Country First - A Forgotten Campaign Message

In 2008, John McCain ran for President with the slogan "Country First". It seemed to be a call for politicians to put the interests of the nation ahead of partisan party politics. Barack Obama ran on the slogan of "Hope and Change" and "Change You Can Believe In". That slogan seemed vague enough to mean whatever type of "change" the voters thought was needed. I would "hope" that many who voted for either candidate wanted to avoid the type of partisan bickering that we are all witnessing now in the on-going debate about how to raise the federal debt ceiling that the Treasury Secretary has told us will be reached early next week.

It appears that there is no one putting the "country first" in trying to reach an agreement on the debt ceiling. I just received an e-mail from Jim Webb, one of my two Democratic US Senators from Virginia, in which he describes the calamity that the nation faces if no debt ceiling increase is enacted in time. Here is part of what Senator Webb says:

"Our nation, as we all know, faces a looming crisis.

The markets have already warned us. Businesses are already postponing investments. We know the consequences of inaction; they are predictable: Borrowing costs for businesses and individuals will escalate. Interest payments on the debt will grow, and already anemic job growth will decline. Our nation will run the risk of another financial catastrophe and possibly a return to recession.

As [Federal Reserve] Chairman Bernanke recently stated, the outcome would be 'calamitous.' Many Americans are struggling. Far too many remain out of work. They cannot be asked to absorb the shockwaves of yet another failure to act. It is time for both sides and both chambers to find common ground."

The statements made by Senator Webb echo similar statements made by President Obama and other members of Congress over the past several weeks. The key point here is that "we know the consequences of inaction". And this has been known for months. So why is Congress and the White House still trying to find "common ground" just days before the ceiling is reached? I suggest that it is due to the failure of most Washington politicians to put the "country first" and instead to engage in playing unproductive political games that put their party first.

The House of Representatives will be voting soon on a second bill to raise the debt ceiling. The first bill the House passed a couple of weeks ago was tabled in the Senate because the Senate's Democratic leaders objected to the ambitious scope of the bill, which included a requirement that Congress approve a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the Constitution before passing a debt ceiling increase. This ambitious legislative approach was the product of the conservative shift in the balance of power in the House after the Fall 2010 election that swept many Tea Party backed candidates into office.

This extreme conservative wing of the Republican Party in Congress (represented by the newly elected Tea Party backed members) is putting its political philosophy first, even to the detriment of the Republican leaders in Congress (who are working to resolve the oft-described crisis), since the new conservative members continue to insist on forcing the Senate to vote on the BBA bill. On the floor of Senate yesterday, Senator McCain tried to explain to these idealistic right-wing newcomers how impractical that objective is in the Democratic controlled Senate:

“What is really amazing about this is that some members are believing that we can pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution in this body with its present representation — and that is foolish.”

McCain is still trying to put the "country first" by seeking a solution to the debt ceiling crisis that has a realistic chance of passing the two bodies of Congress, which has the House controlled by Republicans and the Senate controlled by Democrats. Due to this split in power in Congress, President Obama has been emphasizing the need for compromise in his frequent statements on the process to pass a debt ceiling increase. The difference is that Obama won the 2008 Presidential election and, as the current President, he has more influence on the process than McCain does and Obama needs to do more than just complain about the lack of compromise.

Obama needs to lead the members of Congress toward a "common ground" solution. Instead the White House has indicated that Obama would veto the bill scheduled to be voted on in the House soon, and the Democrats' Senate Leader, Harry Reid, has made it clear he will assure that the second House bill to resolve the crisis will be blocked again in the Senate because no Democrat in the Senate will vote for the House bill.

So after numerous press conferences and public speeches by the President warning the country of the severe consequences of failing to increase the debt ceiling, the Democrats, including my state's Senator Webb, who just told me that "[o]ur nation ... faces a looming crisis", have offered nothing but roadblocks to the Republican House's legislative attempts to address the crisis. And the President has offered no proposal on a compromise to reach a solution to the crisis he has so eloquently described over and over again.

