Posted on 10/23/2004 8:36:13 PM PDT by jmstein7
We're for Walter Mondale, even though Ronald Reagan has in some ways done a good job. America, the President says with permissible hyperbole, is back and he deserves credit because the country feels so much better than it did four years ago. Mr. Reagan has a gift for symbolism and salesmanship; when he salutes the flag and the troops, he embodies a wide renewal of pride in country.
And there's more to it than just the persuasions of a patriotic pitchman. People feel better off because many people are better off. The oil shocks and hyper-inflation of the 1970's have been calmed. Unemployment, after soaring for months, has fallen back to the 1980 level. Real income is up.
So why not re-elect the President? For three reasons. First, because of the way he has paid for our recovery, and his popularity: with the pain of millions of people thrown out of work in the last four years and with the hundreds of billions of dollars Government must borrow in the next four.
Second, because much of the rest of his domestic program is repugnant. Mr. Reagan has punished the poor and retreated from civil rights. He has, laudably, continued the deregulation begun by Jimmy Carter. But the same President who vows to get Government off people's backs has recklessly pushed its nose into the most private realms of religion and family life.
Finally, and most important, because Mr. Reagan's diplomacy, mostly ineffective, has also been dangerous. Not only has he failed to stabilize the nuclear arms race but he has propelled it to new heights and lacks any plausible strategy for regaining control.
Walter Mondale has flaws. Until recent days, he so lacked fire as a campaigner that people called him ''Norwegian wood.'' He has lacked a theme; at times, it seemed to be merely that he's Not Reagan. He is heavily indebted to labor and interest groups.
His running mate is not as ready to be President as is George Bush. Choosing Geraldine Ferraro as the first woman on a national ticket unleashed a welcome wave of energy. But it has also brought a backwash of troubling questions about her husband's dealings and associates.
Now consider Mr. Mondale's strengths. His election would mean franker, fairer decisions on the hard economic choices that the President has concealed during the campaign. Mr. Mondale would offer an enlightened and humane conception of what Government should, and should not, do. Most of all, he would bring to the White House the will to control nuclear weapons.
So give Ronald Reagan due credit for what he has done, 1981 to 1984. The decision now should turn on who offers brighter promise for 1985 to 1988. In all three Presidential categories, our choice is Walter Mondale. More Arms, Less Control
What President Reagan has pursued abroad is not a strategy but an unattainable slogan - ''superiority.'' He has thrown dollars at Defense without curbing military appetites for fancy, fragile technology. He has failed to harness either diplomacy or economic power to the quest for security.
Recall how much energy was wasted just to undo the damage of his first year's quarrels with China, Israel and the European allies. In the Middle East, he remains mostly at the mercy of events. In Central America, he awaits at best the diplomacy of others to shape his ''no-lose'' military exertions.
By pressing ahead with a ''Star Wars'' missile defense, Mr. Reagan is forcing the arms race into outer space. Yet most scientists think it can't possibly be practical till far into the 21st century. Committing to more than modest research is incredibly wasteful, as if President Wilson had vowed in 1919 to put a man in space.
Because of his lifelong opposition to arms control, Mr. Reagan might have driven good bargains with the Russians. Yet unlike every other President of the nuclear era, he lacks the conviction and dedicated personnel to achieve agreement, or even a good plan for achieving it.
True, it takes two to negotiate and the Kremlin has had three leaders in four years. But Mr. Reagan, balking at past agreements, offered none of them any plausible new approach. Though he may finally be ready, as he says, to pursue accord, he has, perhaps even unwittingly, ordered up weapons and appointed officials that obstruct the way.
Walter Mondale believes in a sturdy defense. He also stands in the middle of the bipartisan community that long ago learned to abandon the fruitless quest for nuclear superiority. In this election, he represents all those Republicans and Democrats determined to tame the nuclear threat.
Lawyer Mondale offers pragmatic skill at making the best of reality. Ideologue Reagan offers the same tenacity that has brought him out diplomatically empty-handed. Who is likely to do better in arms negotiations in the next term, Walter Mondale or the President who tickles the religious right by reviling the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire? Off People's Backs, Into Their Beliefs
To Henry Steele Commager, the historian, the 1983 speech in which Mr. Reagan described the Russians in that way was ''the worst Presidential speech in American history, and I've read them all'' - not because it was undiplomatic but because ''No other Presidential speech has ever so flagrantly allied the government with religion. There was a gross appeal to religious prejudice.''
