Although academia continues to debate Ronald Reagan's place in history, a Reagan legacy industry has been working, with some success, to enshrine the former president's memory in a host of public sites and symbols (Bjerre-Poulsen 2008). The man who fired the nation's air traffic controllers and thundered against the growth of the federal bureaucracy now has Washington's national airport and DCs largest federal office building named in his honor. Recently, conservative activists have borrowed from the evangelical Christian movement and urged each other to be guided by the question "What would Reagan do?" (Heritage Foundation 2008). And even Barack Obama invoked Ronald Reagan in the 2008 presidential campaign as a role model of transformative leadership. From these and other indications, it would seem that Ronald Reagan is well on his way to becoming an iconographic figure in our politics.

Many academics and liberal groups understandably take a dim view of this development. But the fact of the matter is that ours would be a very dreary political society if citizens did not try to find ways to celebrate their departed heroes. Rather than poohpoohing the idea of honoring important political figures, we would do better to recognize that there are significantly different ways of doing so.

One way of honoring is to memorialize a person. We do that by stamping his or her name on physical things-a street, building, piece of currency, and the like. Thus the Reagan Legacy Project, led by Grover Nordquist and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, aims to erect a Reagan monument in every state and to have something named after the former president in each of the nation's 3,054 counties.

Second, we can bestow honor by ritually praising the person who is to be remembered. This involves mounting celebrations, remembrances, or similar hortatory projects. Here, for example, one might think of the commemorations conducted by the Young America's Foundation at Reagan's Rancho del Cielo or the over 40 state governments that have now designated February 6 (the former president's birthday) as "Ronald Reagan Day."

Finally, there is the honor that comes from trying to appreciate a person. By "appreciate" I aim to use the term in its original sense-to evaluate or price out the worth of whatever is under consideration. In this sense, to appreciate does not mean simply to admire or be thankful. It means to be carefully attentive to understand, in a well-rounded way, the significance of someone or something. Applied to any major political figure, such an appreciative effort means striving to take the full measure of a person's presence on the public scene. That is far different from simply rendering a thumbs-up or thumbs-down approval rating.

It seems to me that this third category is the highest form of honor we can bestow on a person. That is because it puts the supreme value on the truth of things. We pay our greatest respect to a person by studiously and honestly weighing what it meant that he or she passed through this troubled world. It is true that Reagan has become an iconographic figure for many people. But this does not deny the value of striving for such an appreciation. Quite the contrary. Properly understood, an icon is not something to be worshipped but something to be seen into, a portal into deeper realities. Ideologically closed minds can have trouble seeing that an icon is not an idol.

Of course, even in the best of circumstances, honoring-as- truthful-appreciation is difficult work. A wise historian once said that "all history is contemporary history" (Collingwood 1994, 202). ' In other words, you and I cannot avoid seeing the past in light of our present. Humanly speaking, that is the only light we have.

If that is the case in the best of circumstances, offering a fair account of Ronald Reagan's legacy in 2008 is especially difficult. Given that it is scarcely 20 years since he left office, we are only just now entering the middle distance where one can start gaining a reasonable historical perspective. Moreover, Ronald Reagan's memory is now a foil in today's partisan wars. Political activists know that shaping public understanding of the past is an essential part of contending for the future. Any fair appraisal of the Reagan legacy is difficult precisely because partisans on all sides want their listeners to believe that the truth of things must always be simple. A complex verdict on any subject is equated with a betrayal of political purpose.

And yet honoring a person by pursuing an honest appreciation necessarily requires the kind of complex thinking that today's ruthless partisanship disparages. The truth is that the political world is complicated. Partisanship aims to reduce to a minimum the number of things a person needs to think about. My aim in this essay is, within reason, to increase that number.

A good way to introduce a healthy complexity into one's thinking is to look more deeply into the initial question: What do we mean by a person's legacy?

By common usage, a legacy is the substance of things passed on. It is an inheritance that is not only handed on to the future but also handles and shapes the future. A person does not need to read learned tomes to understand the complexity of this seemingly simple idea. We experience it in our everyday family relationships, particularly between parents and children. For example, we know that parents are always teaching their children, explicitly by their words and even more importantly by their example. Thus we also know that what children are learning is often not what their parents intended. Likewise parents hand down a legacy for their children not only by what they do but also by what they fail to do, by what they give, as well as by what they withhold. And so the skein of bequeathing grows. It is simply a matter of practical experience and common sense to recognize that the idea of a legacy - presidential or otherwise - is inherently complicated. In other words,

* A legacy may entail something intended as well as unintended.

* It may involve conserving what we have as well as creating something new.

* It may consist of certain material conditions as well as the perception of those conditions.

* It may develop from what is accomplished, from what is unsuccessfully attempted, or from what is simply left undone.

So any person's legacy is a complex thing. Or perhaps better stated, it is a complex of things. To assess it requires pondering, as best one can, that intricate braid of ramifications we are pleased to call history. Such pondering should teach us to approach legacy analysis with a hearty dose of humility. Even our best efforts may not measure up to history's delight in irony and unintended consequences.

