June 8, 2004
Liberal columnists and Reagan
It is strange to watch TV coverage of the Reagan era and see Dan Rather et al. presented as neutral commentators on the meaning of his presidency.
"These are Reagan's one-time enemies," I think, watching the news anchors.
As much as liberal newscasters and columnists have attempted for the moment to rein in their tendencies to criticize Reagan, events such as the forthcoming funeral once more illustrate the gap between the media and its customers. Remember how Walter Cronkite and all the other anchors seems so personally distressed at the Kennedy assassination? Definitely no catches in the throat or shaky voices in the media this week, though we see thoughtful and weepy visitors to the Reagan Library on the screen.
This morning I saw an amazing trio of links to Reagan commentary on the Washington Post Web site -- Cohen, Ignatius, and Dionne. Not a conservative in the bunch, though Ignatius has some moderate tendencies.
"These are Reagan's one-time enemies," I thought, again.
After weighing the matter, I decided to read the Post columnists. Overall, it was not as bad as I feared (having seen a faintly damning article (now being trashed by readers here) in the Baltimore Sun by ultraliberal Michael Olesker.
My ratings:
Acknowledges Reagan achievements, and writes graciously about a gracious man (one demerit for terming the late president a "fabulist"):
It is the time, though, to acknowledge he was right about the Soviet Union -- it was the "evil empire" -- and about welfare abuses and the occasional arrogant insularity of Big Government. On certain issues, he had been intellectually courageous for breaking with the liberal orthodoxy of Hollywood and his own past.
Very respectful of the president, but Reagan strikes me as anything but Protean; rather, he struck me as guided by firm principles that did not change the form of his decisions.
Reagan was a Protean leader, capable, like the Greek god, of changing form depending on political needs and circumstances. He talked tough but generally acted with restraint. That ability -- to combine an adaptive and often compromising political approach with the reassuring, changeless language of values -- was part of Reagan's political genius.
E.J. Dionne: C+
Acknowledges probably unintentionally how limited his worldview is ("It was the evening of July 17, 1980. A group of friends had gathered at my apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side to watch Ronald Reagan's acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention. There was not a Reagan supporter in the house, and there were occasional catcalls as he spoke") and cannot resist taking a potshot at Bush. But he touches on a point related to my blog yesterday, that is, Reagan's ability as a former liberal to persuade other liberals to become neo-conservatives:
... I was in awe of a gift of the Gipper's that was insufficiently appreciated among his conservative devotees: Reagan had the New Deal bred in his bones and could talk to Democrats like a Democrat, and in a way no Republican has matched since.
For a far higher order of analysis of Reagan's ability to reach Democrats, see this OpinionJournal piece by two writers from Britain's Economist:
Mr. Reagan may not have been an intellectual, but his sort of conservatism, just like the religious upheaval started by Martin Luther (another anti-intellectual populist) 500 years ago, combined renewal with heresy. The established faith that Mr. Reagan's generation of American conservatives reinterpreted was classical conservatism (the conservatism whose most eloquent prophet remains Edmund Burke), and the heresy they introduced was classical liberalism (the creed of the Enlightenment and John Stuart Mill). ...If Reaganism had been merely a more vigorous form of old-style conservatism, then it would have been more predictable. In fact, Mr. Reagan-- who began his political life as a New Deal Democrat--took a resolutely liberal approach to Burke's last three principles: hierarchy, pessimism and elitism.
The heroes of Burke's conservatism were paternalist squires, who knew their place in society and made sure everybody else did as well. Mr. Reagan's heroes were rugged individualists, defined by the fact that they do not know their place. He packed his kitchen cabinet with entrepreneurs who built up businesses out of nothing and he worshipped the cowboy. He kept a bronze saddle in the Oval Office and--rather magnificently--rushed to appoint Malcolm Baldridge as commerce secretary when he discovered that he liked going to rodeos.
