Hijacking the Reagan Legacy

[jerseyhoya34]

story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&ncid=703&e=5&u=/ap/20040616/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_ad_reagan

"
The Club for Growth's ad, which is to begin airing Wednesday, portrays both Republican presidents as leaders — Reagan on communism and Bush on terrorism, while claiming Kerry was "wrong then, wrong now" on national security.

The ad shows Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, testifying to Congress in 1971 that "we cannot fight communism all over the world and I think we should have learned that lesson by now."

Former President Reagan is then seen at the Berlin Wall in 1987, saying "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." That's followed by Bush telling rescue workers at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks: "I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

The Reagan family's spokeswoman said Tuesday that permission is needed for anyone to use Reagan's likeness in an ad because doing so implies that he endorsed one candidate over another."

I watched last week's tribute to one of the most important Presidents of the 20th century. It was a great tribute to a man who fulfilled the demands of America's highest office.

I am saddened to think that conservative groups are now using his legacy, against the wishes of Reagan's family, as a political tool and to demean John Kerry's candidacy, which capitalizes on the grief of the American people.

I find it particularly troubling as well considering the following situations:

1) Conservatives across the country expressed their outrage when some Democrats and non-politicians used Paul Wellstone's memorial as a forum for political speeches and as a setting to invoke Wellstone and his campaign language for the benefit of the Dem. candidate. Where is the conservative outrage now?

2) Conservatives and even the First Lady expressed during the rememberance week that their positions were not changing on stem cell research. Laura Bush did so on Wednesday on a morning show, and Chris Smith (R-NJ), among others, made statements of their own on Wednesday. It is rather unfortunate, if you ask me, that they took the opportunity to make such statements in anticipation of the arrival of Reagan in DC for the procession to the Capitol and Rotunda Funeral Service.

Contrast this Republican cherry picking of Reagan's legacy with the resolve of Nancy Reagan, who according to conservative NY Post, has already been asked to speak at the Republican Convention in NYC. She will apparently decline. (Source: nypost.com/gossip/liz.htm)

Anyway, I hope that others share my disappointment in these latest developments.

[thebin]

This is asinine. NOTHING like Wellstone's funeral service occurred during the state services. NOTHING. The analogy is weak to be kind. Did you see Wellstone's service? Where there were Republican Senators in attendance? The screaming and yelling and the hate? Maybe I missed something, I don't remember seeing any of that during Reagan's services. Not some advertisement from an advocy group, but his funeral itself. Just an outrageoulsy poor anology.

Then the stem cell thing.... Let me get this right. The first lady politely stands her ground (on an issue I disagree with her on) and she is a party to "highjacking the Reagan legacy?"

To be perfectly honest, if there was any legacy highjacking going on, it was from all of the mainstream media types who used to whisper about how the old man was going to lead the world to nuclear armageddon with his confrontational ways and how last week they were tripping over themselves to declare how "optimistic" he was so as to shy away from how wrong they were on Soviet confrontation and how right he was.

Sorry Jersey, you got NOTHING in the way of a valid argument here. Nancy Regan not speaking at the RNC? Some smokiing gun. Sounds like you are the one eager to hijack the legacy of a man you never would have voted for. She is 83 and ailing, evidently she is not eating. Plus she was never a politician and has spent the better part of the last decade at a death bed. And she is not going to jump on stage at MSG? BFD. She ain't Mick Jagger- she is an old widow that was never an active speaker to begin with. Club for Growth? Are the Democratic party/candidates/supporters now responsible for everything moveon.org or ANSWER puts out? And don't tell me Club for Growth is mainsteam, Gore, et all have been all over Moveon.org.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33147-2004Jun10.html

Reagan Revisionism


By Charles Krauthammer


The second-greatest president of the 20th century dies (with Theodore Roosevelt coming a close third), and the liberal establishment that alternately ridiculed and demonized Ronald Reagan throughout his presidency is in a quandary. How to remember a man they anathematized for eight years but who enjoys both the overwhelming affection of the American people and decisive vindication by history?

They found their way to do it. They dwell endlessly on the man's smile, his sunny personality, his good manners. Above all, his optimism.

"Optimism" is the perfect way to trivialize everything that Reagan was or did. Pangloss was an optimist. Harold Stassen was an optimist. Ralph Kramden was an optimist. Optimism is nice, but it gets you nowhere unless you also possess ideological vision, policy and prescriptions to make it real, and, finally, the political courage to act on your convictions.

Optimism? Every other person on the No. 6 bus is an optimist. What distinguished Reagan was what he did and said. Reagan was optimistic about America amid the cynicism and general retreat of the post-Vietnam era because he believed unfashionably that America was both great and good -- and had been needlessly diminished by restrictive economic policies and timid foreign policies. Change the policies and America would be restored, both at home and abroad.

He was right.

Moreover, at the time, Reagan's optimism was deemed pejorative. It was the cockeyed optimism of the simpleton, a man too shallow, unsophisticated, unschooled and unthinking -- in short, too stupid -- to know better. An "amiable dunce," as Clark Clifford, wisest of the Washington wise men, dubbed him. Justin Kaplan's 1992 edition of Bartlett's has only three quotes from Reagan -- all trivial, all designed to make him look silly. It was only under pressure that the next edition added "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" and other historic lines.

Clifford and Kaplan spoke for an establishment that considered Reagan a simplistic primitive -- whose simplistic primitivism was endangering the world. These were the twin themes: Reagan was stupid, and his stupidity made him dangerous. Those too young to remember the 1980s would be astonished to know how common the notion was of Reagan as a warmonger.

In the early '80s, the West experienced a nuclear hysteria -- a sudden panic about imminent nuclear destruction and a mindless demand to "freeze" nuclear weapons. What had changed to bring this on? Reagan had become president. Like George W. Bush today, the U.S. president was seen as a greater threat to peace than was the enemy he was confronting.

The nuclear freeze and the accompanying hysteria are an embarrassment that liberals prefer to forget today. Reagan's critics completely misunderstood the logic and the power of his nuclear posture. He took a very hard line on the Soviets, who had broken the nuclear status quo by placing missiles in Europe. Backed by Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, Reagan faced the Soviets down -- despite enormous "peace" demonstrations throughout the West, including the largest one to date in U.S. history (New York City, 1982) -- and ultimately forced the Soviets to dismantle the missiles and begin their overall retreat.

Rarely has a president been so quickly and completely vindicated by history. The Berlin Wall came down 10 months after Reagan left office. His policies of unrelenting toughness won the Cold War and brought a new peace. That is because Reagan understood that the key to peace was never arms control. Security had nothing to do with the number of weapons; it had everything to do with the intention and power of those who possessed them.

Accordingly, Reagan put relentless pressure on the possessors of that power, the Soviet commissars, through his nuclear hard line, military buildup, Strategic Defense Initiative and the Reagan Doctrine of supporting anti-communist guerrillas everywhere (especially Nicaragua). Ultimately, that pressure brought about the collapse of the overextended Soviet empire. The result was the most profound peace the world had experienced in 60 years -- since the very beginning of the totalitarian era in the early 1930s.

This success is an understandable embarrassment to the critics who opposed his every policy. They supported the freeze, denounced the military buildup, ridiculed strategic defenses, opposed aid to the Nicaraguan anti-communists and derided Reagan for telling the truth about the Soviet empire.

So now they praise his sunny smile. Normally, people speak well of the recently deceased to honor the dictum of being kind to the dead. When Reagan's opponents speak well of him now, however, they are trying to be kind to themselves.

[jerseyhoya34]

thebin said:

This is asinine. NOTHING like Wellstone's funeral service occurred during the state services. NOTHING. The analogy is weak to be kind. Did you see Wellstone's service? Where there were Republican Senators in attendance? The screaming and yelling and the hate? Maybe I missed something, I don't remember seeing any of that during Reagan's services. Not some advertisement from an advocy group, but his funeral itself. Just an outrageoulsy poor anology.

Then the stem cell thing.... Let me get this right. The first lady politely stands her ground (on an issue I disagree with her on) and she is a party to "highjacking the Reagan legacy?"

