A Time To Choose: Reagan or Vance?

Where should the Republican Party go from here after its defeat on November 4? The stakes in getting the answer right could not be higher. Vice President Vance has emerged as a veritable anti-Reagan, calling for a repudiation of the first principles of Reagan’s grand legacy. Start with what it means to be an American. President Reagan grounded his understanding in the Declaration of Independence, which he quoted more frequently than any other president. “Anyone, from any corner of the world can come to America and become an American.” Reagan believed that America is a creedal nation, embodying equality, inalienable rights, and the right of self- government.Mr. Vance rejects that, arguing that Americans whose ancestors fought in the Civil War — including on the Southern side defending slavery — “have a hell of a lot more claim over America” than other Americans. Reagan supported legal immigration and assimilation. Mr. Vance advocates keeping low the numbers of even legal immigrants wishing to assimilate. Mr. Vance disagrees with Reagan on economics. Reagan championed limited government and the free market. He revered Milton Friedman, whom he draped with the Medal of Freedom in 1988. Reagan believed ardently in free trade as a strong presumption, except with our moral enemies such as the Soviet Union. Reagan imposed tariffs on America’s allies only as a last and temporary resort. By contrast, Mr. Vance opposes Friedman. Mr. Vance embraces big-government economic populism and the aggressive use of tariffs, making no distinction between geopolitical friends and foes. Few contrasts between Mr. Vance and Reagan are of greater consequence than their conflicting views about America’s role in the world. Reagan’s conservative internationalism never wavered. He considered it vital for the United States to maintain military, political, and economic preponderance, with like-minded allies that could supplement but not substitute for American power.As Reagan saw it, the United States needed forward positions on the Eurasian rimlands to maintain a favorable imbalance of power against hegemonic threats in Eurasia he deemed perilous to freedom and America First, but not America Alone.Reagan never would have abandoned Ukraine, a free people heroically resisting Russian aggression, neither for moral nor strategic reasons. Reagan, in his memoir, warned of the consequences for the United States and the world should a revolutionary and hostile Iran ever get nuclear weapons. Mr. Vance has emerged as a neo-isolationist who would abandon Eurasia to its own devices in the event of hegemonic threats, such as the People’s Republic of China intent on displacing the United States as the world’s pre-eminent power. He would have the United States revert to its pre-1939 definition of its strategic perimeter as encompassing the Western Hemisphere alone.Running for Senate, the future vice president said, “I don’t really care about what happens Ukraine one way or the other.” Blaming the Iran War for the disaster of the midterm elections for Republicans, the vice president advocates a diplomatic rather than military resolution of the conflict. The memorandum of understanding he negotiated and which Iran serially violated echoed Iran’s talking points. No contrast between Mr. Vance or Reagan is starker than their views about antisemitism and Israel. Reagan practiced and preached an abhorrence of antisemitism in any guise. He frequently denounced appeasement of Hitler as a suicidal dogma. Reagan said of World War II that “never in the history of man had the issue of right and wrong been so clearly defined, so much so that it makes one question how anyone could be neutral.”Reagan hailed Winston Churchill, archenemy of isolationism and appeasement, “for doing more than any other man to preserve civilization during its greatest style.” On the issue of the American relationship with Israel, Reagan wrote in his memoirs:“I have believed many things in my life, but no conviction I have held has been stronger than my belief that the United States must ensure the survival of Israel. The Holocaust, I believe, left America with moral responsibility to ensure that what happened to the Jews under Hitler must never happen again.”The vice president does not share Reagan’s admiration for Churchill or Israel, which Reagan also respected as a decent democratic ally ready, willing, and able to fight for their freedom in its interest as well as ours. The vice president has refused to condemn bloggers who, masquerading as historians, blame Churchill rather than Hitler in World War II.The vice president’s anti-Israel animus has mounted as the war in Iran has become more controversial. He warned Israelis and other Americans to keep quiet when they criticized the memorandum of understanding he was negotiating with Iran. He went on to insinuate that there was a coordinated effort by elements within the Israeli government to continue the war, a charge that Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Intelligence committee, dismissed.Since the midterm elections, Mr. Vance has descended to new lows, blaming Republican losses on our relationship with Israel, despite evidence that 80 percent of voters considered American support of the Jewish States just about right, with 16 percent of that cohort advocating even more support.Mr. Vance’s insinuation that Israel and Jews are to blame has a whiff of Charles Lindbergh’s speech in 1941 at Ames, Iowa, where he warned Jews of dire consequences if they “dragged” the United States into World War II. No doubt, too, Reagan, a man of deep convictions but also magnanimity, goodwill, humor, and civility, would have shuddered at the vice president’s ruthlessness as a campaigner. Republican voters will have to decide which vision of America they reckon is most consistent with our ideals and self-interests, Ronald Reagan’s or JD Vance’s. Will Mr. Vance’s 1930’s views make us safer and more prosperous at less cost or risk in a world of gathering dangers? Or is it the reverse? Is Reagan 2.0 the most prudent set of first principles to ensure that America’s best days lay ahead rather than behind us?Reagan, in his farewell address, warned that all of his great accomplishments would vanish into the ether if we forgot our heroes and how they won our freedom in the first place.

A Time To Choose: Reagan or Vance?

A Time To Choose: Reagan or Vance?

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