The best thing about the Canadians' use of a Ronald Reagan video to taunt President Donald Trump's trade policies is that it exposes the 54% of today's Americans who weren't alive during the Reagan presidency to what a real conservative sounds like.

I was in another room when I first heard the commercial featuring Reagan's voice coming from the television. I rushed to answer the siren's song, pulling me back to a better time and place.

Listening to President Reagan make the case for free trade evoked a wave of warm nostalgia. I don't care if his words were rearranged by the Canadians or even if Reagan's record on trade didn't always match his rhetoric. It was still wistful to hear a president espouse policy grounded in the clear principles of free markets, free minds and free men that once defined the conservative movement.

Reagan spoke of those convictions with reason and the confidence that sticking to them would benefit all Americans. Hearing Reagan's voice and seeing him sitting at his desk in an everyman's flannel shirt reminded me of how much we're missing that sort of steadiness and strength in politics.

It prompted me to search the Internet for more of his speeches and think about how base our political discourse has become in the years since he left the White House.

Reagan employed self-deprecation over self-aggrandizement to endear himself to his listeners. His jabs at his opponents were wrapped in humor, rather than crude insults and name-calling. He let his accomplishments speak for themselves, rather than engaging in incessant braggadocio. There was no meanness about him.

In 1980, when Reagan became the first president to campaign on the promise to "Make America Great Again," it was taken as a rallying cry for Americans to unite to pull the nation out of its malaise. Today, those same words are a battle cry to separate Americans.

Reagan didn't spend his eight years in office blaming his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, for the mess he inherited. During the campaign, the harshest words he leveled at Carter were, "There you go again." Reagan understood that to be respected, a president must behave respectfully. He exuded decency and dignity, even when under attack.

The anti-tariffs ad from the Canadians was designed to push Trump's button. And he went off as expected, announcing a new round of tariffs on our neighbor and, in the process, giving lie to his claim that his levies are a response to an economic and fentanyl emergency. They aren't. They're a cudgel to punish his enemies and reward those who grovel at his feet.

Vindictiveness is not a conservative virtue. Neither is building monuments to your own ego. Real conservatives have accepted the mantle of conserving the nation's founding principles and institutions. Today's conservatives in name only tear them down to enable their shortcuts around the rulebook.

The lineage of Ronald Reagan's conservative philosophy, with its firm belief in constrained government, stretches back to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. They wouldn't recognize the brand of conservatism being practiced today.

A YouGov poll from earlier this year found 57% of Americans believe the Reagan era was the country's best in terms of quality of life.

That's what happens when a nation chooses principled leaders instead of bullies and buffoons.

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