For all these reasons, I think it is more realistic to speak of the legacies rather than the legacy of Ronald Reagan-and of mixed legacies at that. Moreover, from what I have been able to learn about the man, I also think that Ronald Reagan would have recognized these difficulties in speaking and writing about him. Among other things, he was an essentially humble man-a man who developed a strong sense of self and powerful convictions but also a man with a very small sense of ego or need to defend it. If asked about his legacy, I think that rather than wanting hagiography, Ronald Reagan would give his cock of the head and that crinkled, twinkling smile and say, "Well, just do your best."

In what follows, I will try my best to draw a sketch of Ronald Reagan's complex legacies. The sketch consists of eight strokes under the headings of the welfare state, taxation, national security, the presidency, personnel, party politics, political leadership, and last, but by no means least, a final category called the person.

America's Welfare State

In declaring in his first inaugural address that government is the problem, not the solution, Ronald Reagan meant domestic government. And he meant not only the size of domestic government but its overbearing ambition to run people's lives. As Reagan put it in his famous 1964 endorsement of Barry Goldwater, Americans' fundamental choice was not between the political right or left. Rather it was the choice between up-the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order-or down-to the anthill of centralized, all-controlling government. As he put it in a 1975 interview, "if you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism" (Reagan 1975).

In practice Ronald Reagan handed down to the future a combination of rhetorical and financial pressures that did restrain the growth of domestic government. But he and his administration did little to enact-or even prepare the groundwork for-an agenda of limited government. The overall result was to consolidate rather than roll back America's middle-class welfare state. Here we can only briefly summarize how this occurred (Davies 2003).

* The Reagan administration did carry forward the government deregulation that had begun under President Jimmy Carter. But it was deregulation that continued to be justified on grounds of economic efficiency and not a conservative/libertarian philosophy of limited government. And when deregulation produced obvious economic and social problems, as in the savings and loan scandal, reregulation quickly ensued without a nod to any principles of limited government. * President Reagan's calls for private-sector charitable initiatives to replace government welfare spending remained short- lived rhetoric in 1981-82. Likewise his New Federalism proposals to devolve federal welfare entitlements (Aid to Families with Dependent Children [AFDC] and Food Stamps) to state governments while in return nationalizing Medicare came to nothing.

* Challenged on the "fairness issue" after 1981, the president and his spokesman defended the administration, not on grounds of conservative principle, but by claiming the government was spending more on Food Stamps and other welfare programs.

* On Social Security, Ronald Reagan had historically favored introducing "voluntary features" into the system but quickly learned to avoid the issue as president. In mid1981, Reagan suffered his first major presidential setback when a political firestorm arose over his proposal to cut Social Security benefits for those early retirees approaching age 62, a proposal based on short-term budget balancing needs rather than any social policy principles. In response, President Reagan signed on to establishing a bipartisan commission that would secure the long-term financial future of the Social Security system with no consideration of privatization or de- welfarizing its tedistributive features. The outcome of the 1983 reform was to conserve the government's immense entitlement program by means of enacting future increases in Social Security taxes and the retirement age (Derthick and Teles 2003).

In short, if there ever was anything resembling a frontal assault on the American welfare state by something that might be called the "Reagan Revolution," that assault had essentially ended by 1982. And even that political/ideological/rhetorical retreat was not enough to prevent major Republican losses in the midterm elections that year. For their part, conservative leaders in 1983 expressed bitter disappointment at Reagan's failure to begin dismantling welfare state entitlements, seeing his first term as "nothing more than a right-of-center vision of the welfare state" and "essentially another Ford Administration" (Meyerson 1997, 6). These conservative critics continued to have a valid point. Rather than teaching Americans anything about a principled commitment to decentralized, limited government, the key to Reagan's 1984 reelection was the scrupulous avoidance of any such substantive issues in favor of mood and personality.

However, the combination of Reagan's fiscal policies and his powerful rhetoric did move the terms of debate toward a generalized hostility to something called "big government." Here the ramifications were typically indirect and paradoxical.

After 1982, the long, post-World War II growth in federal domestic spending as a percent of gross domestic product was halted. But it was not reversed and remained roughly stable at about 18% after 1982 and during the remainder of the Reagan presidency (Steuerle et al. 1998, 66). This limitation was achieved indirectly rather than through any frontal assaults on the major components of America's welfare state. Growth in the domestic government's share of the economy was capped in several roundabout ways.

