Senior Fellow John R. Bolton

Today is Ronald Reagan’s birthday. I think that, at least on this day, it’s always “morning in America.” And if that doesn’t make you feel good, then I suspect Jeane Kirkpatrick might say, you must be a “San Francisco Democrat.”

Twenty-six years ago, we were two weeks into the Reagan administration, and Jeane had just started in New York as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, the initial step on her road to becoming America’s first “elder stateswoman.” She spent over four years in that job, at a contentious and difficult time in our history. Reagan had decided--contrary to the conventional wisdom, including from within his own party--that the Cold War was winnable. He wanted Jeane at the UN to handle that battlefield, which she did magnificently, although at times it could feel, to borrow a Civil War term, like the Wilderness Campaign.

But Jeane was born in Oklahoma, where they say that the only things between them and the north wind blowing out of Canada are a few tumbleweeds. Jeane wasn’t from Muskogee, but she nonetheless bore the imprint described in Merle Haggard’s song about her fellow Okies from that town. Like many Americans, however sophisticated and worldly they become, Okies know their roots, and they’re proud of them.

In fact, Jeane’s time at the U.S. mission on First Avenue in Manhattan--and across the street--could be descibed by a lyric from another Merle Haggard song: “When you’re running down my country, you’re walking on the fighting side of me.” And, let me assure you, that can be a full time occupation at the UN. As Jeane once said, “What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem solving.”

Despite her famous Dallas convention speech in 1984, Jeane worried more about ideas than party, largely because she believed that ideas--more than institutions--shaped the future. It was, of course, her ideas that brought her to Reagan’s attention, and then to the United Nations.

Central to that article in Commentary, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” was her support for John Stuart Mill’s three fundamental conditions for representative government: “One, that the people should be willing to receive it; two, that they should be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation; three, that they should be willing and able to fulfill the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them.”

These are tough and unpleasant truths, and hard tasks, the sort Jeane confronted unceasingly during her diplomatic and academic careers, never flinching from the consequences, yet always handling herself with grace and dignity. She inspired generations of students and research assistants; colleagues and adversaries; friends and family; and successors. We will all miss her.

God bless you, Jeane.

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI. He served as permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006.