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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Andrew N. Cothran who wrote (50077)	6/12/2004 11:02:50 AM
From: Andrew N. Cothran	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794040

Kerry on Reagan:The Massachusetts senator is saying all the right things now, but what did he say about Reagan before? by Katherine Mangu-Ward 06/07/2004 5:45:00 PM SENATOR JOHN KERRY issued a respectful and respectable statement in response to the news of President Reagan's death on Saturday. "Ronald Reagan's love of country was infectious," he said. "Even when he was breaking Democrats' hearts, he did so with a smile and in the spirit of honest and open debate. Despite the disagreements, he lived by that noble ideal that at 5:00 p.m. we weren't Democrats or Republicans, we were Americans and friends." This was an appropriate, even deft, statement--followed by the announcement by Kerry that he was canceling campaign events this week. But it's worth taking a look back at what Kerry said about Reagan during and after his presidency. Reagan was president when Kerry was elected to the Senate, and their ideological clashes were colorful and frequent. That's to be expected. Occasionally, however, during Reagan's presidency and in subsequent years, Kerry crossed the line into strident invective: * In November 2002, U.S. News & World Report carried this Kerry assessment of Reagan's presidency: "You roll out the president one time a day. One exposure to all of you [the media]. No big in-depth inquiries. Put him in his brown jacket and his blue jeans, put him on a ranch, let him cock his head, give you a smile, and it looks like America's OK." He repeated the same sentiments in an interview with Vogue last year, this time drawing a parallel to Bush: ''They have managed him the same way they managed Ronald Reagan," Kerry contended. ''They send him out to the press for one event a day. They put him in a brown jacket and jeans and get him to move some hay or drive a truck, and all of a sudden, he's the Marlboro Man." * That's not the only time Kerry has offered unflattering Bush-Reagan comparisons. In an interview last September with the Manchester Union-Leader, Kerry said, "We've seen governors come to Washington, . . . and they don't have the experience in foreign policy, and they get in trouble pretty fast. Look at Ronald Reagan. Look at Jimmy Carter and, now, obviously, George Bush." * In 1992 Kerry said, "Ronald Reagan certainly was never in combat. I mean, many of his movies depicted him there. And he may have believed he was, but he never was. And the fact is that he sent Americans off to die." * After his first major political battle in the Senate over Reagan's support for the Nicaraguan contras in 1985, Kerry said "I think it was a silly and rather immature approach," of Reagan's dismissal of a "peace offer" from Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega * Last year Kerry said to the Democratic National Committee: "I'm proud that I stood against Ronald Reagan, not with him, when his intelligence agencies were abusing the Constitution of the United States and when he was running an illegal war in Central America." In fact, Kerry has spoken at great length about the Reagan administration's "abuse of the Constitution" and "totalitarian" inclinations: "They were willing to literally put the Constitution at risk because they believed there was somehow a higher order of things, that the ends do in fact justify the means. That's the most Marxist, totalitarian doctrine I've ever heard of in my life. . . . You've done the very thing that James Madison and others feared when they were struggling to put the Constitution together, which was to create an unaccountable system with runaway power . . . running off against the will of the American people." Kerry was right to say kind words about Reagan on the day of his death. But they shouldn't obscure what Kerry said about Reagan during his life. Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reporter at The Weekly Standard. © Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

To: Andrew N. Cothran who wrote (50077)	6/12/2004 12:21:11 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 794040

Reagan has been buried. I assume it's now OK to assert that he was not God. <<Both Great and Right:Why Ronald Reagan made a difference and what his detractors are really after... "RONALD REAGAN was great because Ronald Reagan was right." So declared Gipper speechwriter Peter Robinson, author of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life... >> Ronald Reagan made a huge difference. He was one of the two most important presidents of the twentieth century, IMO. He was important because of the difference he made. He changed all our lives. His presidency was pivotal. He turned the country from the Great Society. And he facilitated the end of the Cold War. That's important to the max. That doesn't mean, however, that he was either great or right. Future generations will have to assess that. We can't. We don't know if he was right. We will have to see how things play out. As for him being great, it's hard to say now how much of the output of his presidency was genius and how much was luck or being in the right place at the right time. History may declare him great but it's to early for us to enshrine him. As for what his detractors are after... <<Throughout this week of mourning, Reagan-haters have been calling my show to object that Reagan increased the deficit, and of course, to bring up Iran-Contra. Throwing pebbles at the battleship, as the saying goes, and I ask every one of them to contact a Pole or a Latvian or a Romanian and ask their opinion about Reagan. >> Reagan haters? People objecting to the deification of someone who increased the deficit and produced Iran-Contra? Gimme a break. There are no doubt some Reagan haters out there but this is not evidence of them. What it is evidence of, IMO, is people sick of the adoring ones acting like it was a perfect presidency. It wasn't. It was marred by many things. And it was controversial even where it wasn't necessarily marred. Why can't everyone just agree that it was a mixed presidency even while they disagree on whether it was a net plus or a minus and to what degree? I happen to be among those who considered it a net plus. I was delighted to see the tide turn against the Great Society. I credit Reagan for that so I'm a fan. But even there, where he was great, and I believe that he was right, he might not have been right. When I watch what has been done with his legacy, such as the demise of federalism, I wonder. Only time will tell if he was right. Where Reagan was great was that he was a great, great, great Republican. For the true believers, that would, by extension, make him a great president. But it's not necessarily so and it will be a while before we can assess it.