Ronald Reagan's Secret to Great Leadership By John Baldon

As we mark the occasion of Ronald Reagan's centenary it is important to remember what he taught us about what it means to lead.


When Reagan became President in 1981, the prime rate topped 20% and would rise even higher. A lingering recession kept unemployment rates higher than normal, 7.5% in 1981. It was the worst recession since the Great Depression. Many businesses could not seem to find a way to compete against more agile and quality-conscious competitors from Japan. To many Americans it had seemed we had lost our way, especially in the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis.

Yet none of this could extinguish Reagan's faith in the nation and in its people. After all, Reagan's gift was not just an upbeat attitude; it was his salesmanship of the American dream. Yes, he was a great communicator. And he worked hard at it. [Now that we have access to his correspondence we see what a prolific writer he truly was.]


The salesmanship came from selling the American people on the same dream that Franklin Roosevelt, a Reagan hero, had sold to us in the depths of the Great Depression. We can succeed if we put our minds to it. Kenneth Duberstein, a former Chief of Staff to Reagan, put it best when he said that Reagan got us to believe in ourselves again. People believe in themselves and in a cause greater than themselves they can achieve great things--as long as they have a well-intentioned leader to point them in the right direction.


But Reagan was no happy-go lucky salesman. He was not afraid to make unpopular decisions. As a proponent of smaller government, he lowered the top income tax rate (from 70% to 29%), but he also raised taxes eleven times and increased the size of federal government. The national debt also nearly tripled under his tenure. As presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told CBS News, "Ronald Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes. He knew that it was necessary at times."


It takes a strong leader one confident in his own convictions to persuade others to follow his lead, even when he sometimes might deviate from a desired goal. That does not make him less credible; it makes him a pragmatist. And I would argue that when trust their leader they will grant him discretion to make hard choices.


No president, no leader for that matter, can accomplish much by himself. He or she must harness the power of others, to bring people to common cause. Reagan was the master at this. His positivism was contagious. Even his political enemies, notably Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, liked him personally. Reagan's winning personality even softened the stiff diplomacy of the Soviets. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev did not like Reagan at first but in time found him impossible to dislike personally, even when they could not agree over limiting the number of nuclear weapons.


Getting others to see the virtues of your point of view is what every leader must strive to achieve. And when leaders face long odds it may do them well to recall the example of our former president who sought when possible to look on the bright side because to do otherwise was for him to give in to the forces of defeatism.