It seems that there are a lot of public servants in Washington who need to be reminded to put the COUNTRY FIRST.

UPDATE: On Friday, the US House passed its second bill to raise the debt ceiling. However, to get enough votes from the more conservative Republican members to pass the bill, Speaker John Boehner had to add another BBA provision. This revision reduces even more the likelihood of passage in the Senate, as Senator McCain warned. Even the White House quickly issued this statement: "This bill has been declared dead on arrival in the Senate."

In addition, President Obama stated this: "The time for putting party first is over. It’s time to step up and show the leadership the American people expect."

Unfortunately, the President wants Congress to provide the compromise solution and seems to be sitting on the sidelines complaining about the lack of bi-partisanship. He's the President. Obama should show "the leadership the American people expect".

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American Pride

This has been quite a week to celebrate our country's achievements and heritage. The week started with the 4th of July holiday and its commemoration of our Founding Fathers' Declaration of Independence from the the rule of the King of England in 1776. At the end of the week, the Space Shuttle Atlantis began its final journey to the International Space Station. Between the events that began in 1776 and the final leg of the Space Shuttle program (which will come to an end after Atlantis completes its mission), the US has accomplished much of which all Americans can be proud.

This unique feeling of pride in our country hit me a few weeks ago when I went to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum for my most recent visit to that Museum. Take a look at this photo of some of the historic displays in the Museum's atrium at its entrance.

Hanging from the ceiling on the left is the Spirit of St. Louis airplane that Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. That was the first solo flight by man across the ocean from one continent to another. Lindbergh's flight took place just 24 years after the Wright Brothers accomplished the first successful flight of a manned aircraft in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Those two events marked the beginning of air travel that people all around the world take for granted today. It started in the US.

Below Lindbergh's plane in the photo above is the Apollo 11 Command module used in the first landing of humans on the moon in 1969. This NASA mission took place just 42 years after Lindbergh's flight and was followed by five more successful manned moon landings carried out by the US space agency and its outstanding astronauts.

With the end of the Space Shuttle program coming soon, NASA is working on a new type of spacecraft to replace it, but, in the meantime, the US for the first time in history will have to rely on another country, Russia, to take its astronauts to the Space Station when needed. It is encouraging that the US and Russia have reached a point in their relations that such cooperative missions can be carried out to pursue mankind's exploration of the universe.

Private enterprise is also now positioned to play a larger role in future space travel. The space vehicle hanging to the right of the Spirit of St. Louis is SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded spaceplane to complete a manned space flight. This historic spaceplane was flown by the first commercially licensed space pilot (Mike Melvill) in 2004.... just a few months after the centennial of the Wright Brothers' first flight. The SpaceShipOne flight started at the first facility in the US licensed for commercial space flights by the FAA: the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California.

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group has entered into a joint venture with the company (Scaled Composites founded by Burt Rutan and financed by Paul Allen) that developed SpaceShipOne to create a spaceliner for commercial flights. The new joint venture is called Virgin Galactic and is likely to fly from Mojave Air and Space Port.

While air and space travel is now very much an international endeavor (much as Gene Roddenberry envisioned in the Star Trek series decades ago), Americans have played a major role in the progress to this point in history. Americans have made these major contributions to air and space travel through both personal inspiration, skill, perseverance and financial support, such as the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Burt Rutan and Paul Allen have done, and through US government and military contributions, most notably demonstrated in the NASA missions over the past fifty years.

Now look at this photo from space of London at night and think about the American ingenuity and genius that contributed to the lights that can be seen from Space Shuttles and the International Space Station.

Thomas Edison, a man who demonstrates the unique quality and character of those who pursue the American Dream, worked for years to develop a successful practical light bulb, and then developed the electric utility systems (generating stations, community wiring and lighting installations) that led to the creation of the Edison electric utility companies around the country that we all take for granted whenever we flip a light switch.

