As time goes by, Reagan looks like a giant
James P. Pinkerton
February 6, 2007
As with any historical figure, Ronald Reagan's reputation has been riding both the up escalator and the down escalator. But it's interesting today, on what would have been the 40th president's 96th birthday, to note that Reagan is being increasingly praised by onetime enemies and increasingly criticized by ostensible friends - who at least call themselves conservatives.
For most of Reagan's life and career, the liberal/media establishment contented itself with phrases such as "right-wing cowboy" and "amiable dunce" to describe the Gipper. But now, the judgment is changing. For example, Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, quoted Leslie Stahl as admiring Reagan's "gallantry." Stahl, who covered Reagan for CBS News, certainly rarely had anything nice to say about him when he was in office. But in the nearly two decades since, even many liberals have admitted that Reagan's leadership succeeded in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and in the economic war against inflation and economic "malaise."
And now comes an approving book from John Patrick Diggins, well-known historian of the left, "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History," which argues that Reagan "deserves to be regarded as one of our three or four greatest presidents."Diggins lauds Reagan for ending the nuclear arms race and moving America away from welfare-state dependency, but then he takes his praise in a direction many traditional Reaganites might not agree with: "Far from being a conservative, Reagan was the great liberating spirit of modern American history, a political romantic impatient with the status quo."The author is on to something. Reagan, after all, declared many times on the stump that Americans "have the power to begin the world over again" - not exactly a conservative thought. In fact, Reagan was a New Dealer back in the '30s and '40s; as he often said, he didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him.
So Diggins' book will make some conservatives uncomfortable - precisely because the author has articulated an additional facet of Reagan's persona.But that's the way it goes with the great actors of history. On the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton declared, "Now he belongs to the ages." Stanton might have said, "Now he belongs to the historians" - who have been writing about Lincoln ever since. And so it goes, as well, for Reagan, who died in 2004.
Interestingly, many "friends" of Reagan have turned into ex-friends. One such is the prominent neoconservative Norman Podhoretz. As early as 1983, he accused Reagan of "appeasement by any other name" - this being the same year that Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative. But the neocons have their specific reason for disliking Reagan: They accuse him of being weak in the Middle East. The clearest statement of this view has come from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said back in 2003, "The terrorists declared war on America ... many years before Sept. 11, 2001." She cited, among other incidents, "the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988" - all of which occurred during the Reagan presidency.
Yet, Rice continued, until the George W. Bush administration, "the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response."These days, of course, the wisdom of the Bush administration's "response" to terrorism - specifically, the Iraq war - is under, shall we say, close scrutiny. And so maybe Reagan's response doesn't look so bad in comparison. Nobody thinks of his Marine mission to Lebanon as a success, but at least the Gipper knew when to cut his losses.
So happy birthday, Mr. President. You've gone up to that Great Ranch in the Sky, leaving liberals to like you more and some conservatives to like you less. But this onetime staffer of yours - and forever an admirer - sees you as the gold standard for presidents.
James P. Pinkerton's e-mail ad- dress is pinkerto@ix.netcom .com.
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.
Ronald Wilson Reagan
America's 40th President
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Friday, February 2, 2007
Noonan: "Happy Birthday, Mr. Reagan"
PEGGY NOONAN
Happy Birthday, Mr. Reagan
He was a man of determination and good cheer--one of America's greats.
Friday, February 2, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Next Tuesday would have been Ronald Reagan's 96th birthday, which is amazing when you consider he is, in a way, more with us than ever: his memory and meaning summoned in political conversation, his name evoked by candidates. I remember 10 years ago when there was controversy over the movement to name things for him--buildings and airports. I was away from home at the time, and I realized that to talk to people in Washington about it, I'd have to land at JFK, take the FDR Drive and go through the Lincoln tunnel.
This is America; we remember our greats. You tell yourself who you are by what you raise a statue to.
The other day a friend asked: What do you think made him so likable to many who disagreed with him and who look back with nostalgia on his White House?
It's funny that people like to talk about this even though they know the answers.
There was the courage to swim against the tide, to show not a burst of bravery but guts in the long haul. The good cheer and good nature that amounted to a kind of faith. The air of pleasure Reagan emanated on meeting others, and his egalitarianism. He thought everyone, from Nobel Prize winners to doormen, equal. Not that he wasn't aware of status. When he stood behind Errol Flynn for a still photo to promote "Santa Fe Trail," he knew of Flynn's towering reputation. Between shots, Reagan kept quietly pushing little piles of dirt together. When he had a mound, he stood on it so that he was, literally, of equal stature. He told the story on himself for years because it was funny, and he believed in laughter. He was a little like Art Buchwald in this; he thought laughter was a value of its own. I think he thought that people who shared a laugh had in fact just voted for something together: something funny and human just got said or done.
Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" was CBS's White House correspondent during the Reagan administration, and I asked her what she remembered most. She said, "We reporters would stake out 'the driveway' to see who was going in to see the president. In the first few years there was a stream of people who came to argue against his budget-cutting proposals. They would march up that driveway in a huff, smoke coming out of their nostrils as they rehearsed their angry arguments about why he was destroying the lives of poor people, or schoolkids.
"I remember specifically a group of mayors from big cities, livid about cuts to their welfare programs, school-lunch programs, etc. They were there to give the president a scolding; they were going to tell him. And in they'd march. Two hours later, out they came. We were all ready with the cameras and the mikes to get their version of the telling off. But they were all little lambs, subdued. . . . He had charmed them. . . . The mayors told us Reagan agreed with them. That they had persuaded him. . . .
"Thirty minutes later Larry Speakes was in the press room telling us the numbers would not in fact change. The mayors had 'misunderstood' the president. Still, I'll bet anything if you talked to those mayors today, they would tell you Reagan was a great guy."
She mentioned "his personal touch, his gallantry." You knew he was a good man and you knew he meant it. So you understood how he could be the biggest supporter of FDR and the New Deal in 1944, and the most persuasive voice for Barry Goldwater in 1964. He'd thought it through and changed, not overnight but in time and with effort. He could change his mind on abortion in the same way, and not because he feared the base. Reagan was the base.
Last week I was at a gathering of old Reagan hands and I asked aloud if something that I'd heard might be true. It was that Mikhail Gorbachev now lives in California and has a pool. The minute I said it, a longtime Reagan friend laughed. He knew where I was going. Reagan always said what he really wanted to do with a Russian premier was get him in a helicopter, ride over Southern California, point down at the million little houses and million little pools, and say "Mr. Gorbachev, that's how the proletariat lives in America."
But it wasn't true. Mr. Gorbachev lives in Moscow, where he has a think tank, a former cabinet secretary told me. Mr. Gorbachev had given the secretary a tour, and proudly noted that he paid for the building by renting out two floors.
"Gorbachev has discovered the free market," the secretary said.
It was almost as good.
This led the Reagan intimate to remember being on a private plane with him one day. They had a steak and fine wine. "Reagan said to me, 'You know, I believe everyone in America can have these things.' I said, 'You really believe that?' Reagan said, 'Yes, I do.' " The intimate said to me, "See, I don't believe that, that anyone here can do it." Then he paused. "But it's good to have a president who does."
Lately we are hearing of President Reagan's famous 11th commandment: "Speak no ill of a fellow Republican." It's a good rule for both parties, but it's good also to remember how he approached it in practice. Ronald Reagan turned his own party upside down, enraged its establishment, and threatened its immediate future when, in 1976, he mounted a fierce challenge to an incumbent Republican president. He ran full and hard against Jerry Ford and it was bitter--the stakes were high, the issue freedom at home and abroad.
Reagan lost, his challenge doomed Ford in the general election, and four years later Reagan roared back. And when he won the nomination he turned around and seriously considered as his running mate . . . Jerry Ford.
When he ran against Ford, it wasn't personal. And when he almost picked Ford as his vice president, that wasn't personal either. It was more like this: This is America. We have been arguing about everything for 200 years. It's what we do. It's our glory.
Our politics then were grimmer yet had a lighter touch. The Soviets could nuke us tomorrow; let's have a hellacious brawl. It was a serious time, but I don't think we were in general so somber, so locked in. The 11th commandment meant the fight should never be mean, low or unnecessarily injurious to the person, or the party. But a fight could be waged--should be waged--over big, big things.
That he knew that is part of why we remember him as great. It's part of why when you next fly to Washington, you'll land at Reagan National Airport.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Reagan
He was a man of determination and good cheer--one of America's greats.
Friday, February 2, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Next Tuesday would have been Ronald Reagan's 96th birthday, which is amazing when you consider he is, in a way, more with us than ever: his memory and meaning summoned in political conversation, his name evoked by candidates. I remember 10 years ago when there was controversy over the movement to name things for him--buildings and airports. I was away from home at the time, and I realized that to talk to people in Washington about it, I'd have to land at JFK, take the FDR Drive and go through the Lincoln tunnel.
This is America; we remember our greats. You tell yourself who you are by what you raise a statue to.
The other day a friend asked: What do you think made him so likable to many who disagreed with him and who look back with nostalgia on his White House?
It's funny that people like to talk about this even though they know the answers.
