The Final Thoughts of a President

     I have sometimes wondered how Presidents feel on the day they leave the Presidency.  Are they satisfied with the decisions they made?  Do they regret some of those decisions?  In past blogs I have quoted Washington's warning about the potential harm of political parties, yet political parties continue to exist. Have Presidents whose lives have been cut short while in office thought about things they wished they had completed, or have they wished they had spent more time with their families.  

    In his farewell speech, Ronald Reagan acknowledged the tradition of presidents ending their final speech with warnings.  The following 2 paragraphs are part of Reagan's farewell speech.    

"An informed patriotism is what we want.  And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what America 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.  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, and if you didn't get them from the neighborhood, you got them from the father down the street who fought in Korea.    Or, you could get a sense of Patriotism from school.  And if that failed, you could get a sense of Patriotism from the popular culture.  The embroiled democratic values implicitly reinforced that idea. and 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 ambivalent appreciation for America is the right thing to teach modern children.    As for those who teach modern culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.  Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinitiated 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 have got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important."

    Was President Washington successful in his warning about political parties?  Was Ronald Reagan successful in his ideas about what needed to be done to regain respect for our precious Bill of Rights in a modern culture.  

    Do those we elect on all levels of government ignore the warnings of those who have served in offices before them?  Six men have held the office of President since Reagan made that speech.  Did we respond to his concerns, or was he just another politician whose words were forgotten the next day?