I’ve often written that the modern Republican party’s obsession with Ronald Reagan obscures as much as it illuminates. The deification of the Gipper isn’t a great substitute for addressing the particular problems the party – and the United States – faces today. Asking “What would Reagan do?” can’t provide the answers to every issue.
Nevertheless, there’s at least one aspect of Reagan’s career that all political parties might bear in mind: his generosity of spirit and, correspondingly, the empathy he felt, genuinely I believe, for people whose circumstances were very different from his own. Among those people, whose dreams and aspirations and needs he understood, so my thanks to Kerry Howley for reminding me that Reagan actually supported a kind of North American Union that would go rather further than the NAFTA treaty Bill Clinton would eventually sign.
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