Ronald Reagan, interviewed by Bill Moyers at the Reagan ranch in California on April 30, 1979, six months before Mr. Reagan declared as a candidate for the presidency.
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“Ronald Reagan had an unusual suggestion to help Margaret Thatcher understand the mentality of the Soviet leader: read Tom Clancy’s thriller.
Papers released by the National Archives in Kew, London, reveal the former US president was ‘much impressed’ with Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, which takes places in Russia where an Islamist terror attack triggers a Third World War.
After his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Reagan said that reading the book would help Mrs Thatcher understand Russia’s Cold War thinking.”
— Valerie Edwards, The Daily Mail [links added]
Scott Walker worships Ronald Reagan, which must be disconcerting to Mr. Walker’s minister father. Anyway, each year, on President Reagan’s birthday, Governor Walker eats Mr. Reagan’s favorite foods: macaroni and cheese casserole, and red, white, and blue Jelly Belly jelly beans.
Scott Walker even got married on Ronald Reagan’s birthday. This surely makes for a very romantic anniversary dinner.
Governor Walker thinks that the most important foreign policy move of his lifetime was Reagan busting the air traffic controllers’ union. What? Hey, maybe he was thinking about all those international flights.
More:
“Scott Walker loves Ronald Reagan more than seems humanly possible,” Andrew Prokop, Vox
“Scott Walker: Records show Soviets treated Ronald Reagan more seriously after he fired controllers,” Tom Kertscher, Politifact
“Scott Walker is a giant fraud: Reagan worship, bizarre religious beliefs, and the real story of his long crusade for 2016,” Jud Lounsbury, Salon
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Rick Perlstein wrote a book about Barry Goldwater in 2001; William Buckley praised it. George Will praised Perlstein’s 2008 best-seller Nixonland. Today’s conservatives are not fond of Perlstein’s new publication, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. They’re attacking it, and its author.
“What changed?” asks David Weigel. “This time Perlstein is writing about Ronald Reagan. Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan—Perlstein has moved from covering a minor saint, to a martyr, to God.”
Besides this charge of blasphemy, conservatives chastise Pearlstein for paying attention to the facts and not making up his own, like they do. How unoriginal. He must be a plagiarist.
More:
“It’s Not Rick Perlstein’s Scholarship that Seems to Be in Question. It’s His Politics,” Peter Charles Hoffer, History News Network
“A Question of Character: Craig Shirley’s Scurrilous Attack on Liberal Historian Rick Perlstein,” Adele M. Stan, The American Prospect
“Rick Perlstein: ‘Ronald Reagan absolved America almost in a priestly role not to have to contend with sin. The consequences are all around us today,’” David Dayen, Salon
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In 1998, a reverential Republican Congress changed the name of DC’s National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. On Monday, a grateful nation’s corporate owners unleashed a sculptural tribute to our sainted 40th President there. The nine-foot erection is convenient to one of the airport’s Pet Relief Areas (dog owners: please do not confuse the two).
If Ronald Reagan were alive this February 6th, he would have been a very senile 100 years old. “No surprise, perhaps, that the American president who came to fame in Hollywood would have a centennial celebration with splash,” writes Susan Page. “He’s become a folklore president,” says historian Douglas Brinkley, “”He’s as much Buffalo Bill or Kit Carson as he is Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson.”
The comparison with Buffalo Bill is apt. William Cody became “Buffalo Bill” through massive doses of showmanship and press agentry, the same way Mr. Reagan became president. Leslie Janka, Reagan’s deputy White House press secretary, said the Reagan administration “was a PR outfit that became president and took over the country. And to the degree that the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did it. But their first, last and overarching activity was public relations.”
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show went bankrupt, and President Reagan destroyed the Federal tax base while borrowing against the future. His chief legacy is not Ronald Reagan National Airport, Ronald Reagan Parkway, the Reagan statue in the Capitol, the USS Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Ronald Reagan High School(s), the Ronald Reagan Building, the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site, or the Ronald Reagan Action Figure. It was tax cuts for the rich and budget policies that tripled the Federal deficit as well as financial deregulation that paved the hellish road to our current economic situation.
In 1998, a reverential Republican Congress changed the name of DC’s National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Soon a grateful nation’s corporate owners will erect a sculptural tribute to our sainted 40th President. It will be conveniently located near one of the airport’s new Pet Relief Areas (dog owners: please do not confuse the two).
NotionsCapital 