Reagan's Lions

From IBD:
Posted 3/28/2006

Leadership: A generation born in the final days of the Cold War may not appreciate how, during the Reagan era, a few strong individuals rose to assure victory. Caspar Weinberger, who died Tuesday, was one of them.

'Cap" came into Ronald Reagan's circle early. A San Francisco lawyer and former assemblyman who had long before distinguished himself by serving on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's intelligence staff, Weinberger was picked by Gov. Reagan as California's finance director.

So successful was he in straightening out the state's budgetary mess that President Richard Nixon brought him to Washington as director of the Federal Trade Commission and later director of the Office of Management and Budget. Still later, he became secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Weinberger, by then known as "Cap the Knife" for his swift spending cuts, returned to the private sector during the Ford administration.

When Reagan became president, he announced he had one strategy for ending the Cold War with Soviet communism: "Win it." That meant a military buildup so massive that Moscow would deplete its treasury trying to keep up. It also envisioned a novel, space-based defense system. The strategy was unpopular with conventional thinkers in government and media. Reagan needed a like-minded visionary to run the Pentagon. His first choice: Weinberger.

Cap performed exactly as ordered. He restored a military whose esprit was allowed to wilt in the Carter years. He instantly saw the opportunity to forge anew a strategic alliance with Great Britain, then led by political soul mate Margaret Thatcher.

Historians increasingly recognize the success of the Reagan-Weinberger strategy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has not been hard to find a retired Soviet army general who credits that strategy for the West's final victory.

For all his faith in military might deployed for the right reasons, Weinberger never displayed the arrogance or megalomania so often shown by high officials. His worldview of secured peace flowed directly from his gentlemanly comportment.

Weinberger's passing came within hours of that of another lion of the Reagan era. Lyn Nofziger, a veteran newsman, signed on as Reagan's top press aide when the former actor first ran for governor.

Among the first to see the Golden State governor as presidential timbre, Nofziger — a rumpled, beloved figure straight out of "The Front Page" — groomed Reagan as a political persona. Allergic to bureaucracy, he eventually left the White House. But he was as indispensable to Reagan's rise as Weinberger was to Reagan's legacy.

The hundreds of millions freed from Soviet tyranny owe their liberty to Ronald Reagan — and by extension to Cap and Lyn. R.I.P.