It was the accidental disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair that played the greatest role in bringing the danger of presidential unilateralism to light. Not only did the surrounding events reaffirm the public perception of big lies in high places, they also showed a tolerance for presidential actions that directly contradicted congressional authorizations and legal statutes.

Media attention to the diversion of funds from Iran to the Nicaraguan Contras was actually a diversion from the central issue.2 This issue was the illegal activity involved both in supplying the Contras and in selling arms to Iran in the first place. Beginning in the summer of 1984, Reagan and key aides evaded the legal requirements for covert operations laid down by congressional statute as well as by the president's own executive order and National Security Directive. This evasion of the law was then concealed by false or misleading statements given to the public and Congress by the president and his spokesmen.

Similar evasion and concealment then accelerated through covert arms sales to Iran authorized by the president. Such sales were clearly illegal under the Arms Control Export Act and 1979 U.S. arms embargo against Iran, which designated that nation a supporter of international terrorism. Further requirements for reporting to Congress under the National Security Act were then deliberately violated by senior administration officials.

There was nothing conservative about such disregard for the claims of a constitutional government under law. Nonetheless, the Iran-Contra affair now gave impetus in some Republican circles to expansive claims of inherent executive power, and this too became part of the Reagan presidential legacy. Congressman Dick Cheney and his young aide David Addington led a spirited defense of Reagan's actions. In this view, the primary role in the conduct of foreign policy rested with a presidency enjoying minimal congressional interference. On occasion, the president could even use his prerogative power to "exceed the law" (Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair 1987, 665).

On this reading of events, the Iran-Contra scandal simply represented a partisan effort by congressional Democrats to seize powers that legitimately belonged to the presidency. A new mission was set in motion among a cadre of neoconservatives: to reverse an alleged infringement of presidential power that had occurred following the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal. Some 15 years later, Cheney, now as vice president and with Addington heading his legal team, was in a position to lead the Bush administration's effort to claim inherent executive powers-some of which included imprisonment, surveillance, interrogation, and possibly torture (Savage 2007).

This brings us to an important question. This essay was presented at a symposium under the theme: Was Ronald Reagan a great president? I believe these are words we should use very carefully. Taken alone, greatness simply means to be marked by outstanding merit. However, to be a great president is an inherently constitutional idea. It is to excel in the context of a constitutional office, in this case the office holding the executive power. Office in its original, most meaningful sense-and not the TV showhas to do with obligations to act by virtue of being "positioned" in a certain place. The concept of office is about occupying, not a physical place, but a moral space in the political order.

During his last months in the White House, Reagan observed, "You don't become president of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the presidency, which belongs to our people" (Reagan 1988). But if you think about it, this is a misleading characterization of the office under our system of government. The institution does not belong to the people, not directly. It belongs to the Constitution, which is the creation of the people.

There are only two promises in the presidential oath: to execute the duties of the office and to safeguard the Constitution. For all his positive contributions to the presidency, Reagan did not demonstrate outstanding merit in the context of the executive office known to the Constitution. Legacies teach things, and Reagan did not teach us well about the executive power in our constitutional order. His zeal for rolling back communist influence in Central America and his personal concern for the hostage situation led Reagan and his aides into the extraconstitutional and illegal activities of the Iran-Contra affair.

In the end most Americans seemed willing to forgive the Gipper as merely uninformed or forgetful regarding this whole affair. For understandable reasons, they liked the man and were rooting for him. But a constitutionally perilous legacy had been created. In asserting unilateral executive power, Reagan and his officials violated congressional laws and the spirit of the Constitution. And equally clearly, they largely got away with it as a precedent for future years. The American presidency was left stronger, more manageable, and more dangerous.

Reagan's People

Before and during his eight years in the White House, Ronald Reagan carried with him into the public arena major portions of America's next generation of leaders, conservative and otherwise. This easily overlooked matter of personnel is also a part of his legacy.

The courts are an example. By the end of his two terms, Ronald Reagan had not only appointed almost half of all federal judges (as well as three Supreme Court justices). His rigorous judicial selection process, centered in the White House, also had done much to ensure that these judges were people with a reputation for legal conservatism. These almost 400 judges in the federal district and appeals courts were often appointed at a fairly young age and they will be with us for some years to come (O'Brien 2003, 340).

Beyond the obvious example of the courts, it is easy to overlook the fine-grained nature of Reagan's personnel legacy. It consists of quietly shaping the career lines of hundreds of particular individuals over the years. In this group would be Robert Gates, John Negroponte, Colin Powell, Dennis Ross, Paul Wolfowitz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, to name only a few prominent figures in the realm of foreign affairs. Other career lines in Congress, state governments, think tanks, foundations, and the like would also have to be part of this immense, untold story.

Reagan's most far-reaching bequest in the realm of personnel deserves a few more specific comments.

By choosing him as his running mate (Gerald Ford disdained the offer), Reagan breathed new life into the all-but-expired political career of George H.W. Bush. With only two terms in Congress and two defeats in running for Senate, Bush's own elective record was lackluster and his conservative credentials had long been suspect among the movement's activists, including Ronald Reagan.

