How was bush different from Reagan?

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A funny thing happened to Ronald Reagan on the way to his place in

history. At the three-quarter point, he made a sharp left turn,

then another, and ended his journey going in the opposite direction

from his start. Initially, he was headed towards the title of the

toughest Cold War president of all. His rhetoric was bellicose in

the extreme, as "evil empire" replaced detente. When martial law

descended on Poland, Reagan tried to organize an economic blockade

of the Soviet Union. On the military front, he launched the

greatest arms race in history, topped by the single most expensive

weapons system ever undertaken.

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But history will remember Reagan as the first Cold War president to

preside over eight years of unbroken peace, the first to reach an

arms reduction accord with the Soviets, and the American president

who helped make it possible for Mikhail Gorbachev to begin the

process of restructuring Soviet society.

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Historians will also stress the gap between Reagan's domestic goals

and his accomplishments. Most obvious is the deficit; what he

promised to eliminate he has allowed to swell beyond comprehension.

On the social agenda, abortion remains legal, prayer in the schools

illegal. Reagan's failure in the war against drugs and related

crime activities is so great that drugs were the number one issue

in the 1988 presidential campaign.

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Nevertheless, Reagan will be remembered as the president who

reversed the decades-old flow of power to Washington. By

dismantling some federal programs, and reducing others, he forced

the states and the cities to assume more responsibility for running

their own shows. If he failed to break the Democratic hold on

Congress, he did force the Democratic Party to move to the

right.

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When Reagan entered politics 22 years ago virtually every Democrat

outside Dixie identified himself, proudly, as a liberal; today, in

large part because of Reagan, almost every Democrat in the nation

tries to call himself a conservative.