Ron Reagan's Pere Pressure

Washington Post ^ | July 15, 2004 | Richard Cohen

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Ron Reagan's Pere Pressure

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page A21

... Let's leave aside the implied accusation that Bush is publicly religious not out of conviction but "to gain political advantage" and question the appropriateness of the statement -- at the burial and citing the dead Reagan. And let us also concede that if Ron Reagan were not his father's son, not only would he not have been at that funeral -- by virtue of what achievement? -- but no one would have paid him any attention. He had, as he well knew, expropriated his father's fame and stature for his own purposes....

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Ron Reagan also proceeds as something of a medium, channeling his father's unknowable views on such matters as Bush's very public religiosity. At Reagan's interment in Simi Valley, Calif., for instance, he said, "Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man, but he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians -- wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage."