Today’s New York Times includes an article about Republican leaders who say the party needs to move beyond the invocation of Ronald Reagan.  I largely agree.

In the 2008 campaign, every GOP candidate sought to capture the mantle of Ronald Reagan.  The result was a field that occasionally seemed focused on returning to the past rather than advancing on the future.  And for all of American history, campaigns that turned backwards have been losing campaigns.  American politics has always been about the future.

The same is true for leadership of all kinds, at least in the United States.  Yes, use the past to illuminate the present and to invoke enduring values.  But in speeches, op-eds, and interviews, no leaders should be engaged in a remembrance of days gone by for its own sake.  The task of leadership is to define a future worth having and to motivate followers to reach for it.

It is the task before the GOP.  Reagan clarified for Republicans, at least, the value of freedom in global political affairs and the strategy of entrepreneurially driven growth in global economic affairs.  Those values endure.  But they endure whether Mr. Reagan’s name is invoked or not.