Ronald Reagan

President Trump gets a laugh out of his relationship with the world's worst mass murderer.

"Well, I call it stupid."

Both entered politics as outsiders, but that is where the similarity ends.

Plus, are the #CAPS going to win it all?

Public officials tend to spend too much money on themselves and their offices. It’s an unfortunate part of the human condition—by definition public officials spend resources that don’t belong to them, and so they will often spend more than they have to. Media allegations of excessive spending by…

To those who knew him well, Jeffrey L. Bell was a real-life George Bailey: an accomplished and decent man who shaped important events by helping others achieve their own greatness, mostly without recognition himself.

Jeff, who died suddenly at age 74 on Saturday evening, was primed to be on the vanguard. Starting in the mid-1970s, he turbocharged the policy agenda that culminated with Reagan’s landslide election and a mandate for massive tax cuts. But Reagan (“The only great man I ever worked for, though I…

Roll over Ronald Reagan. When President Trump delivers his first State of the Union address, he will do so as the most conservative president of all time. At least, that’s what the Heritage Foundation seems to think.

In October 1956, shortly after being honorably discharged from the Army at age 23, Lee Edwards found himself in Paris. There he fell into the rhythms of expatriate life, smoking Gauloises, frequenting cafés, and writing fiction. It was in French newspapers that he read of the Hungarian revolt…

While U.S. politics have witnessed any number of distressing trends in recent years, one of the more disturbing is the decline in support among Republicans for free trade. The rise of Donald Trump, who regularly blamed American economic ills on China and trade deals such as the North American Free…

This is a day of mourning for Americans who believe that our politics are broken, who yearn to reach across the aisle, stop the partisan bickering, and eradicate the influence of money, Big Business, the military, corporate media, parochial interests, anti-tax activists, the NRA, the AMA, the CIA,…

In 1986, President Reagan signed the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the New Deal. The law simplified the tax code and substantially reduced individual rates for the second time in Reagan’s presidency—the top rate coming down to 28 percent from 50 percent. When Reagan had appealed for…

Having failed to repeal and replace Obamacare, congressional Republicans have turned their attention to tax reform. Given the disappointing track record of the 115th Congress, a victory on taxes is a political must-win. However, the history of tax reform is mostly one of failure and suggests that…

Tax reform looked like it was in peril. Influential business groups, including real estate agents and homebuilders, opposed it. Lobbyists were working feverishly against it. Opinion polls showed the public was as unenthusiastic as many members of Congress.

In the midst of the current "take a knee" crisis in the NFL and the reaction of fans by lessening their support of pro football, football legend Y.A. Tittle passed away on October 8, 2017. Millions of fans remember his triumphs and gallantry, as player and as coach, especially decades ago when his…

I spoke with Peggy Grande about her new book, The President Will See You Now, a look back at her work as Ronald Reagan’s executive assistant.

In a speech on October 11 promoting his tax-reform plan, Donald Trump spoke rosily of America’s economic revival, crediting himself for having cleared the way for growth. “Since January of this year, we have slashed job-killing red tape all across our economy,” the president said. “We have stopped…

In a speech on October 11 promoting his tax-reform plan, Donald Trump spoke rosily of America’s economic revival, crediting himself for having cleared the way for growth. “Since January of this year, we have slashed job-killing red tape all across our economy,” the president said. “We have stopped…

“The best defense is a good offense,” as the old saw goes. The nature of that “good offense” matters, though. Too often, American officials mistake “any offense” for a “good offense.” As tensions between North Korea and the United States continue to escalate, it is apparent that American…

“When I was in law teaching,” recalled Antonin Scalia in a speech just days before his 1986 nomination to the Supreme Court, “I was fond of doing what is called ‘teaching against the class’—that is, taking positions that the students were almost certain to disagree with, in order to generate some…

As Kim Jong-un’s cavalcade of menace has proceeded across the 2017 calendar, revealing a North Korean arsenal that now includes a hydrogen bomb and missiles capable of reaching New York City and Washington, D.C., America’s strategic posture has been old and familiar (if now more colorfully…

I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed reading a collection of speeches. This may be due to the fact that most or maybe all I’ve read are political, and political speeches, even those authored by literate and capable politicians, lose their significance almost immediately. But perhaps the more important…

If the president’s tax plan is enacted, it will go down in history as the Trump Tax Cut of 2017. And it should, for both the tax reductions and the strategy for enacting them reflect his personal intervention and desires.

