Gaining Ground: The Reagan Legacy
By Horace Cooper
July 6, 2004

"It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people." Radical at the time, these words by President Reagan set the tone for his administration.

Leadership requires transformation. Ronald Reagan's presidency meets that definition as his presidency represents the most abrupt shift in American philosophy in the 20th century since FDR. Most Americans recognize the significance of Ronald Reagan's transformational leadership particularly on issues involving international and economic affairs.

But greater attention should be placed on the sea change in policy direction that his two terms as President wrought on issues involving social policy. While controversial at the time, today many of these policies we now take for granted owe their creation or "rediscovery" to Ronald Reagan. Recognizing that "government was not the solution" but that it was in fact the problem, President Reagan shook the sacred cows in education, welfare and other poverty programs.

While it seems self evident, this consensus view readily accepted today wasn't always so. Few may recall that things were headed in an entirely different direction before Mr. Reagan's election in 1980. Certainly, the Iran Hostage crisis was at the forefront of many voters' minds, but also the malaise embraced by Jimmy Carter caused many to sense that all was not right. Crime was rising. Education scores were falling. And poverty programs continued their 20 year long expansion taking a steadily increasing share of the federal budget all the while poverty, family dissolution and societal decay continued unabated.

In the spring of that year, Charles Murray published "Losing Ground" a devastating indictment of American social policy - in particular the war on poverty. Murray's well thought out arguments transformed the debate about poverty programs by showing that not only were the Great Society programs riddled with abuse, but even beyond this, they not only didn't actually help those in need. And arguably they made the plight of the poor worse. But without Ronald Reagan to trumpet this critique the book would have just gathered dust in libraries.

At the time Reagan was accused of race-baiting and worse with his frequently mentioned Chicago Welfare Queen story. But today rather than focus on the minutiae of how much fraud is actually committed by welfare recipients, a consensus has developed which is even stricter than that of Senator Moynihan the early critic of welfare. Now it's understood that unlimited payments hurt the individual more than they help and that exiting the workforce is harmful and should be avoided at all costs.

Today both political parties understand that incentives matter. Testing teachers and setting educational accountability standards is so widely accepted that President Bush's chief sponsor of his education package was liberal Democrat Ted Kennedy. Time limits for welfare assistance was both a GOP Contract with America agenda item and a signature achievement of "new Democrat" Bill Clinton. Today, Democrats know that the "era of big government is over" and that their national nominee can neither embrace drug legalization or abolition of capital punishment

And it isn't just the Washington establishment that has been reshaped. The American people accepted these changes with enthusiasm. In 1980 Americans, contributed around $65 billion (as measured in 1990 dollars) to charity. By 1990 they were giving more than $100 billion annually, a real increase of 54%. The average American, who gave $350 in charity in 1980, raised his or her contribution to nearly $500 by 1990.

Fewer people today use food stamp programs or receive welfare assistance even as our population approaches 300 million. Axiomatically America knows that larger and more complicated social schemes are unlikely to solve homelessness, poverty and mal-education. But until Reagan declared war on big government the march of government based solutions continued unabated.

Reagan's vision was right on crime too. Many were appalled when the Reagan administration announced their plans to de-emphasize rehabilitation in prison and to instead focus on punishment alone. Along with a dramatic rise in the prison population, the Reagan era's tough law and order measures have yielded a sizeable reduction in crime in America's cities and urban areas. And crime continues a 20 year long drop. In yet another reversal, the Ronald Reagan policies of accountability and punishment have steadily supplanted "education" and therapy programs.

Ronald Reagan's legacies are many, and while the defeat of communism is arguably his signature achievement, single-handedly reversing America's dangerous flirtation with untested social schemes ranks a close second.

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Horace Cooper writes a regular political analysis column for United Press International and GOPUSA.com. He was praised as a key Republican strategist in Elizabeth Drew's New York Times bestseller "Showdown: The Struggle Between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House" and extolled as a "poster conservative" by Michele Mitchell in "A New Kind of Party Animal."

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.