The funny thing about people like Walter Russell Mead is
that they compare President Barack Obama with a past Prime Minister of Britain,
a past American hero or a long dead American president. But they never compare
him to a more recent president like say, Ronald Reagan, whose travails and
aspirations can shed a great deal of light as to what Mr. Obama is facing
today.
In fact, not once does Walter Mead mention the name Ronald
Reagan in his article: “Our Rhetorical President's Unserious Speeches” which
also came under the subtitle: “Obama seems to think that eloquent words are a
replacement for deeds.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal on July 9,
2013. For that reason, we should remind ourselves of the points in the Reagan
legacy that may say something about today's situation.
Was Ronald Reagan a great President? Maybe. Some people say
he was; other people say he wasn't. After all, he was the man who negotiated
the missiles-for-hostages deal with the Iranians even before he was
inaugurated. He also pulled America out of Lebanon shortly after the
inauguration in response to an attack on an American military installation in
that country. Did these decisions make him look like a wise leader who knew the
limits of his country's power? Or was he the consummate wheeler-dealer who,
like a true politician, chose the path of least resistance where he could?
Some people say that Reagan single-handedly brought down the
Soviet Empire. Other people dispute that assertion and point out that the Pope
as well as the Solidarity movement in Poland share in the success of that
operation. Yes, the American President helped bankrupt the Communist empire,
say some people, but he did so by engaging it in an arms race that turned out to
be as detrimental to America in the long run as it was to the Soviet Union in
the short run. Now the Russian Federation is brightening day after day while
America is dimming year after year. I let you judge who the ultimate winner is
in this game.
Ronald Reagan was a good orator; there is no doubt about it.
In fact, he was nicknamed the Great Communicator. But that's only because he
read the speeches that were written for him by speechwriters. Otherwise, he
blundered a few times like when he didn't know there was an open microphone and
said things to the effect that he was preparing to bomb the Soviet Union. And
where there was not an open microphone, there was Nancy Reagan standing beside
him to whisper in his ear how he should respond to impromptu questions put to
him by journalists.
On balance, however, Reagan was not as shallow as he
appeared to be, and there was a simple reason for that. It is that he had
something he was proud of – something that gave him the depth only a few people
saw in him. It is that he had plenty of the “horse sense” he saw in other
people, liked it very much and praised them for it. In fact, it was this
quality in him that made him the cautious man that he was. Deep down, he felt
that peace was preferable to war ... and so he pursued the dream of disarmament
with the Russians while standing on the Russian principle of “trust but
verify”.
The horse sense that Reagan possessed allowed him to see
something else. Even though he went around lifting the spirit of his countrymen
with the refrain: “America's best days are ahead,” he saw deep down that the
country was developing a structural problem in the way that it was governed. He
did not like the big bills that came to him loaded with add-ons and riders.
This was an approach to the idea of governing he disliked intensely because it
forced him to choose between all and nothing. For this reason, he ceaselessly
asked Congress for the line-item veto, but he never got it.
Fast forward almost a quarter of a century, and look what
the absence of the line-item veto is doing to the country. Bills that are
thousands of pages long go through the legislative mill without the legislators
reading them because it is physically impossible for these people to input
information from dozens of lobbyists, digest them all and use them in such a
way as to advance the causes of the country. And because they cannot do this,
they opt instead to advance their own causes as well as those of the lobbyists
… and they do all that at the expense of their country and their countrymen.
This is the setup that the current President Barack Obama
has inherited. The way he responds to events suggests that he has not yet
internalized the truth about the American system of governance being broken. A
constitutional lawyer by education, he starts every project believing that
things will run smoothly because the Constitution will show the way. But he
quickly discovers that obstacles are placed on the road to implementation by
the people who wish to slow him down or block him till he accedes to their
demands. Without a line-item veto, he has no choice but to bow to the pressure
and move on, or freeze and do nothing.
And so, whatever complaint people like Walter Mead may have
about President Obama, the best thing they can do to remedy the situation is
not to go after this president or the next one or the one after that, but try
to fix the system by identifying its weak points and working on them.
In the absence of an effort of this kind by the chattering class,
America will fall further behind other nations. The chattering class ought to
know that the paralysis of a government is never due to the work of one person.
It is the result of people who are too lazy intellectually to do the hard
thinking, muster the courage and tell it like it is till it is drummed into the
heads of everyone.
And so, let's hear them whisper – better yet, let's hear them shout – in
one voice what Ronald Reagan used to ask for. Let's hear the refrain: Give
America the line-item veto.