Ronald Reagan would have been 97 today.

Democrats warned the Republican Party that if it nominated Ronald Reagan, it would bring ruin upon the party. Instead, Ronald Reagan won two of the most decisive election victories ever won by an American president.

Once elected, Democrats warned that Ronald Reagan would bring on economic disaster with his “trickle-down” economics and cause World War III by calling the Soviet’s bluff. Instead, he started an era of nearly inflation-free growth — the biggest economic expansion in history — that has continued for more than 20 years with just two, very short interruptions. And he brought the Soviets to their knees by exposing and exploiting the weaknesses they hid behind their wall of propaganda.

Ronald Reagan did the impossible, and he did it with such ease and grace and style (and remember, style is the opposite of fashion), that it all looks so obvious in retrospect, and it’s too easy to forget how radical he really was. History is replete with examples of Reagan policies that the Democrats fought tooth-and-nail at the time, but which have since become foundational to the policies of both parties.

When Ronald Reagan became president, the highest marginal tax rate was 70%, and the Democrats opposed his “tax cuts for the rich.” The highest marginal tax rate is now 39% — close to half that — and rich people pay a larger portion of national budget than ever.

When Ronald Reagan became president, marginal tax rates were not indexed to inflation, so that cost-of-living pay raises created de facto tax hikes by moving Americans into higher tax brackets for the same income in inflation-adjusted dollars, and Democrats opposed this because the government “just couldn’t afford it.”

When Ronald Reagan became president, the notion that, “we can’t turn back the clock” dominated, and “realists” used it to communicate that Soviet expansion was inevitable and irreversable. Ronald Reagan was the first American head of state since World War II during whose tenure communism gained not one single square inch of ground.

When Ronald Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers for striking when it was strictly forbidden by their employment contract, Democrats claimed that airplanes would fall from the sky. Instead, service continued with barely an interruption, and Reagan put the union labor monopolies in their place with much less disruption than Thatcher’s effort to do the same in the United Kingdom.

There are enough examples to fill a book.

Ronald Reagan wasn’t perfect, and he had his bad moments, but on his birthday, let us remember his triumphs.

For me and an entire generation of Americans, Ronald Wilson Reagan, our 40th president, will forever set the standard against which other presidents are measured. Ronald Reagan brought real change that people believed in. Ronald Reagan was a uniter and and not a divider. Ronald Reagan was a reformer that brought results. When everybody, even many of his allies, said that his he couldn’t accomplish his presidential goals, Ronald Reagan responded, “Yes we can.” And he did.

As Barack Obama recently noted, Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of American politics. He wasn’t just a great communicator. He wasn’t just a great idea man. He spoke in concrete terms about great truths, and people followed him like they followed few other presidents.

I miss Ronald Reagan.