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We had as real a war as you can have, a very difficult one against the Soviet empire. I remember the huge anti-nuke protests, the signs, and the ongoing propaganda of the media. All this stuff we see today was pretty much the same.

The rhetoric was the same as it is now, it's just that Reagan engaged the public and went over the heads of media rather than leaving the public square to the rhetoric. I'm not a Bush hater at all, but his idea not to engage because of "the new tone" should have been thrown out some time in 2002 when it was obvious it didn't work. No matter what he did, they were going to go to the garbage dump, not responding just left the public undefended from their lies.

As to the media, there was Walter Cronkite, about to be replaced by Dan Rather, and the other anchors were all libs, and there was no Fox yet. It wasn't a lack of bias, there was no Rush Limbaugh to point out the bias, no talk radio. It was hardly civil.

Bush never pushed back, and it was a mistake. McCain followed in his footsteps in 2008, and now that Sarah Palin is no longer in his shadow, she is pushing back, and it's working.

Bottom line - We'll never know cause Bush didn't try, but looking at what Reagan accomplished agsinst the same monsters of the left might show us a better way.

Of course the Cold War was real, but there were no deaths that the leftist media could splash on the front pages, and bombed vehicles to proudly display. The left was far more vicious against Bush than it was against Reagan.

The rhetoric was not the same. There were books and movies about assassinating President Bush.

I maintain that even without the "new tone" President Bush wouldn't have been effective.

I don't think McCain followed in Bush's footsteps at all. He campaigned very hard......against Bush. And that's why he lost.

I like Sarah's pushing, btw. I just don't think you can or should insist that someone do something he doesn't believe is the appropriate behavior. I would have been screaming in self-defense if I were President Bush, but that's not what he thought was the right thing to do.