Many inventors around the world had been working to develop a durable light bulb for most of the 19th Century. And even though an Englishman (Sir Joseph Swan) actually invented a light bulb that became the first type installed throughout an entire public building (the Savoy Theater in London when it opened in 1881), Edison's genius went beyond the light bulb itself to creating the companies that built the infrastructure to allow whole cities to be lit up at night.

Although Swan formed his own company in England to sell his light bulbs, by 1883, Edison and Swan merged their companies to manufacture light bulbs for sale in the UK. After Edison founded General Electric in 1890, GE worked or competed with other electrical generation companies around the world through the early years of the 20th Century that resulted in the global daily use of electricity for, not only artificial light, but also a multitude of other electrically powered devices, including appliances, medical equipment, machinery and the modern versions of other Edison inventions (such as the phonograph, sound recording devices and motion picture equipment). The benefits to mankind are countless.

What other country in the world could be the home of so many transformative pioneers, such as the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison, who had the freedom, intellectual insight and entrepreneurial spirit to develop their ideas into working products that grew into major new industries that changed the way men, women and children around the globe live, work and play in their daily lives?

The system of government that resulted from the Revolution started on July 4, 1776 has certainly created a place that can inspire great dreams and accomplishments. It's something for which all Americans can be proud, including immigrants who move to America and become US citizens in order to pursue their own dreams, just as pioneer commercial astronaut Mike Melvill from South Africa did before he flew SpaceShipOne over the Mojave desert.

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Liberal Hypocrisy Spoils the Call for Unity

When President Obama announced the successful mission by an elite team of Navy SEALs to raid the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in which Osama bin Laden had been in hiding for about five years, he said:

"Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work, nor know their names. But tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.

We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day....

And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people...."

It is too bad that these words of praise for our intelligence and military professionals and the call for a return to the post-9/11 sense of national unity is not recognized and acted on by the liberal media or even the Obama Administration as the week of the post-bin Laden world proceeds.

It has been recognized by many in and out of the Administration that the intelligence gathered to compile the information that led to pinpointing bin Laden's hideaway included information obtained during the Bush Administration through enhanced interrogation that the current President and others of his party have called "torture".

In an interview with Brian Williams on NBC News early this week Obama's CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was put in charge of the mission to get bin Laden by Obama, said of the information used to locate bin Laden:

".... in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here… It's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got… I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees..."

Yet even though the President praised the intelligence work that helped the successful outcome of the mission that eliminated the most wanted terrorist on Earth and the CIA Director admitted that enhanced interrogation helped identify the al Qaeda leader's location, the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, continues an investigation of the CIA operatives (who carried out the helpful interrogation techniques) to determine whether there were any violations of law in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. When Obama visited Ground Zero yesterday to meet with the families of the 9/11 victims, the sister of one of the airline pilots whose hijacked airliner was flown into the Twin Towers, asked the President if he would give Holder any new views on the appropriateness of the CIA interrogation investigation. Obama answered "No" and walked away.

One of the detainees who gave information that helped identify the al Qaeda courier who lived at the walled compound where bin Laden had been hiding for years was Hassan Ghul, who was captured in Iraq in 2004. Obama has criticized the war in Iraq as being unnecessary in the war against al Qaeda; yet without that war, this critical piece of information from Hassan Ghul may not have been obtained. As many in the White House team involved in planning the mission to terminate bin Laden's life have stated, the intelligence obtained and used to locate the terrorist mastermind was a "mosaic" of data gathered through a variety of sources and means.

The "mosaic" of data was obtained through a range of intelligence and military operations that allowed the capture of many operatives in terrorist networks who could contribute information to the intelligence "mosaic" that led to bin Laden. The war in Iraq was part of that range of actions. Just as the enhanced interrogations of detainees in undisclosed locations, the war in Iraq was started by President Bush and criticized by Democrats, including Candidate Obama, for years.