After Goldwater's 1964 loss, the political newcomer Reagan publicly challenged Bush's view that conservatives should now make their home in a big-tent GOP. Reagan, like Russell Kirk, saw the 1964 election as a sign that the GOP could be a thoroughly conservative party representing the majority of forgotten Americans National Review 1964). In the years after 1964, George H.W. Bush advanced up the political ladder by retailing his personal contacts. Reagan advanced by wholesaling his personal beliefs. When Bush's son, George W. Bush, ran for Congress in 1978, Ronald Reagan endorsed his opponent in the Republican primary as the truer conservative. And in the 1980 presidential primaries, Reagan defeated Bush senior's brand of a more moderate, mainstream Republicanism. As Bush told one of his speechwriters during those primaries, "Jamie, I'm a Republican - isn't that enough ... I like Barry Goldwater, but stuff like his Conscience of a Conservative isn't my thing" (Humes 1997, 177).

As in tapping liberal Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate in 1976, Reagan behaved as a prudent politician in choosing Bush in 1980. And in choosing Bush's campaign manager, James Baker, as White House chief of staff, Reagan showed he recognized and was not threatened by talented people who were not movement conservatives. The fact remains, however, that Ronald Reagan did not work to secure a succession of conservative leadership for the Republican Party. As Reagan's running mate, Bush obtained the inside track for succeeding the Republican presidential nomination after Reagan left office.

Likewise, young George W gained his first national political experience in helping with his father's revived political prospects. With Bush's campaign to succeed Reagan, which the family began planning in early 1985, the young George Bush became a senior, full- time advisor working with the brilliant star of Republican political consultants, Lee Atwater. And so it was that a few months after President Bush left the White House in 1993, a new generation of Team Bush had assembled in Texas to launch George W's run for the governorship, which in turn became a stepping stone to the White House (Heclo 2003b). Thus Ronald Reagan, however inadvertently, helped set in motion forces that would eventually produce 12 years of Bush presidencies and a gradual unraveling of the conservative coalition.

Party Politics

As others have ably described, Ronald Reagan used the political materials lying around him to build a conservative coalition that was unprecedented in modern American politics. What was this creative work's legacy for our party system?

Clearly the electoral strength of Reagan's coalition has not been as deep or durable as FDR's Democratic coalition. During the Reagan and Bush presidencies, Republicans never managed to gain full control of Congress, and they lost the two presidential elections of the 1990s. Apparent turning points in 1980 (when Reagan received only 51% of the popular vote) and the 1994 congressional election had more to do with public disgust directed toward Democratic incumbents in the White House and Congress, respectively, rather than with any widespread endorsement of a conservative agenda (although of course winners always claimed such a positive mandate). In 1982, 26 House Republican seats were lost, including 14 freshmen who had just arrived on Reagan's coattails. It was the reelection of three anti-Reagan Republican mavericks (Durenberger, Chafee, and Weicker) that served to keep the Senate in Republican hands. Following his 1984 landslide reelection, President Reagan campaigned for Republicans in 10 Senate races in 1986, including 5 in the South. Democrats won all 10 Senate seats.

In short, the "realigning" election that pundits kept looking for never happened. Nevertheless, Ronald Reagan did bequeath enduring changes to our party system.

In terms of Americans' identification with a political party, the Republicans now overcame their half century status as a minority party. By the end of the 1980s, Republican party identifiers were, and have remained, roughly equal to Democratic party identifiers. Young white Americans who came of age during the Reagan years have proven to be a distinctively Republican and conservative political generation. Thus, Reagan laid the groundwork for the closely divided, 50/50 electoral nation that we experience today. The more equal division of support between the two parties also brought with it a sharper ideological division. As Reagan had doggedly sought since 1964, the Republicans became a more thoroughly conservative party. And in making the Republican Party a conservative party, Reagan also changed the way Americans saw conservatism. In 1964, it had seemed antiquated, negative, and dangerously radical. By 1988, conservatism was more likely be to seen as Reaganesque-forward- looking, optimistic, and in the mainstream of American values.

At least as significant was the fact that Reagan's conservative coalition offered leaders of evangelical Christians their first sustained entree onto the national political scene since the days of William Jennings Bryan. Grassroots organization and division on cultural issues made the Republicans a more overtly religious party. Activists in both parties found it profitable to emphasize this division and demonize their opponents. In effect, both the Republican and Democratic parties became more effective sorting mechanisms for organizing Bible-believing Americans and more strictly secular Americans into two different camps (Fiorina 2006).

While liberal activists continued to fight against it, Reagan also shifted the center of the Democratic Party toward the pragmatic, if not philosophical, right. Reagan's legacy, again an indirect one, was to supply a competitive advantage to ambitious, young Democratic politicians with more supple personal views. Hence, Bill Clinton could emerge as a "New Democrat" because the Old Democrats could not come up with a plausible alternative to Ronald Reagan.

Political Leadership

Elsewhere, I have written about Reagan's importance for what some call America's public philosophy, and I will not repeat that here (Heclo 2003a). Instead I turn to another part of his legacy that is too often overlooked-Reagan's reaffirmation and elevation of the politician's role in a democracy.

