Why Ronald Reagan would vote for Kamala Harris

As campaign 2024 draws to a close, television screens have flickered with a once unimaginable image of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wisc.) and Vice President Kamala Harris sharing a stage, with Cheney vouching for Harris’s fidelity to the Constitution and a peaceful transfer of power.

Cheney is not alone. More than 200 Republicans who worked for Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as former Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) have also endorsed Kamala Harris.

Ronald Reagan would have been one of them.

Reagan died 20 years ago and many know him only as a historical figure. But for those of us whose memories of Reagan remain vivid, there is no doubt what he would do in this election.

Ronald Reagan left behind a record that is in stark contrast with Donald Trump’s. For example, in a 1982 radio address, Reagan explained why he was such a strong advocate for free trade, saying some “seem to believe that we should run up the American flag in defense of our markets,” and “would embrace protectionism again and insulate our markets from world competition.”

“Well, the last time the United States tried that, there was enormous economic distress in the world,” he noted. “World trade fell by 60 percent, and young Americans soon followed the American flag into World War II.”

Donald Trump holds the opposite view. From the beginning, he opposed Reagan’s free trade policies. Today, he says “The word ‘tariff,’ when properly used, is a beautiful word. It’s music to my ears.”

Unlike Trump, Reagan saw immigrants as a source of national pride and strength. In his last speech as president, Reagan said: “Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young,” and warned, “If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

But Trump sees immigrants as a source of weakness. While Reagan strongly opposed building a wall, much less a fence, between the United States and Mexico, Trump sees immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country — words Reagan would have never uttered. His charge that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating cats and dogs has been denounced by Republican officials. Echoing Reagan, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) writes that the Haitians who have relocated there are revitalizing the town’s once-moribund manufacturing industry.

On tax policy, there is a strong convergence between Ronald Reagan and Kamala Harris. As president, Reagan strongly supported the Earned Income Tax Credit which cut taxes for low-income families calling it “the best antipoverty bill, the best profamily measure, and the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.”

Harris proposes her own Reagan-like tax programs: giving parents a $6,000 tax credit during a newborn’s first year of life, a maximum $50,000 credit to those starting small businesses and up to a $25,000 credit for first-time home buyers.

After hearing Harris’s ideas, conservative pundit Bill Kristol posted: “Kamala Harris, Reagan Democrat!”

Perhaps the biggest difference between Reagan and Trump is their attitudes toward Russia. As president, Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Today, Vladimir Putin dreams of restoring the Russian empire and took the first step by invading Ukraine. It’s not hard to imagine Reagan’s reaction, remembering his virulent anticommunism and strong support for the Vietnam War and the Nicaraguan Contras.

Today, Donald Trump opposes more U.S. aid to Ukraine and boasts that, if elected, he would resolve the conflict in a single day. As Kamala Harris has stated, that amounts to a unilateral surrender and the installation of a puppet regime in Kyiv.

Donald Trump’s sympatico relationship with Putin is so strong that it prompted Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to walk out of a meeting with Trump, saying, “[With you] all roads lead to Putin.”

Finally, there is a strong difference in the two men’s personas.

Ronald Reagan was charming and engaging, always making us feel better about ourselves. In 1985, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney predicted that Reagan “may, 100 years from now, be revered as a truly great president because he made America feel good about itself again — made it throw off self-doubt, accrued from Vietnam to Watergate, and become a more proud and unsullied nation, capable of providing strong leadership.”

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan’s closing argument against Jimmy Carter in 1980: Can anyone look at America today and say Donald Trump has made us feel better about ourselves? Can anyone say Trump is a president we want our children to emulate? Can anyone sincerely vouch for the character of a nominee who is a convicted felon?

As Liz Cheney put it, “If you wouldn’t hire somebody [like Trump] to babysit your kids, you shouldn’t make that guy the president of the United States.” 

In 1800, John Adams, the first White House resident, wrote to his wife Abigail: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this House, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt so loved that prayer he had it engraved above a stone fireplace in the State Dining Room. 

Ronald Reagan knew character counted and he idolized Franklin Roosevelt. But when asked why he left Roosevelt’s Democratic Party, he often responded, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left me.”

Following Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the GOP, one can almost imagine Reagan saying, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, it left me.” It’s a feeling that animates Cheney and many other Republicans who will enter the privacy of the polling booth and pull the lever for Kamala Harris.

John Kenneth White is a professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America. His latest book is titled “Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism.”