As President Reagan and at least some of his advisors apparently intended, growth in domestic government was partly constrained by tax cuts that shrank the revenue stream flowing to Washington. But by itself that shrinkage in revenue inflow produced only a small amount of pressure. More importantly, leaving the momentum of huge federal entitlement programs in place along with large increases in defense spending this together with the constricted flow of tax revenues - was a formula for ballooning budget deficits. These ever- accumulating deficits tripled the national debt between fiscal years 1980 and 1989. And that in turn continued to require more spending on interest payments to cover the federal government's borrowing requirements. The overall result was to put in place an immense budgetary straightjacket. Its continuing inertial force served to squeeze domestic programs with politically weak constituencies and to make any major new domestic program initiatives extremely costly in political terms. Some examples of this legacy are as follows:

* Since they have fallen into that shrinking share of the federal budget known as "nonentitlement discretionary domestic spending," Great Society anti-poverty programs have been continually trimmed down.

* Reagan's deficit pressure laid the groundwork for the 1989 defeat of the new catastrophic health insurance program for the elderly. To avoid increasing taxes or the deficit, Congress had paid for these new benefits by charging costs to the program's better- off beneficiaries. This in turn produced a political backlash that forced Congress to repeal the new program.

* By the same logic Reagan might also be considered godfather to the subsequent defeat of President Bill Clinton's 1993 health plan. This proposed "managed care" system was easily portrayed as another big government scheme designed to benefit the uninsured minority at the expense of the already-insured majority.

The consequence of all this was to solidify America's existing middle-class welfare state with minimal public education in, or commitment to, principles of limited domestic government. Misreading this fact, Newt Gingrich and his fellow "anti-welfare state" revolutionaries who took over Congress in 1994 were easy political prey. A 1995 shutdown of "big government" and proposed budget cuts allowed President Clinton to portray congressional Republicans as enemies of the government's social safety net, particularly the Medicare system on which parents of the middle class depended. This in turn gave major aid to Clinton's reelection in 1996 and sustained his popularity thereafter. Contrary to what conservative ideologues in Congress, talk radio, and think tanks imagined, there was no Reagan Revolution leading Americans away from dependence on all sorts of social welfare programs orchestrated from Washington. And so, despite the failure of Clinton's grand welfare state initiative in health care, this underlying reality played a huge role in ultimately salvaging the Clinton presidency.

The strongest counterargument to my general theme about a lack of major change in America's welfare state is the issue of welfare reform. I think it is entirely plausible to claim that as both governor and presidential candidate, Reagan's long-standing criticism of the federal AFDC welfare system did help lead the way for the 1996 replacement of this entitlement program with state- based temporary assistance programs having strong work requirements.

However, here, too, the Reagan legacy is more complex than it would first seem.

As president, Reagan never sought fundamental reform of the AFDC system. Instead, in 1988, he signed on to an essentially Democratic bill, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Family Support Act. This law increased federal spending and obligations on the states to provide welfare clients with training, health care, and transportation services and contained only the barest of work requirements. The actual stimulus for the fundamental 1996 welfare reform came from elsewhere-namely, by granting waivers from federal AFDC rules to particular states, allowing them to experiment with work requirements, benefit cutoffs, and other rules emphasizing personal responsibility.

But this waiver process was essentially an afterthought in the Reagan administration. The authority for waivers to encourage work was broadened through a small provision in the massive 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Quite outside the purview of the touted 1988 Family Support Act, the first steps toward the radical 1996 reform in federal welfare policy began in 1987. In that year, an obscure White House Board created by Reagan overruled the Department of Health and Human Services and granted New Jersey and Wisconsin extensive waivers to initiate experimental programs containing work requirements and benefit cutoffs. This precedent for waiving standard federal requirements for welfare assistance was eventually extended to over two dozen states in the following years. It was this that quietly established the political and analytic basis for eliminating the AFDC entitlement in 1996.

Taking an overall view of America's welfare state, it is part of Reagan's legacy that neither Americans nor even Republican politicians were ultimately weaned from dependence on big government. Under a Republican Congress, from 1994 to 2006, the number of earmarks for special federal spending projects tripled. Under a Republican president and Congress, the first years of the 21st century saw the largest expansion of federal education policy in history as well as creation of a huge new Washington entitlement program for prescription drugs. Surveys found that by 2005 roughly onethird of the Republican coalition deserved the odd label "pro- government conservatives," that is, Republican voters favoring federal government activism on any number of domestic issues (Pew 2005).

There is a final irony flowing from Reagan's nonrevolution in social policy.

Frustrated by the Reagan administration's accommodations, especially on Social Security reform, conservative policy activists outside Congress sought a new strategy to produce "real reform," that is, privatization in Social Security. In the 1990s, they crafted an approach that would have the political allure of holding existing beneficiaries harmless while promising young future retirees a better return through personal investment accounts. This was essentially the proposal on which President George W Bush squandered what he called his "political capital" after winning reelection in 2004. As regards any claim of a Reagan Revolution against the welfare state, the legacy problem is obvious. There was no such revolution. As president Ronald Reagan never mounted a frontal assault on the justifications for the federal government's everexpanding role in retirement income, health care, and all the other components of social welfare. The problem in trying to create such a legacy is that, over the long run, the government tends to do what the people want. Facing economic and social insecurities, people want the things government can do for them, even if in some theoretical way they could do many of those things for themselves.