Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?

Rich Lowry (and John Patrick Diggins) make their play for the Stupidest Men Alive prize. You have to admit they make a pretty good team:

Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History By John Patrick Diggins - Books - Review - New York Times: Ronald Reagan's reputation has been rising for so long, it is no longer shocking to read a respected historian hail him as, after Abraham Lincoln, "one of the two or three truly great presidents in American history." That's how John Patrick Diggins describes Reagan in a book that is a bid to save him from the dismissiveness of liberal historiography on the one hand and from his conservative worshipers on the other...

In the company of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, the progressive Roosevelt, the liberal Roosevelt, Truman?

Comments

["As You Know" Bob]

I was in the rustbelt (and looking for a job...) during the Reagan Depression - the era that saw the worst unemployment America has seen since before Pearl Harbor.

And the ONLY reason Reagan escaped impeachment is because he convinced Congress that he was incompetent.

Oh, and he very nearly got us all killed in a nuclear showdown that he didn't fully comprehend.

His reputation certainly NEEDED rehabilitation, because until Bush the Lesser came along, Reagan was the worst American President since Hoover, if not since Harding. (Both Republicans, too: notice a trend?)

[ken]

John Kennedy surely merits inclusion among the all time great. His 'victory' in the Cuban Missal Crisis was the decisive turning point in the cold war.

[Aniruddha G. Kulkarni]

Nothing surprises me any more on rating of the American presidents. Few hundred years on, they all (except one or two like Abraham Lincoln) will sound more and more like Roman kings.

Newsweek compares George Bush and Truman and never says- yes, GB, thankfully, has not YET turned out be as murderous as HT.

If 'Pol Pot' HT is counted as a great President as many in US do (likes of Bob Woodward), god (if she exists) indeed save America and the rest of us!

[supersaurus]

"In the company of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, the progressive Roosevelt, the liberal Roosevelt, Truman?"

Reagan *is* among that august company: they are all dead.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/opinion/19mon3.html

February 19, 2007

Making Martial Law Easier

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president’s use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.

The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.” ...

[pgl]

All Lowry notes is Reagan's continuation of the Cold War against the Evil Empire. Maybe he was smart with this column as he steered clear of Reagan's fiscal folly, his ignoring the S&L crisis etc.

[Bruce Webb]

"Ronald Reagan's reputation has been rising for so long"

But has it? There once was a push to get at least one civic element in every county named after Ronald Reagan. The air seemed to have leaked out of that baloon and I sense more mockery and much less adulation in recent years. The bow-tie boys Wills, Kristol and Carlson seem to have lost some of their hot air, maybe somebody pulled a finger.

I suspect that in this case as in others Bush II just managed to screw it all up. The people behind Bush deliberately set out to make the Fratboy the Son of Reagan, the natural heir. Well the end result has been to make the old man look bad. The Bush Administration has essentially been the Reagan Administration on steroids, with an extra sock stuffed into the codpiece. Not working so well right now and in my opinion reflecting badly back on Reagan.

[RKKA]

Yes, we can see that the smirking chimp in the Oval Office is merely the culmination of what Reagan brought to Washington. Reckless, belligerent foreign policy? Check. Reckless, "borrow and spend" fiscal policy? Check. "Screw everyone but the top 1%" economic policy? Check. And it is vital that the Right never saddle our Republic with their like, ever again. To do this, their whole system of fundraising/propaganda development/punditocracy must be entirely destroyed.

That must be our task, starting when we win the Presidency in 2008.

[Simon]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19910

I don't know much about Ronald Reagan, but this review shows a side of his character you don't often hear about:

He does not suggest that Reagan read closely in Emerson, but notes that Reagan quoted him on several occasions, including his last speech, in which he said, "Emerson was right. We are the country of tomorrow.... America remains on a voyage of discovery, a land that has never become, but is always in the act of becoming." We now know, moreover, that Reagan's mind was attuned to the pleasures of the written word. Recent publication of Reagan: A Life in Letters reveals a compulsive, lifelong letter writer and possessor of a sound and economical prose style, a man obviously comfortable in his command of language.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

In the current Vanity Fair Senator McCain says something to the effect that Reagan's alzheimer's was visible even while he was still in office.

Now "visibly acting like a demented person" doesn't strike me as high praise for a President. Surely being called mindless is a sign of low, not high, reputation...

[bigTom]

How he comes out in the grand scheme of things depends on your view of the end of the cold war. Was Reagan simply lucky, to have occupied the office during a time of inevitable historical transformation, or was it the result of his policies? Were his policies responsible for the successful winding down of such war, or did they increase the odds that it could have ended catastrophically?
All the other issues (incompentence in many areas) pale into insignificance. But I think there are no definitive answers to the above question(s).

[ken melvin]

Where ronnie without his advocates/propagandists?

[Dennis Doubleday]

Brad says

"In the company of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, the progressive Roosevelt, the liberal Roosevelt, Truman?"