To be perfectly honest, if there was any legacy highjacking going on, it was from all of the mainstream media types who used to whisper about how the old man was going to lead the world to nuclear armageddon with his confrontational ways and how last week they were tripping over themselves to declare how "optimistic" he was so as to shy away from how wrong they were on Soviet confrontation and how right he was.

Sorry Jersey, you got NOTHING in the way of a valid argument here. Nancy Regan not speaking at the RNC? Some smokiing gun. Sounds like you are the one eager to hijack the legacy of a man you never would have voted for. She is 83 and ailing, evidently she is not eating. Plus she was never a politician and has spent the better part of the last decade at a death bed. And she is not going to jump on stage at MSG? BFD. She ain't Mick Jagger- she is an old widow that was never an active speaker to begin with. Club for Growth? Are the Democratic party/candidates/supporters now responsible for everything moveon.org or ANSWER puts out? And don't tell me Club for Growth is mainsteam, Gore, et all have been all over Moveon.org.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33147-2004Jun10.html

Reagan Revisionism


By Charles Krauthammer


The second-greatest president of the 20th century dies (with Theodore Roosevelt coming a close third), and the liberal establishment that alternately ridiculed and demonized Ronald Reagan throughout his presidency is in a quandary. How to remember a man they anathematized for eight years but who enjoys both the overwhelming affection of the American people and decisive vindication by history?

They found their way to do it. They dwell endlessly on the man's smile, his sunny personality, his good manners. Above all, his optimism.

"Optimism" is the perfect way to trivialize everything that Reagan was or did. Pangloss was an optimist. Harold Stassen was an optimist. Ralph Kramden was an optimist. Optimism is nice, but it gets you nowhere unless you also possess ideological vision, policy and prescriptions to make it real, and, finally, the political courage to act on your convictions.

Optimism? Every other person on the No. 6 bus is an optimist. What distinguished Reagan was what he did and said. Reagan was optimistic about America amid the cynicism and general retreat of the post-Vietnam era because he believed unfashionably that America was both great and good -- and had been needlessly diminished by restrictive economic policies and timid foreign policies. Change the policies and America would be restored, both at home and abroad.

He was right.

Moreover, at the time, Reagan's optimism was deemed pejorative. It was the cockeyed optimism of the simpleton, a man too shallow, unsophisticated, unschooled and unthinking -- in short, too stupid -- to know better. An "amiable dunce," as Clark Clifford, wisest of the Washington wise men, dubbed him. Justin Kaplan's 1992 edition of Bartlett's has only three quotes from Reagan -- all trivial, all designed to make him look silly. It was only under pressure that the next edition added "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" and other historic lines.

Clifford and Kaplan spoke for an establishment that considered Reagan a simplistic primitive -- whose simplistic primitivism was endangering the world. These were the twin themes: Reagan was stupid, and his stupidity made him dangerous. Those too young to remember the 1980s would be astonished to know how common the notion was of Reagan as a warmonger.

In the early '80s, the West experienced a nuclear hysteria -- a sudden panic about imminent nuclear destruction and a mindless demand to "freeze" nuclear weapons. What had changed to bring this on? Reagan had become president. Like George W. Bush today, the U.S. president was seen as a greater threat to peace than was the enemy he was confronting.

The nuclear freeze and the accompanying hysteria are an embarrassment that liberals prefer to forget today. Reagan's critics completely misunderstood the logic and the power of his nuclear posture. He took a very hard line on the Soviets, who had broken the nuclear status quo by placing missiles in Europe. Backed by Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, Reagan faced the Soviets down -- despite enormous "peace" demonstrations throughout the West, including the largest one to date in U.S. history (New York City, 1982) -- and ultimately forced the Soviets to dismantle the missiles and begin their overall retreat.

Rarely has a president been so quickly and completely vindicated by history. The Berlin Wall came down 10 months after Reagan left office. His policies of unrelenting toughness won the Cold War and brought a new peace. That is because Reagan understood that the key to peace was never arms control. Security had nothing to do with the number of weapons; it had everything to do with the intention and power of those who possessed them.