The team that carried out the bold mission in Pakistan on Sunday night was the elite counterterrorism unit, known as the Joint Special Operations Team headed by Vice Admiral William McRaven, a Navy SEAL himself. President Obama went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky today to congratulate the members of this outstanding team and Admiral McRaven for their brave mission in the war on global terrorism.

However, when George W. Bush was President, this same outstanding team of military professionals was seen by the liberal media as a threat to the US rather than a critical part of the apparatus to protect Americans and US national security. Two years ago, shortly after Barack Obama was inaugurated, New York Times investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who has written many books about government scandals, said at a forum at the University of Minnesota, at which former Vice President Walter Mondale also appeared:

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense...."

Of course, we now know that the JSOC reports directly to President Obama in the current Administration, and no one has been heard to criticize this special operations team this week; not even in the New York Times!

It is clear that in the liberal media and Eric Holder's Justice Department anything that took place in the Executive branch of the federal government before January 20, 2009 for the purpose of national security was of questionable legality, but, when the same actions are taken now in the age of Obama, they are perfectly acceptable and even praiseworthy. Obama has even gone further in the pursuit of the war on terror by authorizing a mission that resulted in the execution of an unarmed man without trial in the presence of women and children. Now I don't disagree with that action at all. But if it had taken place during the Bush Presidency, liberals throughout the land (along with those Muslims and European liberals now making this argument about Obama) would be calling it a war crime (in the extreme) and an impeachable offense (in the least).

What happened to the call for national unity? I'm in favor of judging actions to successfully defend our country by the same standards regardless of who is in office. Sphere: Related Content

Obama Really Had "Better Stuff" To Do!

Last week when President Obama released the sought-after version of his birth certificate he said: "I've got better stuff to do. We've got big problems to solve." He then flew off to Chicago to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I suggested that if he had "better stuff" to do "it would be nice to see him do it instead of going on TV talk shows and giving speeches at political fundraisers."

Well, the President certainly showed the world on Sunday night that he knows how to do "better stuff" when he announced the successful raid by an elite Navy SEAL team into a Pakistani compound in which Osama bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist mastermind on the globe, had been hiding for years. The mission resulted in bin Laden's death, as well as the death of three other men and one woman caught in the crossfire of the firefight that resulted when the Navy SEAL team invaded the terrorists' complex of residences after repelling from two attack helicopters that transported the elite team to the scene.

The SEAL team, the CIA analysts who compiled the data to locate bin Laden, the National Security staff and others in the Administration responsible for the planning and execution of this remarkable mission are to be congratulated, along with President Obama who gave the order to proceed.

The mission required careful planning and preparation that involved practice runs by the SEAL team in a replica of the compound built at the Bagram US airbase in Afghanistan. The helicopters used seem to be advanced models specially designed to fly undetected by radar since the mission was carried out without prior notice to the government of Pakistan.

There is no other country in the world that could have executed such a bold mission with the type of special operations unit as the Navy SEAL team involved, the technology and intelligence support required and the elaborate preparations needed. It would seem that President Obama may now appreciate a major reason why many consider America to be "exceptional". I doubt he will be giving any more speeches in foreign lands about how the USA is no more exceptional than other countries.

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Of Sideshows and Carnival Barkers

Yesterday President Obama released the "long version" of his birth certificate so that the media and public discourse would not be distracted by what he called "sideshows and carnival barkers". I certainly agree that there are many more important issues that should be the focus of discussion by our elected leaders, political pundits and the media. The birth certificate question should never have been the subject of any serious debate. It is and has been a bogus nonsense issue since it started. To question the place of Obama's birth since the first certified copy of the state record was released more than two years ago is to suggest that the state government of Hawaii is engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the American people. It has never made any sense.

As the President said yesterday:

"....We've got some enormous challenges out there. There are a lot of folks out there who are still looking for work. Everybody is still suffering under high gas prices. We're going to have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our future but also get a hold of our deficit and our debt _ how do we do that in a balanced way.