There was the courage to swim against the tide, to show not a burst of bravery but guts in the long haul. The good cheer and good nature that amounted to a kind of faith. The air of pleasure Reagan emanated on meeting others, and his egalitarianism. He thought everyone, from Nobel Prize winners to doormen, equal. Not that he wasn't aware of status. When he stood behind Errol Flynn for a still photo to promote "Santa Fe Trail," he knew of Flynn's towering reputation. Between shots, Reagan kept quietly pushing little piles of dirt together. When he had a mound, he stood on it so that he was, literally, of equal stature. He told the story on himself for years because it was funny, and he believed in laughter. He was a little like Art Buchwald in this; he thought laughter was a value of its own. I think he thought that people who shared a laugh had in fact just voted for something together: something funny and human just got said or done.
Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" was CBS's White House correspondent during the Reagan administration, and I asked her what she remembered most. She said, "We reporters would stake out 'the driveway' to see who was going in to see the president. In the first few years there was a stream of people who came to argue against his budget-cutting proposals. They would march up that driveway in a huff, smoke coming out of their nostrils as they rehearsed their angry arguments about why he was destroying the lives of poor people, or schoolkids.
"I remember specifically a group of mayors from big cities, livid about cuts to their welfare programs, school-lunch programs, etc. They were there to give the president a scolding; they were going to tell him. And in they'd march. Two hours later, out they came. We were all ready with the cameras and the mikes to get their version of the telling off. But they were all little lambs, subdued. . . . He had charmed them. . . . The mayors told us Reagan agreed with them. That they had persuaded him. . . .
"Thirty minutes later Larry Speakes was in the press room telling us the numbers would not in fact change. The mayors had 'misunderstood' the president. Still, I'll bet anything if you talked to those mayors today, they would tell you Reagan was a great guy."
She mentioned "his personal touch, his gallantry." You knew he was a good man and you knew he meant it. So you understood how he could be the biggest supporter of FDR and the New Deal in 1944, and the most persuasive voice for Barry Goldwater in 1964. He'd thought it through and changed, not overnight but in time and with effort. He could change his mind on abortion in the same way, and not because he feared the base. Reagan was the base.
Last week I was at a gathering of old Reagan hands and I asked aloud if something that I'd heard might be true. It was that Mikhail Gorbachev now lives in California and has a pool. The minute I said it, a longtime Reagan friend laughed. He knew where I was going. Reagan always said what he really wanted to do with a Russian premier was get him in a helicopter, ride over Southern California, point down at the million little houses and million little pools, and say "Mr. Gorbachev, that's how the proletariat lives in America."
But it wasn't true. Mr. Gorbachev lives in Moscow, where he has a think tank, a former cabinet secretary told me. Mr. Gorbachev had given the secretary a tour, and proudly noted that he paid for the building by renting out two floors.
"Gorbachev has discovered the free market," the secretary said.
It was almost as good.
This led the Reagan intimate to remember being on a private plane with him one day. They had a steak and fine wine. "Reagan said to me, 'You know, I believe everyone in America can have these things.' I said, 'You really believe that?' Reagan said, 'Yes, I do.' " The intimate said to me, "See, I don't believe that, that anyone here can do it." Then he paused. "But it's good to have a president who does."
Lately we are hearing of President Reagan's famous 11th commandment: "Speak no ill of a fellow Republican." It's a good rule for both parties, but it's good also to remember how he approached it in practice. Ronald Reagan turned his own party upside down, enraged its establishment, and threatened its immediate future when, in 1976, he mounted a fierce challenge to an incumbent Republican president. He ran full and hard against Jerry Ford and it was bitter--the stakes were high, the issue freedom at home and abroad.
Reagan lost, his challenge doomed Ford in the general election, and four years later Reagan roared back. And when he won the nomination he turned around and seriously considered as his running mate . . . Jerry Ford.
When he ran against Ford, it wasn't personal. And when he almost picked Ford as his vice president, that wasn't personal either. It was more like this: This is America. We have been arguing about everything for 200 years. It's what we do. It's our glory.
Our politics then were grimmer yet had a lighter touch. The Soviets could nuke us tomorrow; let's have a hellacious brawl. It was a serious time, but I don't think we were in general so somber, so locked in. The 11th commandment meant the fight should never be mean, low or unnecessarily injurious to the person, or the party. But a fight could be waged--should be waged--over big, big things.
That he knew that is part of why we remember him as great. It's part of why when you next fly to Washington, you'll land at Reagan National Airport.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, January 1, 2007
How famous tyrants met their ends...
Watching the video of Saddam's execution, I was struck with the idea of who other famous tyrants have met their ends:
Joseph Stalin: died of a stroke, March 5, 1953.
Mao Zedong: died of natural causes, September 9, 1976.
Adolph Hitler: committed suicide, April 30, 1945.
