William Inboden is the director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida and a Peterson Senior Fellow at the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Inboden served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. He also served as a Member of the Policy Planning Staff with the Department of State. He is the author of several books, including his most recent release,“The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, and the World on the Brink.”
What inspired you to write your book about Ronald Reagan?
I wanted to tell the story of Reagan to the next generation, to students of your generation who were born after his presidency and after he died. I also wanted to recover a national security success story for the current generation of policymakers and leaders — that there was a time in the not too distant past when the United States successfully waged a conflict against a nuclear armed communist superpower, and we prevailed, and we prevailed peacefully. The third was a personal journey of when I had been growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, including in the Reagan presidency. I was, at the time, more on the left and was not supportive of him. Over time, I really changed my assessment. I wanted to go back and take a fresh look and understand “what was going on during those years when I was in junior high and high school? How can I go back and study it now and understand what I may have missed?”
What made you shift from the left to the right?
I started college more on the left, and by the time I graduated, I was much more conservative. But I’ll tell you two formative experiences. I spent the summer of 1992, the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college, in Moscow. The Soviet Union had just collapsed, and I was one of the first waves of American college students able to go over there. I was a student at Moscow Linguistic University trying (unsuccessfully) to learn Russian. I had a Russian roommate, and a number of other Russian friends in the dorm, and they all told me, “we hated Soviet communism. We hated the Soviet government, and we loved Ronald Reagan, and you Americans had a great president.” So for me, it was jarring to hear this very different perspective from students, who we thought hated us. Then the next year, I went to Washington, D.C., to do an internship in the Senate for a Republican senator from Indiana, Dan Coats, who later was the director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, but just a wonderful man with great staff and really thoughtful conservatives. I decided, “wow, I want to believe what you guys believe. I want to be more like you.” I was very grateful for that.
Has any recent president left a legacy like Reagan’s?
No. That’s not to say we haven’t had some consequential ones. I was honored to serve for five years in the George W. Bush administration, on the State Department National Security Council. He was, I think, a great man who did a lot of good things, certainly keeping the country safe from another terrorist attack, but also made a share of mistakes. Reagan was a great visionary leader. I don’t know that another one like him would come along, and nor should we necessarily expect it. But I hope if one does, we as a country will recognize that and support him.
What advice do you have for students going into politics?
The first is: study history. I don’t mean that in a trite way, but we are so much products of what the world around us looks like when we’re in our high school and college years and that matters. You’ve got to pay attention. But if we only allow that to form us, we’re going to miss some really inspiring and sometimes sobering insights from the past. We need to understand all of the ups and downs of our country and our great successes, and some of the feelings that we’ve overcome, too. And again, I say this as someone who worked in politics for about 10 years — we get so consumed with the day-to-day, with a 24-hour news cycle, with the next election cycle. The other is identifying some older role models and mentors — a 30 year old, or 40 year old, or even an 80 year old who has some of the experiences that you value and cherish, and spend intentional time with them. They’ll be eager to pass along a lot of what they’ve learned, and they’ll tell anyone who’s spending time in politics — I’m no exception — will have their share of mistakes and lessons learned. So it’s not just, “here’s all the great things I did. Be like me.” Rather, it’s “let me tell you the things I got wrong.” I certainly benefited from that when I would start off in politics, too.
What is the biggest problem facing American politics today?
I worry that we as a country have lost our sense of purpose. We’ve lost, I think, a real belief in confidence in our own principles and ideals. I’m not one who laments political divisions for their own sake. People on the left who I disagree with — we have those differences for a reason — and yet I do worry that we’ve lost this larger sense of how we can rally the country around a better vision, how we can have more hope from the future. It often feels like we’re too entrenched in these oppositional cycles. We’re only focusing on what the other side is getting wrong, rather than asking what we can get right. I think that loss of common purpose is the biggest problem and it’s up to your generation to solve it.