And this is going to generate huge and serious debates, important debates. And there are going to be some fierce disagreements _ and that's good. That's how democracy is supposed to work. And I am confident that the American people and America's political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems....

We live in a serious time right now and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids proud. And I have every confidence that America in the 21st century is going to be able to come out on top just like we always have. But we're going to have to get serious to do it....

We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do. We've got big problems to solve. And I'm confident we can solve them, but we're going to have to focus on them... [not my birth certificate]...."

The problem is that the "better stuff" he had to do yesterday was to fly to Chicago to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show with his wife and then fly to yet another Democratic fundraiser. Last week, he spent most of the week flying from coast to coast attending Democratic fundraisers, not dealing with the important issues of the day that he referred to in the White House Press Room. He seems to act as if any time Congress is in recess, he is too.

Meanwhile the Middle East and North Africa continue to witness Arab revolts, dictators continue to shoot and kill their own citizens and many of our allies are losing confidence in the reliability of the US as a partner in the time of need. And when Congress returns to town, the President has again appointed a commission (this time under Vice President Biden's chairmanship) to come up with yet another new budget proposal - after he ignored the commission he previously appointed that reported deficit reduction recommendations last year and after the Republican House of Representatives has already passed its proposed budget for 2012.

I agree with the President. He does have "better stuff" to do. So it would be nice to see him do it instead of going on TV talk shows and giving speeches at political fundraisers.

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Real Working People Show Up in Madison on Saturday to Support Wisconsin's Governor

Wisconsin, like many states, has a fiscal crisis. But for the past week, many of those drawing Wisconsin government paychecks have not been on the job. The state's Democratic Senators fled the state to avoid voting on a bill to help address the fiscal problems, and many other state workers, including teachers who called in "sick", marched around and inside the state Capitol in Madison throughout much of the work week protesting Governor Scott Walker's bill to help balance the state's budget. On Saturday, supporters of the new Governor who had to work during the week showed up in Madison.

Scott Walker was just elected Governor in November in the wave of Tea Party backed Republican victories that were fueled in large part by budget deficits run up by Democratic leaders in numerous states and the federal government. Some labor backed protest signs carried around the Capitol earlier in the week said that the demonstrations showed "how democracy works". It is true that democracy permits free speech and the right to express political views in such demonstrations. However, decisions regarding who leads government at each level and sets public policy during elected terms of office are made in elections in America. Protesting crowds of demonstrators may be how democracy must be practiced to change political leaders in the Middle East, where free and fair elections have not been permitted for decades, if ever, but not in the US. In America, "elections matter".

"We did have an election and Scott Walker won," said Deborah Arndt, 53, of Sheboygan Falls. "I think our governor will stand strong. I have faith in him." At a rally organized by Tea Party Patriots, the movement's largest umbrella group, and Americans for Prosperity, supporters of Walker carried signs with a fresh set of messages: "Your Gravy Train Is Over . . . Welcome to the Recession" and "Sorry, we're late Scott. We work for a living."

"We pay the bills!" tea party favorite Herman Cain yelled to cheers from the pro-Walker crowd. "This is why you elected Scott Walker. and he's doing his job. . . . Wisconsin is broke. My question for the other side is, 'What part of broke don't you understand?'" http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/19/battle-over-anti-union-bill-draws-protesters-from-both-sides-to/

Wisconsin state workers are protesting a bill that would require them to pay more toward their pension and health insurance benefits and would limit collective bargaining rights for state employee unions. Governor Walker's website provides the details on how much the taxpayers have been paying toward government workers' benefits:

"From 2001 to 2010 taxpayers spent more than $8 billion dollars on state employee health care coverage—over the same period of time state employees contributed about $398 million....

-From 2000 to 2009 taxpayers spent about $12.6 billion on public employee pensions, during the same period public employees contributed $55.4 million....

