Our 250th anniversary as a nation made me think about what I was doing on its 200th. And that made me think about the first vote I cast, which was for Jimmy Carter for president.

It was a mistake, and anecdotal evidence that the 26th Amendment had been one as well. The electorate had more wisdom when naïve, ignorant 18- to 21-year olds (like me) weren't part of it.

Carter proved to be a decent, overly earnest fellow who became the poster-boy for a new political science concept: the "failed presidency."

I (and the nation) corrected that mistake four years later, although Ronald Reagan was someone I initially viewed with skepticism (he was my last choice among the GOP contenders, my first being the guy who acquired the "big mo" coming out of Iowa and then abruptly lost it, George Herbert Walker Bush).

Reagan eventually won me over, though, and my respect for him has only grown since, as I've become more familiar with his correspondence and newspaper columns and come to realize that, far from being the "amiable dunce" of left-wing caricature, he possessed a more profound understanding of political theory, especially classical liberalism, than just about any office-holder of the time, and proved reasonably effective at putting those principles into practice.

Reagan remains the key........

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