In such ways, Mr. Reagan readily turns himself from a conservative libertarian into a statist. He perversely condemns as ''intolerant'' anyone who opposes organized school prayers. He continues to flog at abortion though it is barely a Federal, let alone a Presidential, concern.
Lately, Reagan Republicans have called this a matter of civil rights - of the unborn fetus. Would that their President were so attentive to the minority millions whom the civil rights laws were designed to protect. Not until the Congressional momentum was unstoppable could Mr. Reagan finally bring himself to support even the 1982 bill renewing voting rights.
There is every reason, therefore, to worry about potential Reagan appointments to the Supreme Court. Since five of its Justices are 75 or older, the President elected this year is likely to leave a deep imprint. The last Roosevelt appointee to leave the Court, William O. Douglas, did so in 1975, 30 years after F.D.R.'s death.
President Reagan deserves credit for fastening the nation's attention on the need to restrain social spending. That fostered bipartisan collaboration on Social Security costs and commendable innovation in containing Medicare. But where has the Administration concentrated its budget cutting? Not on swollen middle-class entitlements but on the famous social safety net for the poor. For example, one Federal judge after another has had to order the Administration to restore disability benefits to thousands of helpless people thrown out of the safety net.
As for the environment, Mr. Reagan was too long content to let his record be written by James Watt and Anne Burford and other zealots who sabotaged or flouted the laws to protect air, water and human health.
Walter Mondale, son of a stern Minnesota minister, knows it is important for both church and state to maintain a respectful distance. He has stood for civil rights and liberties from his earliest days in politics. He has championed individual and human rights, the right to a lawyer or the right to be left alone by government. His interest in family addresses the public policy issue of day care, not the personal torment of abortion. Feeling Fine, On Borrowed Money
In a 1981 impression of the President, Rich Little, the comedian, explained Reaganomics. ''Let's suppose your mom baked a big blueberry pie,'' he said. The top half is for defense spending, the bottom half is for domestic programs - ''and the other half is for the national debt.''
At the time, it sounded merely comic. The President was denouncing deficit spending at every turn. Why, he said, the national debt was equivalent to ''a stack of $1,000 bills 67 miles high.'' But since then, even while calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, he's raised the stack another 40 miles.
The huge Reagan deficits weigh heavily on the economies of other nations. They divert capital away from poor countries, making development that much harder, and they put the United States in hock to the world. There's no reason to expect that in the next four years Mr. Reagan will keep the budget-balancing promise he's broken so dramatically in the last four.
Walter Mondale comes from the party that invented deficit spending but there is reason to think he would do better. It may have been a bravely candid act, or perhaps politically foolhardy, but he began his campaign in San Francisco in July by declaring that he would, among other things, raise taxes to reduce the deficit.
Unless most economists are crazy, the country can't keep borrowing $200 billion a year. Everyone knows that spending cuts can't suffice. Everyone knows a tax increase is well-nigh inevitable. For all his feigned horror, Mr. Reagan knows it, too. The question is not whether there'll be a tax increase but whether the burden will be distributed fairly. On the evidence of his first term, Mr. Reagan will soak the poor, favor the rich and throw more money at the Pentagon.
There's another, less tangible standard for judging candidates for President: theatrical skill, the capacity to inspire. The hecklers who chant, ''Reagan, Reagan, he's no good / Send him back to Hollywood'' are missing a crucial point. Salesmanship is a precious Presidential asset and Mr. Reagan has it. He's the master salesman, the Music Man, of American politics.
Walter Mondale has all the dramatic flair of a trigonometry teacher. His Nordic upbringing makes it hard for him to brag. The first debate may have been the high point of his political personality. But there's power in his plainness.
Precisely by not dramatizing issues, he has consistently produced consensus and agreement, as a Senator and as Jimmy Carter's Vice President. And for all the talk about his vacillation, Mr. Mondale has grit. When knocked down, he does not blame his staff or his opponent's makeup. He gets up and starts swinging again.
Chances are that come Nov. 6, he'll keep on doing the same, win or lose. As the man most likely to reduce the deficit, to spread burdens fairly and to control nuclear weapons, Walter Mondale deserves to win.
Back in 1984 the AFL-CIO endorsed Mondale before he even had his nomination sewed up. It was really embarrassing for them when more of their members voted for Reagan than for Mondale.
This reminds me of when Michael Moore endorsed Howard Dean in the primaries.
