As Republican activists start contemplating which candidate they will support for 2012, expect to hear more complaints about how there’s no Ronald Reagan. Such despair and longing is misplaced.
Why? Reagan was not uniformly embraced by conservatives even during his tenure in office, so there’s a danger of putting on some rose-colored glasses before looking into the rear-view mirror.
For another thing, the world is a different place now, meaning it’s possible to mis-apply the lessons of Reagan.
Biography counts for something, too, and nobody in the field (or potentially in the field) has Reagan’s biography. Herman Cain’s time in talk radio serves as a rough approximation of Reagan’s time stumping the country for free-market principles as an employee of GE (and how GE has changed!). But unlike candidate Reagan, candidate Cain has never been governor, nor even, that I know of, held any elective office.
First published by the Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=2335