The Republicans The Torch Is Passed

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Twenty years ago, as part of a revolt against an era of Big Government, the name of Ronald Reagan was first put in nomination at a Republican Convention. Richard Nixon won top billing that year, but it was the favorite-son Governor of California who would prove to be the party's most enduring inspiration. First in graceful defeat, then in glorious triumph, and finally as a reassuring symbol of the presidency itself, Reagan became the conservative constant through two decades of Republican resurgence. This Monday in New Orleans, the era's most successful Republican politician will take the podium to thunderous applause and, as part of his final bow, urge Americans to continue his legacy by supporting George Herbert Walker Bush, the dutiful deputy who has been tapped as his heir.

There is an inherent uneasiness in all dynastic succession. Bush embraced the true conservative faith late in life, and purists still question his ideological pedigree. He fully understands that he must woo the national electorate as a man of the future rather than the past, which is why he declared in one major speech, "I do not hate government."

But for all the talk about Bush's asserting his political independence, the Vice President cannot hope to defeat Michael Dukakis without standing on the shoulders of the President. Bush appears, on present form at least, overmatched as a candidate, offering the voters little more than a resume without a rationale. Yet as the crown prince, the authorized inheritor of the Reaganite mantle, Bush may still be able to rally the faithful behind the implicit message of "Four More Years."

In its narrowest terms, the Reagan record allows Bush to run as the candidate of peace and prosperity. Whether it is Soviet troops withdrawing in disarray from Afghanistan or a leader in the Kremlin who wants, in Reaganite fashion, to get the commissars off the backs of productive enterprise, the world appears to be fulfilling the President's boldest dreams. At home, most Americans have enjoyed the longest peacetime economic expansion in modern history. The "misery index" -- that combination of inflation and unemployment rates that the Democrats invoked to bedevil Gerald Ford in 1976 -- now stands at less than 10, roughly half what it was when Jimmy Carter left office. Reagan has also fulfilled his antigovernment pledge to drastically slash income-tax rates.

That might be enough if the Constitution allowed the President to run, for a third term, instead of Bush. But the very orchestration of the New Orleans convention, with Reagan leading off and the Vice President batting cleanup, emphasizes the philosophic legacy that Bush will formally accept Thursday night. The Republican nominee is inescapably cast in the role of the grateful inheritor. But what precisely is Reagan's bequest?