The NYT's mantra: Never admit your wrong, just move on to the next trendy liberal cause.
Ol' Sulzberger and his boys sure can pick 'em.
5.56mm
ROFL!!
"Now consider Mr. Mondale's strengths."
They could've ended the article there :)
Does the left ever go back to look at its failed pronouncements and say "what the hell were we thinking?"
Probably not. Because then they wouldn't still be on the left.
Of the Howard Zinn school of "history".
"Walter Mondale has flaws..."
Typical NYSlimes understatement. In Modale's campaign, the big economic bugaboo was "American jobs being exported overseas." and "How will we replace all those good highpaying manufacturing jobs?"
Twenty years ago, and it seems like only yesterday ...Oh, wait, it WAS yesterday--My Little Pony ranting in Canton Ohio!
To Henry Steele Commager, the historian, the 1983 speech in which Mr. Reagan described the Russians in that way was ''the worst Presidential speech in American history, and I've read them all'' - not because it was undiplomatic but because ''No other Presidential speech has ever so flagrantly allied the government with religion. There was a gross appeal to religious prejudice.''
Imagine if Reagan went to...Berlin.... or somewhere like that and demanded that the Berlin Wall be torn down? I bet that would be the second worst speech in history...
Good stuff. Thanks for the laughs.
Wow. Is anyone else just thunderstruck at how COMPLETELY wrong the Times endorsement was. I mean, not so much wrong in it's opinion, as much as it is, but how it is on the exact opposite side of how history ultimately ocurred!
This is a sterling example that demonstrates how liberals are utterly and willingly blinded by their religion.
They simply do not care who is running. All that matters to them is who has the R or the D after their name. It's pretty much that simple.
Great read. Really great to see how completely off the mark they were then and are now.
Wow, what a read. The best slam on the Times, apparently, is reading just how wrong they've proven to be over and over and over.
>>when Michael Moore endorsed Howard Dean in the primaries.
he also endorsed Weasel-ly Clark after awhile. And didn't he endorse Nader in '00? We know how Nader played the spoiler and may have helped to elect W in places like
NH and Florida. That's right, liberals--big fat Mike
helped elect W! Hoo ha!
Last GOP candidate for prez endorsed by the NYT?
Dwight Eisenhower, LOL!
I'd love to read the McGovern endorsement!
RR bump
What is this fixation the Democrats have with wood?
I remember C-Span replaying Mondale's nomination speech from his 1984 convention. It could not have been scripted to be more wrong about eventual events. EVERY SINGLE ISSUE. The USSR/foreign policy segment was a particular howler.
You brought a smile to me this morning.
The similarities to today are amazing. I hope we have similar results!
The New York Times is the anti-American rag of choice.
Our enemies are emboldened by it, because they think it represents the Voice of America.
Instead, the NYT is the Voice of Treason.
Why on earth does any American read or quote such trash?
"Walter Mondale has flaws. Until recent days, he so lacked fire as a campaigner that people called him ''Norwegian wood.'' He has lacked a theme; at times, it seemed to be merely that he's Not Reagan."
At the gym yesterday, there was a lady with a Kerry button. I went over and asked her seriously if she was for Kerry or against Bush. She rolled her eyes and said that she could not support the "Texas Rodeo Clown". I asked her again if she was really supporting Kerry. She said no and that she had liked Clark in the primaries and she thought that Kerry was arrogant. I also asked her what made Kerry better than Bush. She said that Kerry was not Bush. I proceeded to tell her that was a very irresponsible manner to vote and to support someone that we know nothing about except that he has been on every side of an issue. That is not an effective leader.
Honestly, I am not 100% happy with the President's choices, but I respect that he made some unpopular choices and he is not all over the map with them. He made them, he takes responsibility for them and he fully funds the troops that he has committed. Kerry seems to be another Clinton like that what ever choice he ends up making, he takes a poll, commits, takes another poll and then switches his mind. Sorry, this is not a democracy and not every, Tom, Dick and Harrietta gets to voice their opinion on every issue.
We elect a strong leader to make tough choices and we voice or support/disapproval, but that leader needs to follow up with his/her choices. For this reason, although I disagree with him on steel tariffs, amensty, Iraq, expansion of government, and a slew of other issues, President Bush has gained my support. Individuals that are voting third party are effectively casting votes for Waffle Man, AKA Lurch. Please reconsider and vote for the President if you live in a swing state...we need every vote for a solid leader.
Cheers.
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