Beatifying Reagan
An article at The Weekly Standard's Web site criticizes
The New York Times for not being hagiographic in its coverage of President Reagan's death.
But geez, get over it. President Reagan was a public figure, and in his day, was a controversial President. He had both fine qualities and weaknesses. I disagreed with his policies and many of his decisions. I don't believe he was a good President, even though his term in office was successful for him politically. He was a strong president in many ways; he was persuasive. But he wasn't a saint.
I don't think the coverage of his passing and the retrospectives need to be hagiographic. A look back at his presidency and his life, to be honest, needs to recapture and remind readers of both Reagan's accomplishments, but also what writers consider his controversies and missteps.
There's much to admire about Reagan -- his grace under an assassin's gun; his deep and abiding love for his wife, and hers for him; his ability to rally the nation in times of crisis, such as the Challenger explosion; his skills as political speaker and powers of persuasion.
But he also loaded future generations with enormous debt. He started us down an expensive weapons program boondoggle dubbed Star Wars. He submitted budgets to congress that didn't cut spending, despite his rhetoric to shrink the size of government in order to pay for his tax cuts. Ketchup was a vegetable. He got 241 marines killed in Beirut (but unlike the current President, took responsibility for the decisions that put them in harms way). Yet on
Iran/Contra, which had us trading arms to Iran for hostages and funding a rebel army to oppose a democratically elected government in Nicaragua, all done illegally, he ducked responsibility (and the impeachment that would have come with it), feigned ignorance, and played the befuddled, in-the-dark dolt. And thus he became known as the Teflon President.
So look, bottom line, President Reagan deserves praise and recognition for his years of service in elected office. And his partisans certainly have the right to gloss over his flaws and to beatify them to their hearts' contents.
But the general press is required to keep things in balance. For the most part they won't -- they aren't. They're tilting to the side of
sentimental mourning.