As Kim Jong-un’s cavalcade of menace has proceeded across the 2017 calendar, revealing a North Korean arsenal that now includes a hydrogen bomb and missiles capable of reaching New York City and Washington, D.C., America’s strategic posture has been old and familiar (if now more colorfully…

“When I was in law teaching,” recalled Antonin Scalia in a speech just days before his 1986 nomination to the Supreme Court, “I was fond of doing what is called ‘teaching against the class’—that is, taking positions that the students were almost certain to disagree with, in order to generate some…

The last time Republicans advanced a serious plan to overhaul the tax code, Madonna had a No. 1 hit and Back to the Future had just been released on VHS. The new Republican tax plan harkens back to Ronald Reagan’s 1986 reform package, promising a future of stronger growth with less economic…

The forces driving North Korea’s nuclear weapons program are reminiscent of Cold War strategies pursued by the Soviet Union. Most notable was Moscow’s decision in the mid-1970s to deploy 243 SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) with three independently targetable warheads apiece and…

For those of us who wish (or hope) that Donald Trump may ultimately settle into something resembling a conventional president, his ex-chief strategist Stephen Bannon offered a glimmer of encouragement last week.

For those of us who wish (or hope) that Donald Trump may ultimately settle into something resembling a conventional president, his ex-chief strategist Stephen Bannon offered a glimmer of encouragement last week.

Even before the Senate failed to pass a weak health care reform bill in mid-July, congressional Republicans were rationalizing their failure: Health care wasn’t their issue, they reasoned. But tax reform—now there was something they could win with.

Even before the Senate failed to pass a weak health care reform bill in mid-July, congressional Republicans were rationalizing their failure: Health care wasn’t their issue, they reasoned. But tax reform—now there was something they could win with.

ISSUE 5! The American Original, the McLaughlin Group, is back. . . . Or is it? And while John McLaughlin has left the earth, a new pilot episode has just been released with our Washington Examiner colleague Tom Rogan as host. Rogan, a former panelist, considered McLaughlin a mentor . . . but didn't…

As somebody who makes a living, in part, by writing history, I have a confession against interest: I am not a big fan of biographies. My main problem is the constant interruption of narrative flow. Real life moves along multiple tracks simultaneously, but a biographer can only discuss one item at a…

As somebody who makes a living, in part, by writing history, I have a confession against interest: I am not a big fan of biographies. My main problem is the constant interruption of narrative flow. Real life moves along multiple tracks simultaneously, but a biographer can only discuss one item at a…

Fifty years ago today, Ronald Reagan captured the hearts and minds of America's youth. The general view of the late 1960s is that it was a time when drugged-out hippies and anti-war protests took over the country. But there was another concurrent, subculture growing, too: A rising tide of…

President Trump is thinking about dispatching more troops to Afghanistan. Given his past insistence on withdrawing American forces, one might have expected this switcheroo to raise eyebrows in Washington and the media. Yet it hasn't.

There's an old saying that "personnel is policy" in filling the top positions in an administration. More precisely, if you want a policy to be pursued and protected, hire those most committed to it.

Political coalitions are tricky things to manage in the United States. Ours is a country of more than 320 million people but only two major political parties—so each side's voting bloc tends to be unstable at the margins, where national elections are actually won and lost. It is hard to build a…

Political coalitions are tricky things to manage in the United States. Ours is a country of more than 320 million people but only two major political parties—so each side's voting bloc tends to be unstable at the margins, where national elections are actually won and lost. It is hard to build a…

During the vice-presidential debate Tuesday, Virginia senator Tim Kaine likened Hillary Clinton's stance on immigration to Ronald Reagan's 1986 immigration plan, a controversial set of reforms that, rather than cracking down on undocumented workers and heightening border security, was followed by a…

A footnote in a book about Ronald Reagan led Gene Kopelson to drop by the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in the fall of 2012. Kopelson is a physician, not an academically trained historian. But he had begun research on Reagan's presidential run in 1968, a campaign to which historians have…

A footnote in a book about Ronald Reagan led Gene Kopelson to drop by the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in the fall of 2012. Kopelson is a physician, not an academically trained historian. But he had begun research on Reagan's presidential run in 1968, a campaign to which historians have…

"Trump just failed his first foreign policy test," tweeted Hillary Clinton after Donald Trump returned from his meeting with the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto. Actually, the opposite is true: Trump was smart to accept Peña Nieto's invitation to Mexico City, and smarter still to comport…

Jazz musicians, like their colleagues in the other performing arts, are not exactly known for being politically conservative. Hear of a jazz project with political overtones, and you can be forgiven for expecting that it will have a stridently left-wing "message."

