Ronald Reagan's Virginia legacy

Ten years ago, America and the world started missing Ronald Reagan. Over the weekend, we started mourning Ronald Reagan, as his long battle with Alzheimer's disease came to an end. But rarely has it been more true to say that someone is not really gone, so long as people remember him. In the case of Ronald Reagan, Virginia’s leaders not only remember him, but eagerly try to imitate him.

Two of our recent governors, George Allen and Jim Gilmore, have much in common with Ronald Reagan. They were among a much larger group of Republican Governors (George Pataki of New York, Frank Keating of Oklahoma, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, George W. Bush of Texas, to name a few) who came of age politically while Reagan was president. Their terms of office are part of the Reagan legacy, and one more way in which Reagan fundamentally changed the landscape of American politics.

Reagan came to office determined to liberate the world from the fear of Communism, which he did not consider a permanent part of the global political reality. Every Cold War president before Reagan refused to think seriously about eliminating the Soviet Union. Reagan’s vision and determination recall the resolve of George Allen to liberate Virginians from the fear of violent crime.

Previous governors thought of rising crime rates as something we would simply have to live with. Allen, by contrast, proclaimed that Virginia’s streets and neighborhoods could be made safer, by abolishing parole and keeping dangerous criminals under lock and key. The alternative, Allen said, is for law-abiding citizens to constantly live behind locked doors. When Allen announced his intention to abolish parole, many of his political opponents rolled their eyes and smirked at such a “simplistic” solution.

It was exactly the way Washington responded when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Now that crime rates have fallen in Virginia, many who opposed Allen tooth and nail are claiming they were with him all the way.

Reagan made a priority of cutting taxes, which would become the signature legislative victory for Jim Gilmore. Reagan’s opponents said that he would never get his program passed by a Democratic House of Representatives. The pundits said that the special interest groups, who depend on government handouts, would not permit Congress to cut taxes. And, even if somehow Reagan did cut taxes, it would not lead to economic growth.

How familiar it all sounds, as we recall Gilmore’s 1997 promise. Gilmore would never get his program though a Democratic legislature. Even if he did, it would lead to fiscal chaos and economic stagnation. Instead, as even the administration of Mark Warner has had to admit, Virginia’s status as a low tax state has resulted in a budget surplus this year. Not even Warner will be able to claim that his tax increases brought the surplus about.

There are other similarities between Reagan on the one hand and Allen and Gilmore on the other. Reagan remade the Republican Party into a conservative party, fueled by optimism and an unshakable faith in the American people. But not all Republicans embraced this future for the GOP. Reagan had to deal with well-entrenched, unimaginative, go-along-get-along Republicans who had been in the minority for so long they seemed to prefer it.

Where Reagan had his Bob Michel, Bob Packwood and Howard Baker trying to hold him back, Allen and Gilmore had to contend with such Senate luminaries as “Bo” Trumbo, as well as John Chichester, Russell Potts and Emmet Hanger, the architects of this year’s tax debacle. But in spite of these internal feuds, Allen and Gilmore helped make the Virginia Republican Party a conservative party. It is no accident that the party faithful applauded loudest at this weekend’s State Convention for the party’s most Reaganesque leaders.

Perhaps the best evidence of Reagan’s legacy in Virginia, however, is the eagerness with which our current Democratic governor tries to liken himself to Reagan. Warner claims to be a fiscal conservative (who wants more of our tax money). He claims to be tough on crime (but his party supported giving convicted felons the right to vote), and he claims to favor educational choice (so long as you choose the public schools) (unless you are Mark Warner yourself).

Hypocrisy, it is said, is the homage that vice pays to virtue, and Virginians, who voted overwhelmingly for Reagan twice, may smile at Warner’s rhetorical homage to Ronald Reagan. But they applaud Allen and Gilmore’s genuine homage to Reagan, because in paying tribute to Reagan, Allen and Gilmore showed that they shared his confidence in the people who elected them.

They keep Reagan’s dream alive.