-When looking at state operations, state employees account for about 60% of taxpayer cost—77% of state operations for the UW are employees, 70% for corrections, 63% for health services...

-Public employees in Wisconsin are vested in the retirement system immediately, while in Illinois it takes 8 years, 10 years in Indiana, 4 years in Iowa, 10 years in Michigan, 3 years in Minnesota, and 5 years in Ohio...." http://www.wisgov.state.wi.us/journal_media_detail.asp?prid=5625&locid=177

While the state unions and Democratic legislators have agreed to state workers paying more toward their benefits, they are resisting any proposal to limit union members' collective bargaining rights. Governor Walker, who previously served for eight years as the Milwaukee County executive, saw attempts to cut employee related costs at the local level often reversed during collective bargaining, which state law protected. As a result, state law limited County executives' ability to control local government spending.

Private sector workers (whose taxes support the state workers' benefits) have been suffering through a recession for over two years and unemployment is still at 9%. In private business, it is well recognized that the largest part of any company's operating expenses are the costs of employee compensation and benefits. That's why the first response in the private sector to reducing costs when the economy turns sour is to reduce the number of employees or cut employee benefits. Over the past two decades, increased global competition has also led many private businesses to eliminate employee pension plans for newly hired workers that used to be a common employee benefit at most companies. Now private sector employees are generally limited to relying on 401k accounts for retirement savings, and those accounts suffered during the recession's stock market downturn that is only now coming back close to 2008 levels.

While private sector employees have been suffering the effects of the recession for over two years, public employees have been largely spared because the Obama Stimulus bill sent enough money to state governments to allow many governors to avoid state worker lay-offs and benefit cuts to the same extent as those in the private sector. Since the Stimulus program has now run its course, the states must now face up to their budget difficulties without the same level of financial help from Washington that many relied over the last two years. Hence, the sign in Madison that says "Your Gravy Train is Over".

I spelled out the disparity in compensation and benefits between private sector and public sector workers in a post last year at http://jaxonnews.blogspot.com/2010/12/mainstream-media-takes-notice-of-public.html. In that post, I quoted comments made by Scott Walker before he was sworn in, as well as comments made by outgoing Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, that noted that public sector employees had become a privileged class whose better pay and benefits are paid for by private sector workers' taxes:

"We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and the taxpayers who foot the bill are the have-nots," Wisconsin's incoming Republican Gov. Scott Walker declared... as he raised the idea of stripping state workers there of collective bargaining rights. Outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is mulling a GOP presidential bid, also sounded a class-war note.... on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal: "Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt."

The demonstrations in Madison over the past week have dramatized this new type of class struggle between public workers and private sector workers. It might even be possible that union members in the private sector will eventually take a stand against their union brothers with government jobs since the hard working taxpayers in the private sector are paying for the government employees' "gravy train".

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GOP and Democrats Celebrate Reagan's Birthday Centennial

It is rare in these days of partisan bickering to see politicians of both parties honoring a Republican President who served during our lifetimes. Since I am writing this on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, another Republican President who is highly regarded by Americans of every political persuasion, I certainly do not want to suggest that bi-partisan admiration of past Presidents is unheard of in America. What is noteworthy is that Ronald Reagan has gained an historical stature that is usually accorded leaders of a more distant time. I even saw a recent report that some in the Conservative movement are talking about having Reagan's face added to Mount Rushmore alongside the other Presidents of historical significance already depicted on this national monument, including President Lincoln.

I agree that President Reagan achieved much of major significance, including gaining changes to the tax code that helped lead the country out of a recession that in many ways was worse than the one we are still coming out of today (higher unemployment and high inflation) and taking bold steps that had a major role in the collapse of the Soviet Union and other Communist countries in Europe. However, as someone who lived through the Reagan Presidency as a working adult and who grew up and lived through decades of the Cold War, I have always been somewhat surprised at the aggressive legacy building of Reagan's image that started almost on the day he left the White House.