Philadelphia

Sunday's Washington Post contained a book review of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, Ph.D. (A good rule of thumb: Be wary of authors who broadcast their academic achievements on the cover of their books.) The review, by Pamela Newkirk, included the following…

When it comes to Hollywood, The Scrapbook is grateful for small favors. And last week we got a very small favor from Hollywood, for which we are suitably grateful.

Following the results of Tuesday's Indiana primary, THE WEEKLY STANDARD received a letter from two readers, addressed to the Republican National Committee. With the writers' permission, that letter is reproduced below:

Ann Coulter recently stated that Ronald Reagan was the last presidential candidate as unpopular as Donald Trump. She claimed to cite a Los Angeles Times poll from March 1980, close to the same period in which the current presidential campaign finds itself. And irrespective of the numbers, Trump…

If there is a more awkward position in American public life than first lady, The Scrapbook is unaware of it. The president’s spouse—and of course, thus far, they've all been women—is elected by no one and enjoys a certain status undefined by any statute. But she is front and center in the press,…

When Ronald Reagan ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, the top issue was the sour economy. Reagan’s solution was a 30 percent, across-the-board cut in individual income tax rates. As nominee, he stuck with the big tax-cut as his main message. And he followed through as…

Soon after Ed Meese was sworn in as attorney general in early 1985, he organized a group within the Justice Department whose purpose was to advise him, and ultimately President Reagan, on who would be the best candidates to select for the Supreme Court, in the event seats opened. There were about…

Readers are well aware of The Scrapbook’s attitude toward PolitiFact, the much-admired "fact-checking" watchdog of American politics run by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida. Under the guise of a journalistic enterprise, PolitiFact is, in truth, a partisan rapid-reaction squad,…

Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Jeff Bell found a lot to like in Donald Trump's tax plan. 

A half-forgotten exchange of letters between two titans of the Republican party, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, contains an urgent lesson for the presidential candidates who will debate at the Reagan Library on Wednesday: Tell the country that you will be the president of all Americans, and…

I've suggested before that 2016 is beginning to look more and more like 1968. This is true in terms of the presidential contests—on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is Eugene McCarthy, Hillary Clinton is Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden will be Hubert Humphrey, and (the big question!) Elizabeth Warren…

At a rally in South Carolina Thursday, Donald Trump attacked Republicans for “copying” his phrase, "make America great again."  

Last week, political pundits began likening Donald Trump, running for the Republican presidential nomination, to an earlier and for many, a beloved president. Trump also has been comparing himself—frequently and favorably—with Ronald Reagan.

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a Republican candidate for president, will address the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, on Monday evening on her foreign policy outlook. In her speech, Fiorina will discuss how as president she would broker a "new deal" with…

The boss marks the D-Day anniversary with Ronald Reagan's words (and more!):

Former Virginia senator Jim Webb said American foreign policy over the last two decades has had a lack of clarity and purpose. But the potential Democratic candidate for president stopped short of directly criticizing former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

According to Miles's Law, "where you stand depends on where you sit." And so when Vice President Joe Biden hyperventilates over Republican senators' criticism of the Obama administration's negotiations with Iran, we must take him with a grain of salt. He used to have a seat in the Senate; now he…

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol, featuring Bill Bennett:

Secretary of State John Kerry, who wrote an op-ed for the Miami Herald along with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, evoked Ronald Reagan's timeless challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall in 1987, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." In reference to…

Craig Shirley, a prominent biographer of Ronald Reagan, has accused historian Rick Perlstein of plagiarism in his new book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. Shirley has cited 45 instances in which he says Perlstein uses information and passages from his 2004 book,…

Last week, Texas governor Rick Perry made that mistake. Sen. Paul responded by mocking Gov. Perry’s new hipster glasses and saying that if the governor remains so stubbornly ignorant, “I’ll make it my personal policy to ignore Rick Perry’s opinions.”

No columnist rivals Matthew Continetti's ability to contrast so starkly the president's exalted self-image with his actual smallness on the world stage. This morning's installment of his weekly Free Beacon column is perhaps the best example yet. While President Obama announces his arrival at coffee…

We've been seeing short clips from President Reagan's address to the nation a few days after Korean Air Lines fight 007 was shot down by the Soviet Union. But it's worth reading the whole text to remember what an eloquent, serious, tough, and thoughtful American president says--and does--in such a…

A lively panel and discussion on Ronald Reagan and today's conservatism, held yesterday at the Heritage Foundation with remarks from the boss, Jonah Goldberg, and Jim Antle:

The White House twice misspelled the name of President Ronald Reagan in an email this evening to reporters. The email was of the president's schedule for tomorrow.

