Saturday marked the passing of America’s 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan, after an extended battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Love or hate his politics, Reagan will be remembered as a shaping force in the American political arena for years to come, from his iconoclastic conservatism to his unwavering optimism and faith in the inherent good of Americans. To many he was known as “the Great Communicator,” eloquently articulating a vision of America as a beacon of liberty to the rest of the world, or to use his own words, “a shining city on a hill.”

Reagan’s political legacy was a mixed one, of course. Among his many accomplishments, he is credited for hastening the demise of the Soviet Union, bringing about the end of the Cold War, best summed up in his famous admonition to his Soviet counterpart when he said, “Mr. Gorbachev… Tear down this wall!”

Likewise, Reagan was exceptionally skilled at winning over ideological opponents, most remarkably when he convinced a Democrat-controlled Congress to pass his massive tax cuts, which included cutting the top income tax bracket from its prior level of 70 percent and carrying out a net reduction in government spending, a feat unheard of in today’s administrations.

There was a dark side to this, of course — Reagan’s tax cuts combined with his defense buildup led to massive deficits, forcing his successor George H.W. Bush to break his infamous pledge, “Read my lips — no new taxes.”

Likewise, not all of his policies showed the same degree of prescience as his confrontation of the Soviet Union. His missile-defense initiative (dubbed “Star Wars” by critics) was at best the stuff of science fiction, costing hundreds of millions of dollars with little to show for. Further, his administration’s aggressive anti-communist foreign policy involved making several short-sighted alliances with tyrants and thugs, from the Iran-Contra affair to our support of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

More so, his administration’s support for mandatory minimum sentencing in drug crimes, intended to be “a sword and shield in the War on Drugs,” as he called it, has resulted in a massive overcrowding of our prisons with non-violent offenders, leading to the United States having one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.

Despite these shortcomings, Reagan’s presidency marked a turning point in American politics. Finishing what Barry Goldwater started in 1964, Reagan carried out a political revolution, showing that there was more than one dominant philosophy toward government. More importantly, he showed us the good in ourselves as a nation at a time when we needed it most.

So long, Dutch — and happy trails.