I do not recall any other former President, who during his lifetime, had a major airport (Reagan National Airport) and a federal government building in DC (the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center that houses the EPA, US Customs and other federal agencies, as well as commercial tenants, located on Pennsylvania Avenue) named for him. Only recently, long after their deaths, has the Old Executive Office building been named for President Eisenhower and the State Department building been named for President Truman.

It will come as a surprise to many in my family that I never voted for Ronald Reagan. I thought he was a slick actor who knew how to read lines written for him by others. It has only been since he left office that I have learned that he had truly thought deeply about his philosophy of patriotism and conservatism. He cultivated his ability to speak from the heart about America when he traveled the country as spokesman for General Electric at company events. Since GE hired him to talk about the company and its products, he eventually left to get more actively involved in politics.

When he ran for President in the 1970's and in 1980, I knew he had been Governor of California for eight years, but I knew little of what he accomplished there since I lived in Illinois in those years focused on my own career. I voted for a third party candidate in 1980 because I thought Carter had a failed Presidency, and I was very uncertain of whether Reagan was his own man.

During Reagan's first term, while I liked his economic policies, he took on the Soviet Union with much saber-rattling, including calling the USSR an "Evil Empire", without ever meeting with the Soviet leader personally. I wondered whether he and his advisers really knew what they were doing. Furthermore, in his first term, Reagan was the first President I ever remembered, who did not meet personally with the Soviet leader to assure peaceful co-existence and civil relations between our two Superpowers.

By 1984, I had been reading the Chicago Tribune on the commuter train for four years about how Reagan kept poking a stick at the Soviet bear while increasing our own Defense expenditures and promising to build a new defensive weapon that the press called "Star Wars". Since I grew up with the Cold War threats of nuclear weapons, I was very unsure of what the Reagan White House was doing. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I felt much more confident about how President Kennedy and his Ivy League advisers handled that than what I saw with the California crowd around a former actor who could make great speeches. As a result, my vote in 1984 became the biggest mistake of my Presidential voting history. But, at least, I can say that I have voted for a woman Vice President twice!

In Reagan's second term, it became more clear that he really did have a method and plan for what I had thought was madness in threatening the Soviet Union during his first term. Nevertheless, I still do not believe that Reagan alone should be given credit for bringing down the the USSR and its Communist satellites.

Reagan had the good fortune to have important allies in the right places who also contributed to the forces that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that it represented, including Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who was much more enlightened and pragmatic than his predecessors. Furthermore, Reagan benefited by having Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, and Pope John Paul II (the first Pope from a Communist country) as allies in the struggle to end the Soviet threat. In addition, the Solidarity union movement in Poland during the 1980's served as an inspiration to people throughout the Iron Curtain countries, much as the successful civilian protests in Egypt over the past three weeks are now doing in the Middle East.

It has become clear to me in hindsight that Reagan was more insightful about the potential to defeat the Communist threat from the USSR than I realized in the early 1980's. My personal experience in reevaluating Reagan's Presidency has helped me appreciate how important it is to learn more about candidates and what life experiences they have had that contribute to their character and beliefs. Unfortunately, due to their own busy lives, many voters end up making decisions based on catchy campaign slogans, distorted attack ads, superficial coverage by a press interested in sound bites and sensational news stories slanted toward their own biases and Internet sources that include narrowly focused websites that distort the facts much more than did the press of the 1980's.

One thing that I always did admire about Ronald Reagan was how uplifting his speeches were and how good he was at making us proud to be Americans. The quote below from his Farewell Address demonstrates how he urged us all to appreciate what a great country we live in. The good fortune we have to live in a country with freedoms that we often take for granted has been illustrated quite dramatically over the past few weeks as we watched the protests in Cairo. Here's Reagan's message to us as he prepared to leave the White House:

"Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time....

An informed patriotism is what we want.... are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.

But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs [protection].

So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important—why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, "we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.'' Well, let's help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual."

Ronald Reagan's FAREWELL ADDRESS, January 11, 1989

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