America has lost a beloved president in the passing of Ronald Reagan.
He profoundly influenced my life. I recall walking across the University of Georgia campus with a friend in the dark days of Jimmy Carter when I was a college senior.
ThatÂ’s supposed to be a time of new horizons, optimism and youthful idealism. Yet, my friend voiced the fear that our generation could never afford a mortgage, never achieve the American dream, thanks to the failed policies of President Carter. We really thought so. America was suffering under stagflation, gasoline shortages, high unemployment, and the real threat of nuclear holocaust from the Soviet Union.
Scarcely a year later, the world had changed. Ronald Reagan then resided in the White House, Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate for the first time in decades, and I was part of the Reagan Revolution as a Senate staffer.
As a youth, I was one of those kids who watched the TV coverage of national conventions and the Watergate hearings, one who dreamed of working in Washington some day. IÂ’d seen Ronald ReaganÂ’s speeches at Republican National Conventions, but I didnÂ’t really know much about him.
One day in college, I rode with a Campus Crusade for Christ staffer who had served as a Senate staffer past the intramural softball fields. The radio was playing, and he reached over to turn up the volume. On the air was Ronald Reagan giving a political commentary.
My friend asked me if I knew much about Reagan. I confessed I didnÂ’t. He said Reagan was likely to be the next president. As the Republican primary started in coming months, Ronald Reagan became my choice for the nomination.
By 1981, optimism ruled in Washington. Reagan pushed significant tax cuts through Congress, with his charm and persuasive appeals aimed directly to the American people, who knew firsthand that the government was too big and spent too much.
Working for Sen. Strom Thurmond, I got to do things like attend ReaganÂ’s landing at Andrews Air Force Base following his trip to the 1982 G-7 meeting and his Memorial Day speech and wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.
Sen. Thurmond, nearly 80 years old at the time, was often asked what he thought of President Reagan. The Senator said he thought Reagan was the best president of his lifetime. That struck me as profound.
The most remarkable thing to me about Ronald Reagan was his public speaking ability. IÂ’d majored in speech communication, and the spoken word captivated me. His forthright, plain but well-crafted language and powerfully put ideas connected with average Americans. This was a president whose voice, smile and words inspired confidence in a people badly in need of it.
He brought a breath of fresh air to the presidency. Reagan wasn’t afraid to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” to challenge Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in Berlin, to speak openly of God’s hand in America’s destiny, and to employ overtly patriotic terms. Intelligentsia in media and government pooh-poohed Reagan’s lack of sophistication, but Reagan knew exactly what he was doing.
People related to Reagan, from Constitution Avenue to Main Street. He was that approachable, affable, down-to-earth guy who embodied the American dream. Though a Hollywood star with fashionable friends, he could believably say, “The taxpayer – that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.”
Reagan renewed the hope of young people. He inspired my generation, which had rejected at the ballot box the malaise the previous administration told us was our lot. Here was a man old enough to be our grandfather and we related much more to him than to his younger predecessor.
And you couldn’t argue with a man who spoke his mind forthrightly, refreshingly. How do you argue with a clearly stated fact like, “Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born”?
The way his political opponents underestimated Reagan proved their demise. He had a firm agenda of priorities – tax cuts to restore the economy, military buildup to restore our national defense and end the Cold War, missile defense to secure our safety against the nuclear threat. And Reagan kept his eye on the ball.
Reagan stood for the right to life, including that of the unborn; the right to liberty, including those oppressed behind the Iron Curtain; the right to the pursuit of happiness, including for Americans strapped by high taxes and intrusive government.
He lifted our hearts with his humor, raised our hopes with his honesty and common sense policies, and restored our courage by his display of the courage of his convictions.
Ronald Reagan often invoked the Pilgrims’ reference to this land as “a shining city on a hill.” And he faithfully kept the lamp trimmed during his tenure. Reagan left the presidency, the nation, indeed the world in better condition when he left office than it had been when he had assumed office. You can’t ask much more of someone than that.
Now Reagan enters that eternal shining city on a hill. God rest his soul and comfort his family in their loss – buoying them by the outpouring of love for the Gipper, the vast display of care from a grateful nation.