Reagan, Biden, Harris … and Trump

As incongruous as it may seem, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have more in common with Ronald Reagan – one of the most prominent conservatives in American history – than does Donald Trump.

Although on politically opposite sides of the ideological fence, former President Ronald Reagan and Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden share the same fundamental values: integrity, decency and a moral code.

They all, apart from Mr. Trump, share a common understanding and commitment to the post-World War II American-led rules-based international order. Like Reagan did, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris value freedom, democracy, human rights and human dignity – ideals that for Mr. Trump are abstruse concepts. They share the belief that, despite our occasional blunders and missteps, America has been a major force for good in the world. And as did Reagan, Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden recognize the importance of Ukraine’s freedom. Mr. Trump is the outlier here.

Ms. Harris, like Reagan and most presidents and vice presidents throughout our history (including Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence), has a reverence for the Constitution. Mr. Trump demonstrably does not. He’s the aberration.

None other than former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the central figures in the Republican party for the last 50 years, has said that he would be voting for Ms. Harris. Five years ago, many would have thought that hell would freeze over before Mr. Cheney, or, for that matter, his daughter, former conservative U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, would ever vote for a Democrat. Their policy differences on many issues are stark. Yet the Cheney family, like other principled Republicans, understand that character and integrity often matter more than policy.

In his statement explaining why he would be casting his vote for Ms. Harris, Dick Cheney wrote bluntly: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He cannot be trusted with power again. … As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution.”

Ms. Cheney recently said that there is “absolutely no chance” that former President Reagan would support Mr. Trump if he were alive. I strongly agree, in part based on my own experiences.

I was working at the Republican National Committee in 1980 when Reagan was first elected. And throughout all but the first 10 months of his presidency, I worked for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission), where we witnessed and participated in the Reagan Administration’s efforts to combat the Soviet Union’s egregious violations of human rights and other international commitments.

Reagan, like Ms. Harris, was optimistic, hopeful, and had a positive vision for America’s future, even if there would have been honest policy disagreements as to what that future looked like. Reagan, like Ms. Harris, looked forward and not backward. He was not about grievance and negativity. Like Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden, he was a patriot who put country above party. Reagan, whether one agreed with his policies or not, was essentially a man of character and principle – the opposite of the crude, morally bankrupt narcissist Trump.

Could you imagine Ronald Reagan (or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, for that matter) endlessly proclaiming that elections he might have lost were stolen, despite all evidence to the contrary, including from numerous Republican election officials? Could you ever imagine Reagan disparaging our military and Gold-Star families, or mocking people with disabilities, as Mr. Trump has done? Could you ever imagine Reagan repeatedly denigrating war heroes, as Mr. Trump did with the late Republican war hero Sen. John McCain? Lest we forget, Mr. McCain was one of America’s foremost supporters of Ukraine – it’s no accident that a street in Kyiv was named after him. Or stoking a mob to take over the Capitol? (This one hit close to home, having worked on Capitol Hill for 35 years). The list could go on … and on … and on. Mr. Trump, through countless words and actions, has displayed little regard for democratic principles or for elementary human decency.

On foreign policy, too, Reagan shares a lot more with Ms. Harris than with Mr. Trump. Reagan was a firm internationalist. Our 40th president understood the need for robust American global leadership and the principle of helping friends and allies to defend themselves (not for nothing that principle is called “the Reagan Doctrine”). His policies, such as peace through strength and standing up for freedom, contributed significantly to the fall of the Soviet empire. A staunch anti-Communist, he called the Soviet Union “the evil empire” and stood for freedom for Ukraine and the other captive nations. This was at a time when Ukraine, unlike today, was largely unknown among the American public and even academia and the foreign policy establishment, despite the efforts of the Ukrainian American community and some members of Congress.

A small but telling example of Reagan’s support for liberty: I remember attending a Rose Garden ceremony in July 1988 commemorating Captive Nations Week where Reagan eloquently spoke and noted the presence of Petro Ruban, a Ukrainian Helsinki Monitor who had recently been released from a notorious Soviet Gulag camp. He had been sent there in part for the “crime” of having fashioned a wooden replica of the Statue of Liberty as a gift to America for our bicentennial. The year before, Reagan had mentioned Mr. Ruban’s imprisonment at a Captive Nations ceremony I attended held at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family in Washington, D.C.

Fast forward to Mr. Trump three decades later. He repeatedly demeans Ukrainians. Don’t take my word for it. Just look at former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton’s 2020 memoir: “The Room Where It Happened.” In chapter 14, readers will get a sense of Mr. Trump’s irrational hostility towards Ukraine and Ukrainians. In one conversation, Mr. Trump unjustifiably rants and raves about Ukraine and Ukrainians, using the “F” word no fewer than half a dozen times.

Of far greater damage, however, was Mr. Trump’s egregious withholding in 2019 of nearly $400 million in security aid to Ukraine that had been approved by Congress. There was no good reason whatsoever to halt this aid. To add insult to injury, Mr. Trump did so to allegedly blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into giving him non-existent dirt on his political opponent, Mr. Biden. Thankfully, the effort failed due to a bipartisan outcry.

More on Mr. Trump’s hostile words and actions with respect to Ukraine during and after his presidency will be available in my next column, but let me close with the following excerpt from a March Wall Street Journal op-ed by distinguished former Reagan Navy Secretary John Lehman titled “Reagan would never vote for Trump”:

“The most fundamental difference between Reagan and [Mr.] Trump is that Reagan knew America’s friends from its enemies. He would be horrified by the Republican Party’s abandonment of Ukraine at Mr. Trump’s behest. He would recognize Russia’s invasion for what it is: a brutal attempt to reassert its old Soviet dominance on a free people, no matter how many innocents die. Reagan would recognize that supporting Ukraine is both morally correct and good realpolitik, a chance to bog an adversary down. He would find Mr. Trump’s naked admiration of our enemies incomprehensible and dangerous.”

Orest Deychakiwsky may be reached at orestdeychak@gmail.com.