Worse than that, "one of the two or three truly great presidents in American history" implies that he is in the Washington/Lincoln Valhalla, perhaps even surpassing one of them.

[spencer]

bigTom -- you are clearly asking the right question.

I for one come down very hard with the view that Reagan just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He did not do anything but continue the cold war policies that has been in place since Truman. For example, if you are looking for the proximate cause of the collapse of the Soviet economy in the 1980s it was the plunge in the price of oil, not the Reagan military buildup.

But on the other hand one has to give Reagan full credit for recognizing that the Soviet leadership was changing and for throwing his weight behind the soviet reformers even though many of Reagan's domestic supporters opposed his doing this.

[howard]

spencer makes a critical point: reagan was much less of a rigid ideologue than his followers.

which isn't to say he was a great president or anything, but that it's interesting how the hardcore right wing has attempted to turn reagan into something he wasn't: one of them.

[andres]

howard, while I sympathize with your attempt to be fair to St. Ronnie, I think you're giving him too much credit. That the Reagan administration had some creditable accomplishments (shoring up Social Security, accepting a thaw in relations with Gorbachev, 2nd term restraing of the surging 1st term deficit) is due entirely to there being in Washington Republicans who still had a sense of the political constraints they were working under: men such as Baker, Greenspan, and Schultz, among others.

By 2001, those constraints were gone and we have seen not the slightest trace of the mythical Adult Republican. The good thing about people like Baker, Greenspan, Schultz, and others is not that they are or were "Adult", but that they recognized rightly or wrongly that there were some things they couldn't get away with, and this is the only thing that prevented Reagan from being a replica of George W. Bush. That obviously no longer applies to the current White House group.

[wcw]

Second the tip for the NYBooks review of the same hagiography. While my memory is too good to convince me up is down, I find the Emersonian argument to be less unconvincing than most. Certainly, it is not serious analysis, but it does say something, it's backed by a hint of evidence, and it does not seem completely at variance with fact.

[howard]

andres: at the end of the day, reagan agreed to tax hikes (including his best single action, the '86 tax reform), didn't fight to abolish social security, didn't do anything stupid wrt to lebanon, and some similar sorts of things.

who knows, maybe it was adult republicans, maybe it was tip o'neill, maybe it was something else, but the point is that he wasn't in practice a right-wing ideologue nearly to the extent that his successors/followers/hagiographers would have liked....

[ken melvin]

In promoting the Reagan Myth this lot's real agenda is to promote their own dogma. He was a front then; still is.

[anon]

You listed Jackson as an all-time great. Well, I can see Reagan with Jackson. Not with any of the others listed though.

Except, Reagan did one very big and very great thing, in my opinion. He listened to smart people who advised dealing with Gorbachev, and he was an important force in helping wind down the Cold War. It was an imperfect effort, and the neocons put way too much emphasis on the effect of the Reagan arms build up. But I think that is a significant accomplishment of Regan's presidency, and one of the reasons I have quite a bit of respect for him, even if I disagree completely with 80% of what he did and said. So, I think Reagan will go down as a significant president who did some good to balance much of the bad.

Think about what would have happened if Bush Sr were president at that time -that guy just had a real jones for the Cold War, he just couldn't let go. Shudder about what might have happened if violent incompetent loons like Cheney or Rumsfeld had gotten their way. Maybe a 100 thousand years from now, the descendents of them damn dirty apes would find a decipherable print of Dr Srangelove in some obscure layer of ash and rubble.

[Roger Albin]

Reagan was lucky. Suppose Chernenko and Andropov had each lived a couple more years? The real initiative for ending the Cold War came from Gorbachev. If the latter had come to power later, we'd be talking about Bush 1 and not Reagan as the President who negotiated the end of the Cold War. Reagan and his team (especially then Secretary of State George Schulz) do deserve considerable credit for recognizing that Gorbachev meant what he said and making an about face from Reagan's first term foreign policy.

The dementia issue raised above is an interesting one. There have been rumors about this issue for years. The public facts, however, are suggestive. Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease in 1994. There is usually a prodrome of cognitive decline which can span years. In 1989, he underwent surgery for a subdural hematoma. You have to ask why his physicians obtained the CT scan that lead to the diagnosis of the subdural hematoma. The most common reason CT scans are obtained in older people is because of concern about cognitive problems. Anyone who compares Reagan's poor performances in the debates with Mondale with his self-assured and glib performances in the 1980 election would conclude that something had changed. The available facts do support the hypothesis that he had some dementia during his second term. Given that he delegated much of his authority to competent individuals like Howard Baker and George Schulz, this may not have been a bad thing.

[anon]

I'm halfway between Andres and Howard, Reagan had a strong pragmatic streak, and he was a very shrewd politician, as were some of his most important advisors. He was a much more moderate governor of California than his reputation and his rhetoric would indicate. Someday we may know whether the Reaganauts did not fulfill the neocon and reactionary wingnut fantasies re social security, etc. because they were 'adults' or because they knew it would not fly and harm them politically too much to attempt the full counter revolution.