Benito Mussolini: executed by Italian partisans, April 28, 1945.
Pol Pot: died of natural causes, April 15, 1998.
Nicolae Ceausescu: executed by firing squad, December 25, 1989.
Idi Amin: died of natural causes, August 16, 2003.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Kennedy targeted on 1963 Ireland trip
A brief respite in our coverage on the passing of Gerald Ford, with another bit of history, this time about our 35th president, John F. Kennedy:
Kennedy targeted on 1963 Ireland trip
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer
DUBLIN, Ireland - President John F. Kennedy was the subject of three separate death threats during his visit to Ireland in 1963, according to newly declassified police documents released Friday.
The documents released by the Irish Justice Department said police received two anonymous telephoned warnings in the weeks before the arrival of the United States' first Irish Catholic president. A third threat went to the newsroom of the Irish Independent newspaper.
Kennedy's June 26-29 visit went ahead trouble free as he was greeted by adoring crowds in Dublin, Cork, Galway and at his family homestead in County Wexford, in southeast Ireland.
He was assassinated in Dallas five months later.
One threat claimed a sniper would target Kennedy as his motorcade traveled from Dublin Airport to the residence of the Irish president at the start of his visit. The second warned a bomb at Shannon Airport, in southwest Ireland, would detonate as Air Force One was about to depart.
According to the documents the third threat, phoned to the newspaper, indicated that Kennedy would be attacked at Dublin Airport, although the method wasn't specified.
The documents detailed police security concerns — and also reflected officials' desire to impress both U.S. visitors and onlookers in Britain, Ireland's colonial master until 1922.
In a letter, Commissioner Daniel Costigan, the commander of Ireland's national police force in 1963, described the Kennedy tour as "the most important visit to this country since the establishment of the state, with worldwide publicity.
British journalists are likely to be ready to criticize any fault in arrangements."
He wrote that although unlikely, "we cannot overlook the possibility" of an assassination attempt.
Costigan said his officers would use binoculars to monitor rooftops along the route of the presidential motorcade. He said an unspecified number of police would be armed with handguns, rifles and submachine guns — an exceptional measure in a country with a largely unarmed police force — to engage any would-be sniper.
The documents indicated that 6,404 police officers were on duty the night Kennedy arrived, and 2,690 lined the U.S. president's route from Dublin airport to the Phoenix Park mansion of Irish President Eamon de Valera.
Which leads to one of the favorite mental exercises of historians, which begins with the phrase "what if?" - What if JFK had been assassinated while on this trip? A trival question? The dark day of November 22, 1963 would have come much sooner.
Kennedy targeted on 1963 Ireland trip
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer
DUBLIN, Ireland - President John F. Kennedy was the subject of three separate death threats during his visit to Ireland in 1963, according to newly declassified police documents released Friday.
The documents released by the Irish Justice Department said police received two anonymous telephoned warnings in the weeks before the arrival of the United States' first Irish Catholic president. A third threat went to the newsroom of the Irish Independent newspaper.
Kennedy's June 26-29 visit went ahead trouble free as he was greeted by adoring crowds in Dublin, Cork, Galway and at his family homestead in County Wexford, in southeast Ireland.
He was assassinated in Dallas five months later.
One threat claimed a sniper would target Kennedy as his motorcade traveled from Dublin Airport to the residence of the Irish president at the start of his visit. The second warned a bomb at Shannon Airport, in southwest Ireland, would detonate as Air Force One was about to depart.
According to the documents the third threat, phoned to the newspaper, indicated that Kennedy would be attacked at Dublin Airport, although the method wasn't specified.
The documents detailed police security concerns — and also reflected officials' desire to impress both U.S. visitors and onlookers in Britain, Ireland's colonial master until 1922.
In a letter, Commissioner Daniel Costigan, the commander of Ireland's national police force in 1963, described the Kennedy tour as "the most important visit to this country since the establishment of the state, with worldwide publicity.
British journalists are likely to be ready to criticize any fault in arrangements."
He wrote that although unlikely, "we cannot overlook the possibility" of an assassination attempt.
Costigan said his officers would use binoculars to monitor rooftops along the route of the presidential motorcade. He said an unspecified number of police would be armed with handguns, rifles and submachine guns — an exceptional measure in a country with a largely unarmed police force — to engage any would-be sniper.
The documents indicated that 6,404 police officers were on duty the night Kennedy arrived, and 2,690 lined the U.S. president's route from Dublin airport to the Phoenix Park mansion of Irish President Eamon de Valera.
Which leads to one of the favorite mental exercises of historians, which begins with the phrase "what if?" - What if JFK had been assassinated while on this trip? A trival question? The dark day of November 22, 1963 would have come much sooner.
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