President Obama spoke to the Democrat National Committee's winter meeting in Washington, D.C. on Friday and addressed the minimum wage increase that he recently proposed, comparing it to the minimum wage in Ronald Reagan's time.  According to the White House transcript, and the C-Span video, the…

Arnold Steinberg writes:

The findings of the newly released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll are simply brutal for congressional Republicans. Not only are they getting the lion's share of the blame for the government shutdown, but President Obama's numbers have actually improved. Worse, Obamacare's numbers are improving,…

Seventy years ago today, Winston Churchill received an honorary degree from Harvard University and addressed its faculty and students in the university’s largest room, Sanders Theater.

Today, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, President Obama paid appropriate tribute to the brave East Germans who rebelled 60 years ago against Communist dictatorship:

Just as the wrecking ball was poised to swing at President Reagan’s home on Chicago’s South Side, where he lived when he was 3-4 and survived near-fatal pneumonia, President Barack Obama put brain research in the national spotlight.

Barack Obama's administration will not be sending any sitting American politicians to attend funeral services for the former U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The Guardian reports:

And now the last of them is gone. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II—three who won the Cold War and, it isn't too much to say, saved the West (at least for a while!)—are no longer with us. Their examples remain.

At the New Republic, Jonathan Cohn writes,“Paul Ryan has released his new budget proposal, ‘The Path to Prosperity.’ It looks almost exactly like his old budget proposal.” Cohn continues, “That tells us a lot about Ryan’s priorities — and how little interest he and his allies have in moderating…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Fred Barnes hosted by Michael Graham:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Robert H. Bork, a superb legal scholar, principled public servant, fine judge, and important social critic—withal, a great American—died early this morning from heart complications. He was 84.

I received an email yesterday from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, Ill.) that he's given me permission to post, as I thought it would be of interest to our readers. Here it is:

Charlotte Allen writes:

Naturally, there has been plenty of talk this week about who won the debate. As I mentioned in my own recap, I thought that though Obama won more “points,” Romney did a better job advancing his argument for election.

I've been wary of comparisons of this year's presidential race with that of 1980. I'd love it if the comparison holds, but have been worried 1) that the conditions aren't the same as in 1980 in all kinds of ways, and 2) that over-confidence the race will inevitably break to Romney at the end, as…

When Republican strategists like Karl Rove cite 1980 as a model for this year’s election, they usually have in mind two main elements: Ronald Reagan’s question in the late October presidential debate about whether voters felt better off than four years earlier, when they elected Jimmy Carter, and…

Here are the prepared remarks of Newt and Callista Gingrich, which will be delivered together after the Ronald Reagan tribute at the Republican convention: 

Today brings us a Bloomberg column from Michael Tackett, "Hero Reagan’s Compromise Would Collide With Tea Party Certitude." It's rather unfortunate this particular talking point keeps making the rounds, as it requires arguing alternate history. Further, asserting that Ronald Reagan is significantly…

If there's one thing we've learned after nearly a week on THE WEEKLY STANDARD cruise, it's this: Jimmy Carter was the best thing that could have happened to modern conservatism.

The boss yesterday wrote a post yesterday saying that, contrary to certain things others were saying, President Ronald Reagan did not neglect national security:

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Mitt Romney is recounting a Jim Baker anecdote in which President Reagan ordered Baker, as White House chief of staff, to hold no national security meetings over a hundred day period early in his first term so that President Reagan and his team could…

On the day that the Supreme Court released its Obamacare ruling, my daughter and I had the opportunity to visit the Reagan Ranch. Located in the mountains in the Central Coast region of California, the ranch is where President Reagan spent nearly one out of every eight days of his presidency. As…

Vice President Joe Biden had this to say today about whether there's a "depression" in America: 

When I interviewed President Reagan in the Oval Office in 1987, I took with me a photograph of him with two dozen women at the Presidio of Monterey in California 50 years earlier. My mother, the presidio commander’s daughter, was one of the women. I wanted Reagan to autograph the photograph, and he…

Victor Fiorillo reports for Phillymag.com: 

Yesterday, I noted that we have generally had our strongest periods of economic growth coming out of our deepest recessions, and I compared FDR and Obama in this vein.  Another good comparison is a more recent one — between Obama and President Reagan.