[anon]

I've read that Reagan had to fight many of his most senior adviors's complete opposition in order to make the about face on the Soviet Union. I give him credit for listening to Schultz and other sane people (who where, I've read, a minority of his advisors) when almost all of the other advisors would not even consider changing policies.

Who would Bush I have listened to at that time? I thank God we will never know. Byt the time Bush I became president, things were too advanced for him to make much difference.

[BillCross]

Maybe I am misremembering, but didn't Gorbachev essentially begin unilaterally ratcheting down the Cold War and then Reagan basically didn't do much to embolden Gorbachev's opponents in the Soviet Union

[bigTom]

Reagan did have a real way with words, and could come across as a real friend. This might have helped in the cold-war wind-down. He & Gorbachev were able to make it about changing a corrupt system -not about humiliating the people that were stuck with such system.
Clearly anyone close to the trade-union movement will never forgive him for the Patco episode. At the time I thought unions had too much power, that doesn't seem to be true today. Also while personally deeply religious, he didn't force his views upon the country -or exploit them for political gain.

[Richard Green]

Jackson? A great? The I-don't-care-what-the-Supremes-say-trail-of-tears guy? The abolisher of the Second Bank of the United States? The guy who retired in time to leave the US with one of the longest periods of recession in its history?

I'll never understand why he is considered great.

[Bruce Moomaw]

What the hell is Jackson doing on DeLong's list of Great Presidents? He remains the only one in US history to openly defy the Supreme Court -- and he did so because it forbade him to carry out genocide against the native Americans because of his "pathological hatred" of them (to quote Poul Anderson). To say nothing of the fact that he's the only president on that list to support slavery...

For that matter, what is TR doing there, given the bloodbath he knowingly presided over in the Philippines in order to repress a genuinely democratic insurgency (unlike all those Leninist "people's revolutions" that came along later)?

[I shouldn't have said "great" but rather "important." I wouldn't expect NR types to agree on my choices of "great and good," but I would expect non-idiots to agree with my choices of "important."]

[Bruce Moomaw]

As for Reagan, we do have to consider what he would have done had the GOP controlled the House -- or how chowderheaded his policies might have been in dealing with the current Islamoterrorist crisis. He might have had sense enough to back off from the abyss (he certainly bailed out of Beirut fast enough) -- or he might not have.

[Bruce Moomaw]

In defense of George Will against Bruce Webb: he may have dined frequently with Nancy, but this didn't stop him from making many an acerbic (and accurate) crack about her husband while he was actually in office:

"Reagan's brand of conservatism is popular because it consists of giving the average American a dollar's worth of government for 80 cents worth of taxes, with the rest being borrowed."

"Reagan is frequently referred to as the Great Communicator. Well, if I stand on my front porch and yell to the neighborhod kids, 'Let's all go out for pizza!', I will quickly draw a wildly enthusiastic crowd, but it won't make me a Great Communicator."

In fact, it wasn't until Clinton hit office that Will -- in my own observation -- suddenly took a major swerve for some reason toward the dopier version of far Rightism (from which he has yet to recover, despite his sour view of Mr. Bush's War).

[zinc]

This is really scary. Reagan was crazier than a bedbug. The guy actually waxed forth in a speach about his war heroics. The story was actually the plot from a John Wayne movie.

Reagan never left the states in WW II.

[cb]

"Anyone who compares Reagan's poor performances in the debates with Mondale with his self-assured and glib performances in the 1980 election would conclude that something had changed. The available facts do support the hypothesis that he had some dementia during his second term. Given that he delegated much of his authority to competent individuals like Howard Baker and George Schulz, this may not have been a bad thing."

This is precisely it. It is shocking to see the deterioration between 80 and 84. And it wasn't just a poor performance in a debate, it was someone obviously disoriented. It is hard to ignore the potential impact of trauma of the shooting. And then the further rapid deterioration (note the 1987 memo written by James Cannon to Howard Baker about Reagan's mental state).

[theCoach]

I rank Reagan third...among the last 4 Presidents.

[Auto]

I think claims of Reagan's greatness as president rest on his attractive personality.

Without his sunny disposition, we'd all have seen that he was just another nasty conservative willing to use the powers of the federal gov't to stick it to America's non-rich.

While I'm glad the Cold War (more or less) ended on his watch, he didn't do much else that I care for, either then or today.

That said, I would have liked to have the old coot as my next-door neighbor. He sounds like a decent even tolerant man, someone with an endless store of racy gossip about 30s/40s movie stars. He would have disliked my politics, but it would not have stopped him from picking up my newspaper on days when I was away.

And I'm sure he would have popped over to my house for a drink to get away from his pushy, demanding wife.

Who the hell would want either of the Bushes as next-door neighbors?

[New York Real Estate]

Seriously... I maybe would put Reagan as top 15... there's no way he's anywhere near the top 5. Diggin's obviously doesn't know basic American history.
Eric
New York Real Estate