Former N.C. History Project Headliner Wilfred McClay writes in the latest hard-copy version of National Review (NRDT) that Reagan understood “the fact that the American dream is in some respects a thoroughly romantic and liberating one.”
It was part of the political genius of Ronald Reagan that, rather than disdaining these romantic impulses of American life, he embraced them warmly, and made them his own. By incorporating them into American conservatism, he provided exactly the countervailing elements and defining horizons that those impulses so badly needed — and endowed conservatism with an elan and vigor that had formerly been liberalism’s province. Conservatives may have winced whenever Reagan quoted Thomas Paine; but he knew exactly what he was doing. He understood that respect for the American dream had to be part of American conservatism, and vice versa. This is why he remains such a signal figure.
