The Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone writes:
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… As with Roosevelt and Eisenhower, an electorate that had experienced depression and war gave a landslide endorsement to a president who seemed to produce peace and prosperity. It’s not clear that this can happen again, in a nation where universal media have been replaced by niche media and the language of universal media is no longer accessible to any political figure.
Reagan recognized that himself in his farewell speech nine days before he left office. He called for “an informed patriotism,” which he said older Americans had gotten from their families, neighborhoods, schools, “from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio.” Or, he continued, “if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties. But now we’re about the enter the nineties and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.”
The trends that Reagan described and lamented 25 years ago have only continued. Aspiring Republican politicians may claim Reagan’s mantle, but in today’s America even Ronald Reagan could not be Reagan. He was, like every political leader, a man of his times. His inborn optimism was strengthened by his dazzling success in pulling the country out of economic doldrums and his patriotism was reinforced by the unity of a nation mobilized for total war.
Read the rest over at the Washington Examiner.
