[Ronald Reagan] called the image of [George] Washington praying on his knees in Valley Forge the most sublime image in American history.

I was disappointed in how [Bill] Clinton, like [Jimmy] Carter, used the founders to argue for huge expansions in federal power, clearly beyond what the founders could have ever conceived.

Throughout American history our presidents have invoked our nation's founding fathers. This is particularly true of recent presidents.

Maybe the most interesting find in my research is that it is clear that Ronald Reagan, among all modern presidents, plainly rediscovered the founders.

There's the unique case of Ronald Reagan, who cited [founders] some 850 times, and in a way that was absolutely fundamental to understanding Reagan's vision for America.

Speaking of [Ronald] Reagan on the faith of the founders, he was particularly fond of George Washington, who he cited nearly 200 times, and almost twice as much as all the presidents since [John F.]Kennedy combined.

[ Alexis de] Tocqueville said it in 1835, and it's as true today as it was then: 'Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any other.'

Issues are important, yes, but issues come and go. America as an ideal is timeless.

Reagan loved and respected his father, Jack Reagan. But if there was a father figure to Reagan in the religious sense, it was Ben Cleaver. What Reagan's father didn't provide spiritually, from a fatherly point of view, Cleaver did.

Reagan thought that school prayer was important because it was crucial to begin each day reminding students that their inalienable rights came to them from their Creator and not from government bureaucrats.

The American founding is not just about a group of people, a group of men. It is about an ideal: Both a vision and understanding of the very essence of democracy, constitutional government, a representative republic, and the remarkably powerful concept of being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

President Bush, yes, spent money like a drunken sailor, and left the nation with a record $400-billion deficit. President Obama, however, is spending far more money than Bush, with a record $1.8 trillion deficit projected for his first year.

You would hope that the supposed best of American educational institutions would teach its students about America as an institution.

The presidents varied in the degree to which they cited the founders. Some, like JFK, LBJ, [Richard] Nixon, and [Bill] Clinton, cited them somewhat frequently, in the range of 100 to 200 times, though, regrettably, not in a thematic or notably profound or even interesting way. Others, like Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, cited them rarely.

In [Ronald] Reagan's view, the American Founders had anchored their experiment in Judeo-Christian beliefs the Bolsheviks deliberately established an antithetical model. Those founders of communism divorced their faith from God.

When Reagan was outspoken about his faith it was usually for a purpose, but never for getting votes.