Ronald Reagan assumes his lapidary place in Grosvenor Square today, alongside Franklin D Roosevelt and Dwight D Eisenhower. All three presidents stood with Britain in war; yet Reagan – the man rather than the statue – towers over the other two...
What distinguishes Reagan, though, is not simply his Anglophilia. Every president from Theodore Roosevelt to George W Bush has been, in practical terms, pro-British: Barack Obama is the exception. No, what sets him apart is the magnitude of his achievement. At home, he reversed the disastrous decline of conservatism and began the work of constraining government. Abroad, as the inscription on his statue puts it, he won the Cold War without firing a shot.
It is easier to perceive the heroism of leaders long past. Washington and Jefferson have assumed an almost Homeric quality which familiarity denies their more recent successors. Yet, in a list of the greatest US presidents, I would put Reagan at the head...