Today's the twenty-five year anniversary of Ronald Reagan's powerful Brandenburg Gate address in Berlin, Germany. Watch here:

Mitt Romney, with his wife Ann, met this afternoon in Los Angeles with former first lady Nancy Reagan to receive her endorsement. "Mitt and Ann Romney joined me at my home this afternoon for some lemonade and cookies and I offered my firm endorsement of his campaign for President," Reagan says in a…

The general view about last night's debate is that Rick Santorum didn't do well. Rich Lowry put it best: Santorum spent too much time "explaining why he voted for things he opposed (NCLB, Title X)," got "tangled up in his Senate record," and was in general "too defensive, too insider, too…

There's one mention of Newt Gingrich in The Reagan Diaries. It's in Chapter 3, which covers 1983. Page 123 in the book:

Writing at National Review Online, Elliott Abrams explains Newt Gingrich’s Ronald Reagan problem:

The Obama administration is using an internal budgetary review of the Department of Defense as cover to undertake what amounts to an off-schedule Nuclear Posture Review—one that ices out Defense and State Department experts usually consulted on nuclear issues. It is also beginning a new round of…

During Tuesday night’s national security debate on CNN, Newt Gingrich said he was “prepared to take the heat” for his position that immigration laws ought to be enforced “humanely” in order to avoid unnecessarily breaking up families.

John Podhoretz calls Chris Christie's speech last night at the Ronald Reagan Library a "brilliant performance." And one questioner last night said, "I've been listening to you tonight. You're a very powerful and eloquent speaker. You know how to tell the American people what they need to hear." The…

New Jersey governor Chris Christie delivered the following address this evening at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California:

Texas congressman Ron Paul is out with a new ad attacking Texas governor Rick Perry for his support of Al Gore in the 1988 presidential election, when Perry was still a registered Democrat. Watch the ad below:

Full marks to Jay Cost for his deft evisceration of Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman, and their resurrection of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a liberal Democrat. What Fineman and Matthews don't know about American history could fill a book—and in each instance, has done so.

What would President Reagan do in the debt limit battle? That’s unknowable, but we do know what his goal would be: get the best deal possible under the circumstances. Reagan never let the perfect or the unattainable keep him from achieving the good.

"U.S. Officials Behind 'Fast and Furious' Gun Sales Should Be Tried in Mexico, Lawmaker Says"

"Global race on to match U.S. drone capabilities"

In a new documentary, John Lennon's last personal assistant, Fred Seaman, reveals that by the end of his life the Beatles star was in fact a closet Reaganite, according to contactmusic.com. If true, this would indicate quite an astonishing political conversion: 

"House to vote on authorizing or ending Libya mission"

Conservatives searching for a foreign policy (think skittishness on winning the war in Afghanistan) should take note of President Ronald Reagan's approach, as Jennifer Rubin reminds us:

Conservatives searching for a foreign policy (think skittishness on winning the war in Afghanistan) should take note of President Ronald Reagan's approach, as Jennifer Rubin reminds us:

Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Jimmy Carter in 1980, and the subsequent rapid American recovery at home and abroad, didn’t come out of the blue. There were plenty of signs before Election Day 1980 that such a reversal and triumph were possible:

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s First Read posed this question:

Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced his plans to run for reelection in 2012, 582 days before Election Day and before most major Republican opponents officially announced that they'd be entering the race. This is the earliest any incumbent president has officially signed up to run again.

James Pethokoukis says that Paul Ryan's budget finishes what Ronald Reagan started in the 1980s:

The independent-minded and always-interesting thinker John D. Mueller has a fascinating post over at The Gold Standard Now. In his study of history, Mueller has noticed that before major shifts in party alignment, large numbers of voters become "detached" from their previous affiliations and…

The Reagan Centennial having come and gone, we may detect certain trends in current Reaganology. One, exemplified by the new HBO documentary (Reagan) directed by Eugene Jarecki, is that Reagan was not conservative at all—a myth perpetrated by right-wingers, according to Jarecki, who have sought “to…

The debate about Ronald Reagan has never shown any sign of ending, but it is less and less about whether his presidency was consequential. As has happened with a few other high-impact presidencies​—​see historian Merrill Peterson’s classic The Jeffersonian Image in the American Mind​—​the debate…

Natan Sharansky shared his memories of Ronald Reagan with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, after the former president died, in 2004:

Scrambling for a simple standard to measure events in Egypt and across the Arab world, the blogosphere and the airwaves have been full of references to 1979. That point of reference is probably more apt than imagined, for much more happened that year than just the Iranian revolution. It was also…

Palo Alto

Ben Smith writes of Marco Rubio's closing ad:

Throughout American history, citizens have been duped. It’s a word as old as the republic itself. George Washington, in his “Farewell Address,” warned about “dupes”—that is, those who, unwittingly, allow themselves to be deceived or misled by active adversaries of the United States.

1. Desperately Seeking Strawmen.  One of President Obama’s chief rhetorical tricks since he was inaugurated has been to attack strawmen, tendentiously drawn caricatures against whom Obama can contrast himself.  Usually, the president does this to create the false impression that he is a centrist –…

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