The Original Comeback Kid

Campus Report ^ | October 8, 2009 | Malcolm A. Kline

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The Original Comeback Kid

by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 08, 2009

American presidents of both parties, all too often, need to be appreciated at a distance. Of the 20th Century chief executives, perhaps only Ronald Reagan holds up well under scrutiny.

Truly, the more you know about him, the more there is to like. Even a few academics are starting to appreciate him.

“Political scientist Andrew Busch conducted a content analysis of major presidential speeches from Lyndon Johnson through Reagan and found that Reagan cited the Founders three to four times as often as his four predecessors,” Steven F. Hayward writes in his masterful The Age of Reagan. “Reagan mentions the Constitution ten times in his memoirs, often in a substantive way; Carter, Ford, Nixon and Johnson mention the Constitution a grand total of zero times.”

In this way, Reagan represented both a continuity of American tradition and a break with a series of, to put it charitably, failed presidencies. Reagan also marked a number of first in the Oval Office:

• The first divorced man elected president;
• The first Democrat-turned-Republican to serve as commander-in-chief; and
• The first labor union leader.

It was this last part of his resume that led to Reagan’s success as presidential negotiator at home and abroad where others before, and, for that matter, after, him failed. In the words of a Kenny Rogers’ song, he knew when to hold ‘em, knew when to fold ‘em, although did much better than break even.

Contrary to expectations, it was in high stakes international talks, where he was least experienced, that he was, arguably most effective....

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Scholars of the left seem only to praise past Republicans in order to tear present Republicans down.

Eisenhower and Reagan were deemed to be “amiable dunces.” George H. W. Bush was only praised in retrospect, by many liberals who called him a wimp at the time he was president and who said Clinton’s problems with Iraq were all due to Bush 41 “not finishing the job” - he was praised in contrast to his “stupid” son Bush 43, and his not toppling Saddam was then praised.

Just wait for the ntxt Republican president - libs will be saying how smart even Bush 43 was in comparison.

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Reagan cited the Founders three to four times as often as his four predecessors,

0bama talks about them even more than Reagan.

He's always going on about them Honky Slaveowners.

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(One notable example was his use of the phrase “Tear down this wall” in front of the Berlin barricade that separated the communist half of the city from the Western part despite pleas from his advisors not to include it in the speech. Indeed, Hayward shows that one staffer who advised tearing out that reference was none other than Colin Powell.)

Colin Powell’s instincts have been bad for quite a long time.

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Yup.