Accordingly, Reagan put relentless pressure on the possessors of that power, the Soviet commissars, through his nuclear hard line, military buildup, Strategic Defense Initiative and the Reagan Doctrine of supporting anti-communist guerrillas everywhere (especially Nicaragua). Ultimately, that pressure brought about the collapse of the overextended Soviet empire. The result was the most profound peace the world had experienced in 60 years -- since the very beginning of the totalitarian era in the early 1930s.

This success is an understandable embarrassment to the critics who opposed his every policy. They supported the freeze, denounced the military buildup, ridiculed strategic defenses, opposed aid to the Nicaraguan anti-communists and derided Reagan for telling the truth about the Soviet empire.

So now they praise his sunny smile. Normally, people speak well of the recently deceased to honor the dictum of being kind to the dead. When Reagan's opponents speak well of him now, however, they are trying to be kind to themselves.

I never compared the two memorial services if your read the argument instead of responding to the argument that you thought I made. I said that some Republicans are now using the Reagan death for political purposes in much the same way that some Dems used Wellstone's death for political purposes. While the Club for Growth isn't mainstream, where are the mainstream Republicans asking them to take down the ads? Anyway, we'll see how the election cycle plays out, but I just wonder when one of our leaders will exclaim, "Let's win one for the Gipper."

Incidentally, you also lack understanding of what went on at Wellstone's service. There were Republicans in attendance, which is partly how the outrage was generated. Some of them claimed to feel uncomfortable due to the politicking of some.

I also never said that the First Lady was party to hijacking the legacy. I merely pointed that out as being an act of very poor taste and that Republicans are cherry picking what they want to out of Reagan's legacy and standing their ground on what does not suit their immediate interests but may be more inkeeping with the interests of the Reagan family.

I do agree with you, however, about the media reportage. I believe that much of the coverage distorted Reagan's role etc. and the Cold War itself. If winning the Cold War just involved confronting the Soviets, then Truman would have won it. Winning the Cold War was much more complicated than the media portrays, and some of it was out of our control.

Also, I would suggest that you not say that I'd never vote for Reagan. I am more than willing to support thoughtful Republicans and was very supportive of McCain in 2000. In 1980, I think the choice was very clear and Reagan would have been the best choice given Carter's record.

[showcase]

You've got to love the anti-genius of Krauthammer.

I think it bespeaks the man's lack of class (or his small-mindedness) that he cannot pass up the opportunity to taint a national moment with partisan rancor. A President's death is a moment for the country to pause and remember the man. In this particular instance, it's particularly befitting that Americans of all stripe would attempt to identify an aspect of the man's legacy with which all could agree.

So it's no surprise that many who disagreed with the particulars of Reagan's policies have identified his "optimism" as a laudable feature of the man and his Presidency. That's hardly derisive, however; Krauthammer himself notes the value of Reagan's whole approach to his presidency, and the cultural sea-change it worked on the American psyche. The fact that certain individuals (perhaps even the same individuals) may have derided that 'optimism' during Reagan's Presidency while lauding its virtue now speaks less about the true motiviations of those individuals than the man who cannot let the perceived injusticies inflicted on a third party go, even two decades later.

I think what's most inadvertently ironic about Krauthammer's column is that, in an apparent apoplectic fit of righteous indignation, he insists that those who hold Reagan's "optimism" up as an important aspect of his legacy must be cast out as unworthy for "trivializing" his legacy. Hogwash. No one is more unworthy of defending Reagan's legacy than Krauthammer, because Krauthammer has overlooked one of the more important aspect of Reagan's tenure. If there's one interesting reflection of Reagan's legacy that I've heard from both sides of the political spectrum is that Reagan, both domestically and internationally, had adversaries but not enemies. Yet the slights Krauthammer seeks to vindicate in the wake of Reagan's death are not slights against the man or his Presidency, but slights against Krauthammer and the conservative dogma for which he stands by Krauthammer's own enemies. Through his screed, Krauthammer has become exactly what he reviles: in defending Reagan's legacy (as he sees it) by denouncing the supposed hypocisy and derision of the "liberal media," Krauthammer is not being kind to Reagan, he's being kind to himself.

I also think it's ironic that Krauthammer's piece appears to be emblematic of the exact same kind of partisan thinking that derailed Wellstone's funeral. It is not the column I would have trotted out in response to JH34's reasoning.