He was rare and that’s what made him so great.   If every king was a Charlemagne, what would make Charlemagne so great?

To compare our current batch of presidential candidates against Reagan is simply unfair and it’s counterproductive.

Think about it this way – if we never went to war until we identified the next Napoleon or Patton to lead our troops, we’d never be able to defend ourselves.  We shouldn’t let perfect become the enemy of good, and treating every presidential primary as the political equivalent of choosing the next Dalai Lama isn’t productive.  All it does is lead to cynicism and lethargy.  If the only way we can excite Republicans for a candidate is to give them a Winston Churchill, we’re in serious trouble.

Instead of wasting time trying to find the next Ronald Reagan, we should instead be looking for the next Coolidge, Eisenhower, Ford or George H.W. Bush – men who were competent, handled the job well, and while they weren’t in the same league with Ronald Reagan or Theodore Roosevelt, they were the kind of solid Republican leaders that we built our party on.  They were the kinds of men that have consistently won the White House since the turn of the 20th Century and why Republicans have held the job so often during the last hundred years.  And while no one is going to call Coolidge, Ford or Bush 41 great, there is one thing that everyone can call them: President.

Is at least one of our current crop of candidates in that league? I think so.

So instead of wasting our time trying to find the next once-in-century leader, let’s focus our energies on finding someone who can do the job and who has the confidence of the American people – two things our current president can’t claim.

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