His harshest critics declared Ronald Reagan to be a simple- minded ideologue. By contrast, some who worked with him, such as David Stockman, found Reagan to be "a consensus politician, not an ideologue." For his own part, Reagan often liked to portray himself as an ordinary citizen in office.

The truth of the matter is something larger than these partial views. Reagan's political leadership exemplified the high calling of the politician in a democracy.

Americans want political leaders who are both principled and effective. There is, of course, an underlying tension between these two characteristics. The principled leader is idealistic, straightforward, and firm. The effective leader in our messy democratic system is pragmatic, flexible, and at times duplicitous. At their best, democratic political leaders manage that tension without fostering public cynicism. This is what Reagan accomplished and, in doing so, he set a long-term example for other would-be leaders.

Ronald Reagan did not enter politics at age 55 because his ego needed votes or public office. He did it because he believed deeply in certain very important things. And throughout his political career, people seemed to perceive and like this about him. I think this public understanding goes a long way to explain his remarkable appeal even in the most unfavorable circumstances. As his presidency was ending, only Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with the line that "in my heart I don't believe I traded arms for hostages, but the facts say otherwise."

Reagan was what George Will has called a "conviction politician." He effectively communicated and firmly adhered to core principles. But he was also willing eventually to compromise to make partial advances toward his goals. This principled pragmatism irritates those wanting ideological purity. But it is of priceless value for a healthy democracy. As noted earlier, during the 1980s conservative leaders expressed feelings of disappointment and even betrayal when it came to Reagan's choices regarding major issues such as welfare state entitlements and arms control agreements. In truth, Reagan probably did weaken the conservative movement by investing it with governing responsibility. Governing democratically necessarily entails an adulteration of ideological purity. But the gain for our democratic way of life in having such political leadership far outweighs that ideological cost.

The gain is that Ronald Reagan exemplified the high calling of a democratic politician to find the working terms on which government by consent can go forward. This is the essential thing for a diverse people who hope to be self-governing-principled leadership that knows how to mediate, adjust, and continue discovering the basis on which people will live together.

Reagan also showed how a politician with honest convictions does not need to slur his political rivals' character, competence, or good intentions. Instead, Reagan invariably sought to teach listeners how his rivals misunderstood the real problems and what a truer understanding required. Reagan set an example of democratic leadership which is available for other would-be politicians to follow, if they only will.

The Person

As we come to the end of this sketch, the last stroke is possibly the most important. This is because Reagan's legacy is something more than a sum of the parts I have outlined. It is a legacy that has to do with the whole person. Reagan's is an influence that goes very deep because it can evade our consciousness.

In the long term, history does not give points for style. It is not the style but the substance of the man we are talking about here. Reagan's basis for being the so-called "great communicator" was not style. What Reagan communicated to people was that he believed what he said. And what he believed was hopeful. Some have said that Ronald Reagan made America feel good about itself. This is true, but it would be wrong to characterize this as a fluffy, feel- good message.

The hopefulness Reagan believed in and communicated was deeply rooted in America's revolutionary and religious tradition. Reagan was a visionary traditionalist, and thus a futurist as well. The old truths were always new because they were forever lifting free people to new possibilities. As he said in his presidential farewell address, what people called the Reagan Revolution was really "The Great Rediscovery-a rediscovery of our values and common sense."

Part of the attraction of Ronald Reagan's life is its paradoxical nature. He recalled citizens to a vision of the traditional virtues in small-town America, to unapologetic patriotism and the simple grandeur of ordinary, free people. And yet Reagan built his career in the modem world of mass entertainment. He emerged from the mass mediaand corporate structures of Hollywood and TV. These were precisely the forces tearing at the social, economic, and cultural ligaments of traditional, small-town American life. But Reagan envisioned more basic realities in American life. When he told Americans the good things they wanted to believe about themselves and their nation, this was no subterfuge or political strategy. Reagan did it because he believed that he was-at the deepest level- telling them the truth about themselves.

At the same time, Reagan was also communicating the truth about himself. Within the man there was a basic decency, kindness, hopefulness, and principled toughness. It was what he saw in America, and in this regard I think his legacy will be what he hoped for. "Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone," he said, "I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts" (Reagan 1992). We puny commentators, offering our historical verdicts so far from the scene of battle, will soon be forgotten. Ronald Reagan will not.

This is because there was an American romance about Reagan's life and an American poetry in his vision. He was an authentic lover who saw heroic, good, noble things at the heart of this nation. He saw and loved the light it shed for freedom-starved people, pilgrims as he put it, "from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home." Out of the depths of who he was, Reagan could envision and tell others what they should continue to believe about America. Of all the things I have discussed, probably the greatest thing Reagan bequeathed was the legacy of his person, an American image that will continue to inspire untold numbers of people. It is as if they will hear that velvety voice saying, in words of the poet Robert Graves,

I loved you, so I drew the tides of men into my hands,

and wrote my will across the sky in stars.

Copyright Center for the Study of the Presidency Dec 2008

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