This Presidents Day, A Lesson In Greatness

IBD Editorials ^ | February 18, 2011 | MICHAEL RAMIREZ

[Kaslin]

Presidents Day is a good time to reflect both on the accomplishments of presidents past and on the lessons of history.

It's also a time to honor our truly great presidents: George Washington, the father of our country; Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator; and Ronald Reagan, the great communicator.

Reagan, the greatest president of modern times, provides all of us a lesson in presidential leadership. True, it was his oratorical skill that made Reagan such a potent force. But it was his ideas and his unwavering belief in America's greatness that made him great.

Take America's Cold War with the USSR. On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan declared the Soviet Union "an evil empire."

The reaction was immediate. A blanket of condemnation rose from political pundits and the mainstream media. Critics and conventional wisdom called Reagan's remarks "unpresidential," an abrogation of diplomacy.

They characterized him as "a doddering old man barely in charge of his mental faculties, who was unaware of what he was saying." And worse.

But the reaction was different in another part of the world. In the most remote part of Siberia, deep in a Soviet gulag, in a dark, damp and dingy cell, a political prisoner quietly whispered between the iron bars of his cell, "Ronald Reagan has just called the Soviet Union the evil empire."

Yes, words have meaning.

[Kaslin]

Excellent column by the IBD cartoonist

[thatdewd]

Most excellent. Most Excellent, INDEED.

[Jacquerie]

[SunkenCiv]

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[Pharmboy]

It is of interest to note that the senility accusation made about Reagan was an echo of the same accusation made about Washington almost 200 years before. And, it was Jefferson who was a major promoter of that false rumor (to this day Washingtonians like myself do not have any love lost for TJ because of this and some other issues).