Why I Wish Today's Republicans Were More Like Ronald Reagan

Let’s be clear — this is not a Reagan nostalgia piece.

After all, my only memory of Ronald Reagan is his funeral. And I wasn’t even old enough to vote in the Obama-McCain election, so Reagan isn’t a rosy figure from my past — he’s history.

And Reagan’s decisions to fund overseas military ventures and spend billions to build up weapons arsenals while defunding social services is not in line with my values, or this publication’s values — as it has made abundantly clear over the years, most recently in a scathing 2004 essay on the occasion of Reagan’s death.

That being said, President Reagan was not the Evil Emperor — even for progressives. He granted amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants, vocally supported federal gun control, and would probably be written off as a RINO by today’s conservatives for backtracking on his own tax cuts.

And while more flexibility on these issues among the Republicans of today would be commendable and a relief, I think Nov. 19 is the perfect day for the ghost of the Gipper to come haunt his party on an entirely different issue.

That’s because exactly thirty years ago today, on Nov. 19, 1985, President Reagan arrived in Geneva, Switzerland to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, face-to-face. The event was carefully planned and statements meticulously edited for the press and the television cameras. It was the first time in six years that the leaders of the world’s two superpowers had met in person. Huge obstacles loomed between the two leaders. With the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the arms race, and Reagan's “Star Wars” missile defense program all causing tension, was it even worthwhile to meet?

This summit yielded no practical results at first. It affirmed only general principles — but importantly, their joint statement at the summit’s conclusion read that the two nations, “will not seek to achieve military superiority.” But Reagan’s and Gorbachev’s commitment to diplomacy, inaugurated at the Geneva summit, eventually paid off — the decades-long Cold War ended without violence.

Reagan and Gorbachev went on to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, and Reagan’s efforts paved the way for the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

With the benefit of hindsight, the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet Union may not seem miraculous. But that these two ideologically opposed nations — the most heavily armed in world history — chose to turn back from their hair-trigger brinksmanship without a war, or nuclear holocaust, remains a sign that God has seen fit to allow humanity to bumble along at least awhile longer. (If God had ever needed a pretext for ending it all, he most certainly had it in the nuclear insanity of the Cold War.)

This is not to lionize President Reagan — without Gorbachev’s unilateral military cuts, introduction of democratic reforms in the face of violent opposition, and peaceful relinquishing of power, it is doubtful that the Cold War would have ended as nonviolently as it did.

But Reagan’s openness to dialogue with his enemy ought to serve as a lesson to the Republican Party. Far from being “wishy-washy,” Reagan’s embrace of dialogue did not preclude him from firmness or clarity. This is evident in his famous 1983 speech to the leaders of American evangelicalism:

“Beware the temptation … to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”

But toward the end of his presidency, as Reagan stood inside the Kremlin with Gorbachev, a journalist asked Reagan if he still thought that the Soviet Union was the “evil empire.”

“No,” he said.

“You are talking about another time, another era.”

Without dialogue between enemies, that moment would have never occurred.

This stands in stark contrast to frequent calls from various Republicans to just give up on diplomacy. For example, the phrase “America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists” became an excuse in the early 2000s to forego diplomacy altogether. Even now, some Republicans advocate indefinitely ending dialogue with other leaders and ripping up international treaties. To see them do this while standing in front of Reagan’s Air Force One is especially ironic.

What would Reagan think of the belligerent members of his own party who fly their jingoism like a flag?

He wouldn’t be pleased.

President Reagan was never closed off to diplomacy, and he made this clear as president first by exchanging long letters with Gorbachev and then demonstrating diplomacy publicly with the Geneva summit. Just after the summit, Reagan penned another letter to Gorbachev. In the letter, he wrote:

“I want you to know that I found our meetings of great value. We had agreed to speak frankly, and we did. As a result, I came away from the meeting with a better understanding of your attitudes. I hope you also understand mine a little better. Obviously there are many things on which we disagree, and disagree very fundamentally. But if I understood you correctly, you too are determined to take steps to see that our nations manage their relations in a peaceful fashion. If this is the case, then this is one point on which we are in total agreement — and it is after all the most fundamental one of all.”

Reagan was certainly not a pacifist, and I’m not trying to argue that he was. U.S. military involvement during his presidency in, among many other places, Libya, Grenada, and Nicaragua clearly demonstrates this. Reagan believed that the U.S. needed to be militarily strong. You can argue about whether that’s good or bad.

But Reagan’s words — and more importantly, his actions — around the Geneva summit proved that his ultimate aim was peace, and that there’s no better way to get it than diplomacy. The Party of Reagan would do well to remember.