A child of the 'Reagan revolution' grateful for inheritance

Ronald Reagan's death has a special significance for those of us who were the children of the "Reagan revolution." In early 1987, I joined the Reagan White House as a senior domestic policy analyst. I was part of a generation of young conservatives drawn to Washington in the 1980s, inspired by Mr. Reagan and the idea of America that he espoused.

What we found new about Reagan was his bold and optimistic challenge to collectivism. Collectivism was the great idea of the 20th century, and opposition to it was the unifying element of Reagan's thought.

Soviet socialism, what Reagan called the "Evil Empire," was only the most grotesque example of collectivism taken to its extreme limit.

At home, Reagan was equally fierce in resisting the expansion of the welfare state. With typical aplomb, he announced that "government is not the solution, government is the problem."

I had come to Washington initially as a journalist, writing articles about the Reagan revolution. But by the time I joined the White House, I must confess that my enthusiasm about Reagan was waning. Reagan had been in office for six years, and little had changed. He spoke about cutting the size of government, but government was bigger than ever. The Soviet bear remained on the prowl, without suffering a single major defeat at Reagan's hands.

Moreover, Reagan seemed a poor administrator. The Iran-contra scandal had erupted in late 1986, and chaos abounded in the White House. No one appeared to be in charge.

The president struck me, and many of my colleagues, as somewhat detached from the everyday responsibilities of high office. Many of us continued to believe the things he said; we just didn't think he would do them. We were genuinely fond of Reagan, but we worried that he was not a very effective leader, certainly not the revolutionary he once seemed to be.

Now, with more than 15 years of hindsight, I realize how wrong I was. Reagan badly bungled the Iran affair, but his original motive in selling arms to Iran was to bring American hostages home, so people eventually forgave him, and Iran-contra quickly became a historical footnote.

While many people - both critics and supporters - were obsessed with minutiae, such as whether this Labor Department regulation should be continued, or whether that tax loophole should be closed, Reagan over his two terms somehow managed to keep focused on the big issues, and he brought about massive changes that came to full fruition only after he had left office.

I remember sitting in the Old Executive Office Building with other White House staffers in 1987 watching Reagan on television deliver his address in Berlin before the Brandenburg Gate: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

And we cheered the old boy and marveled at his rhetoric - a bit hyperbolic, perhaps, but those were words that needed to be said.

Which of us knew then, though, that only two years later, the Berlin Wall would come crashing down? No one.

The event simply seemed too large, too momentous, to contemplate. So nobody expected it, and nobody predicted it. Except Reagan.

Early in his presidency Reagan repeatedly said that the death of Soviet communism was imminent. In 1981 he said at the University of Notre Dame, "The West will not contain Communism. It will transcend Communism. It will dismiss it as a bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written."

At the time, there was virtual unanimity across the political spectrum that the Soviet empire was permanent. Reagan's top Soviet advisers were part of that consensus. Reagan was almost unique in the Western world in seeing the fragility at the heart of the Soviet system.

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