The Real Reagan Legacy

Paul Greenburg takes on Kerry's attempt to cloak himself in the mantle of Reagan:

But at the time, he was saying that the "biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense," and arguing that Ronald Reagan "has mortgaged our future in order to pay for a bloated military budget."

That was just a few years before the military buildup he'd decried led to the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War -- and of the nuclear arms race with it. And now John Kerry presents himself as another Ronald Reagan.

Sort of on topic:

The American Spectator (July/August 2004) had a column that reminded us that everything was not sweetness and light as RR set out to win the Cold War. This was the way the smart people reacted to his evil empire speech:

Back in D.C., Washington Post doyenne Mary McGrory called the performance "a marvelous parody of a revivalist minister, flaying those laggards who refuse to join his crusade against the nuclear freeze and the 'evil empire' of the Soviet Union." Post peacenik Colman McCarthy called it "a return to a 1981 outburst that the Soviets are liars and cheats. Both preachments lower [Reagan's] thinking to the level of Ayatollah Khomeini..." Historian Henry Steele Commager, already long in the tooth, declared that this was "the worst presidential speech in history, and I've read them all." A news story quoted former Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg as saying, "Something like the speech to the evangelicals is not presidential." Sister publication Newsweek joined the pile on, predicting that the speech would hobble the president's re-election chances.

In Congress, the halls reverberated with Democratic mockery. From the House floor, Rep. Ed Markey summarized Reagan's position thus: "The force of evil is the Soviet Union and they are Darth Vader. We are Luke Skywalker and we are the force of good." Rep. Tom Downey said, "Mr. Speaker, the only thing the President didn't tell us last night was that the evil empire was about to launch the death star against the United States."

And the Speaker, Tip O'Neill, nowadays touted as Reagan's good bipartisan buddy, had his own theological axe to grind. 'The evil," he retorted, "is in the White House at the present time, and that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood."