Ronald Reagan is returning to Washington and his mission is the same one that got him in the Oval Office in 1981 — putting conservative principles to work.
In a first for presidential libraries, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute has opened a satellite office in Washington to keep the Gipper’s legacy alive and steer policy makers to paths he would have taken.
“This is about bringing Reagan back to Washington in the sense of bringing his ideals, his principles, his beliefs, and making sure that they are in the domain of public policy,” said Roger Zakheim, the director of the Ronald Reagan Institute.
“The Reagan Foundation’s work at his Library in Simi Valley has been that shining city on a hill he talked about for years. It’s helped President Reagan’s legacy thrive for generations. But we want to do more than preserve his memory. If we’re to truly fulfill our mission, we’ll promote the values and ideals he stood for in our nation’s capital every day,” added Foundation Executive Director John Heubusch.
The Institute makes its official debut Thursday with an address by House Speaker Paul Ryan, considered a star example of Reagan conservatism and style.
“There could not be a better time to bring President Reagan’s legacy back to Washington,” Ryan told Secrets.
“With all the challenges we face, we need to renew the timeless principles he advanced, and relearn the lessons of his time. His blueprint -- economic freedom, military might, moral leadership -- remains the best way to deliver lasting prosperity and secure the peace,” added the speaker.
Zakheim, who has organized the Reagan National Defense Forum held at the California library, said the new institute will tackle the exact issues Ryan suggested.
He said it will have three policy centers under the Institute umbrella.
The “Center for Peace Through Strength” will address national security and the military. As president, Reagan fought communism with a huge military buildup, a call for a focus on space with the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the 600-ship Navy. It will also sponsor the annual defense forum.
Another will be the Center for Education and Civics and sponsor the annual Reagan Institute Summit on Education.
And the third, the Center on Freedom and Democracy, will look at how his success on expanding democracy and tearing down the Berlin Wall can be expanded and imprinted on foreign policy.
Zakheim said that freedom and democracy was “central to almost everything President Reagan did.”
The center will also develop ways to have new generations of Americans be familiar with Reagan. One key angle will be promoting scholarship and guiding biographers and historians to major Reagan decisions and papers.
He pointed to one victory already, the hiring at State of Reagan scholar and author Kiron Skinner as the director of policy and planning. She edited the best-selling “Reagan In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America,” and “Reagan: A Life in Letters.” She co-wrote “The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons From Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin.”
The Daily Signal, the news outlet at the Heritage Foundation, said of her, “Having somebody rooted in Reagan in the heart of Foggy Bottom ought to help keep Trump’s foreign policy headed in the right direction.”
Zakheim added of the hiring, “That is great, that almost encapsulates what I think the library and foundation would hope that leaders in public policy are imbued with a deep understanding of President Reagan, his principles and beliefs. And they’re now in their own way carrying out public policy with that deep understanding of Reagan.”
The Institute, he explained, will be less like a think tank and more an operation that helps policy makers tap into the Reagan way and keeping the Reagan way alive.
“We’re just getting it going and the essence of it is to say, yeah, the presidency and ideas and beliefs and principles are connected, they matter, and they are timeless. But you can’t take that for granted. You have to make it part of the currency in town, you have to make it part of the conversation in town.
He said there is no real model to follow. “What I’ve been doing is basically coming up with our own approach, it rhymes with ‘think tank’ but it’s not the same thing,” said Zakheim.
His favorite way to explain the impact he wants the Institute to have is to cite four photographs of the Reagan years in his conference room that is in the Willard Hotel office complex.
One shows Reagan and the late Pope John Paul deep in thought. A second shows Reagan and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva. In that picture, Gorbachev is bundled up in a coat while Reagan is simply in his suit coat, a sign of strength. A third shows Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two were best allies and iron tough. And the fourth shows Reagan and former House Majority Leader Thomas P. “Tip” O'Neill. The two were rivals but sometimes practiced the Washington art of compromise to achieve major victories.
“Those four pictures really capture how we want to present and to promote the president,” said Zakheim. “In all of them you can immediately see and hear, without even articulating it, the nexis point to today,” he added.
