Posted on 06/13/2004 1:25:59 PM PDT by dead
Washington, D.C.
PETER LANSING was talking about greatness and Ronald Reagan, but was having a little trouble finding all the right words as he stood outside the U.S. Capitol one evening last week.
"I want to pay my respects to a great man, probably the greatest president in my life," said Lansing, an electrical engineer.
At 46, Lansing has now lived through parts of 10 presidential administrations, including Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. But as he waited to walk by Reagan's flag-draped coffin in the Capitol rotunda, he insisted Reagan was far above everyone else.
Why? What is the single Reagan accomplishment Lansing admired most? Lansing, fell silent a half-minute, then said: "The tax cuts."
Yep, Reagan definitely cut taxes. But he raised them again, too. The man, as they say, was complicated.
And just as he was complicated in the 1980s when he was president, his legacy two decades later is burdened with all manner of complications.
All week during Reagan's drawn-out funeral, we heard whispers of this. It's only natural to assess a president's place in history after he dies. But with Reagan, it was almost as if a defensive wall had been erected as part of his funeral plans.
Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh was in full blather, leading the way in tossing barbs at anyone who voiced a syllable of criticism. And when Limbaugh wasn't playing defensive, others were cheerleading in a way that bordered on Hollywood hype. A day before Reagan's coffin was carried to the Capitol rotunda for public viewing, Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert stepped to a microphone in the House chambers.
"As a former history teacher, I've taught students about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson," Hastert said. "I have taught them about our fellow Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, and I have taught them about FDR and JFK. History has now called Ronald Reagan to take his place alongside the most noble of our countrymen."
Reagan might have been popular, winning all but one state in his 1984 reelection. But does he rank with America's greatest presidents? Republican supporters, not satisfied that Reagan's name adorns an airport (outside Washington, D.C.) and a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, want his face on the $10 bill and his mug sculpted into the rocks on Mount Rushmore. Hearing this, it makes you wonder if America suffers from collective memory loss.
When he came into the White House, Reagan virtually ignored the murder and bloody aftermath of U.S. churchwomen in El Salvador and other crimes against humanity there. His administration later secretly sold weapons to arch-enemy Iran, then used the profits to fund anti-communist Contra guerillas in Nicaragua. And that was just foreign policy.
On the domestic front, homelessness exploded during the Reagan years. So did mortgage rates and the national debt. Meanwhile, the rhetoric from the White House seemed to suggest that being poor was a crime. Welfare moms were painted all with the same negative brush - as "welfare queens." All this was supposed to be part of the new, creative form of governing that conservatives ushered in. Yep, this stuff was real creative. In one of their more embarrassing moments, Reagan cost-cutters suggested that "ketchup is a vegetable" - this as a way of revamping school lunch programs for poor children.
And while we're on the subject of creative word choices by the Reaganites, who could forget Reagan's own little joke while he tested a microphone for his weekly radio speech? He suggested that the United States would begin bombing the Soviets in a few minutes.
Wasn't that a laugh riot? That day, Reagan did not know the radio microphone was as on and that his words would be broadcast over the air. But the idea that a president would joke even privately about nuclear war tells you something about his thought process.
The truth is that Ronald Reagan was not great at all. He was just ... OK. Great presidents lead the nation through wars - as Lincoln and FDR did. Or they bring their own courage to international emergencies- as JFK did with the Cuban missile crisis. They develop new programs - as FDR did.
Reagan did none of this. Yes, he invaded puny Grenada. His international crisis was Lebanon - a debacle in which 241 Marines were killed. As for programs - well, this just wasn't Reagan's forte. The AIDS epidemic blossomed during the Reagan years, with thousands of Americans dying mysteriously. The White House barely said anything.
Remembering all this is not petty. It's history. But as Reagan was praised last week, it was almost as if Hollywood's script doctors had taken hold of real history, even giving their man credit for playing the most important role in ending the Cold War. Don't they remember Lech Walesa, the Polish union leader who forced the Soviets to really blink?
Outside the Capitol, it was Reagan's style, not substance, that seemed to matter most. John Pierre, who came all the way from Canada, remembered Reagan's "sensibility." Peter Lansing recalled Reagan's "confidence and how it spilled over."
Reagan was seen as a nice guy, sort of a "President Feel Good." Back then, after Watergate and Vietnam, maybe that was good enough. Does it still have to be that way?
Record Columnist Mike Kelly can be contacted at kellym@northjersey.com. Send comments about this column to oped@northjersey.com.
Ronald Reagan triggered the largest peace time economic expansion in the history of the world and set in motion the events that would free 300 million people from tyranny, in the process greatly diminishing the threat of global nuclear annihilation.
But, since he didn't start any new government programs, he can't be called "great." Freaking liberals.
Long after this author is reduced to the ash heap of history, we will still be loving President Reagan. I am so glad I was a child during his presidency- he instilled in me a lifelong love of this country and showed me that you should never be ashamed to show you love it.
The media can say the same things they have said about him for years and its not going to make any difference. Their power to manipulate minds has seriously decreased in recent years, to their chagrin. The people just don't believe them any more. 21% interest rates, gas lines, and hostage crises are hard to forget.
Homelessness did not explode because of Reagan's presidency. It exploded because we decided that people living on the street were no longer vagrants but an exalted group. We also decided that we could not tell people to stop living on the streets. As a result we got lots of them. And we are surprised?
I wonder what Mike Kelly thinks about Wm. Jefferson Clinton.
I'm so effing sick of lefties blaming President Reagan for AIDS . I guess they never heard of personal responsibility. Oh, wait...the government is supposed to protect us from everything, especially ourselves. Idiots.
the national debt
Funny how the debt exploded after a massive increase in tax revenues (caused by the decrease in marginal tax rates).
the White House seemed to suggest that being poor was a crime
And poverty declined, while the definition of poverty steadily became "richer."
We knew it wouldn't be long, what is surprising is that
they waited as long as they did!
It's really sad how low journalistic standards are.
Add to the fact that the liberals sued mental hospitals, saying that they were holding people "against their will." With nowhere else to go the mentally ill lived on the streets and became minor celebrities in the liberals' crusade.
do these liberals realise that JFK almost got us blown off the map because of his huge blunder in not taking Castro out in the Bay of Pigs?,, the Cuban Missile Crisis never would have happened if he had done his job,, so other than that we got the Peace Corp,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Even Travelgate, probably the least serious of Clinton's crimes, dwarfs Iran-Contra and possibly Watergate in comparison.
All those who insist (or in this case imply) that the cause of homelessness is lack of jobs need to instead be applying their activism to reopening and paying for the mental institutions where most of the homeless belong.
Morality is a personal choice to these people but diseases (and epidemics among those of low morals) brought on by those personal choices are a public problem requiring the attention of and the prompt action of the President.
The very fact that liberals are rushing to define the Gipper in the days after his death proves that they know history will remember him as a great president, that their only hope is to define him negatively for this generation. It ain't happening.
Same here. Reagan really created the legend of the 80s as a care-free era with feel-good music, movies, and trends.
I grew up in the 80s and kids like me just had fun. We didn't spend time practicing nuclear war drills under our desks and our parents didn't constantly have their heads buried in the Classifieds looking for work.
That said, I sent an email telling him why.
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