Posted on 06/09/2004 6:37:34 AM PDT by jazzo
While trying to avoid ostentatious gloating, Republican operatives quietly confide their hope that the public tributes to the late Ronald Reagan this week will lift the sagging George W. Bush. That may happen for a time, just as the capture of Saddam Hussein briefly bolstered the President. By Election Day, however, memories of Reagan are unlikely to motivate anyone who wouldn’t have voted for Mr. Bush anyway.
Meanwhile, with typical taste and restraint, the Bush-Cheney campaign has erected a "living memorial" to Ronald Reagan on its Web site. Such strained attempts to associate their candidate with his professed role model may prove less profitable than they expect. Placing him alongside Reagan isn’t necessarily flattering to the incumbent, in terms of substance or style.
Both Presidents passed ill-advised and unfair tax cuts, but Reagan then raised taxes and closed corporate loopholes, which would be unimaginable for Mr. Bush. Both claimed to be opponents of bigger government, but Mr. Bush expanded federal entitlements and corporate welfare with his prescription drug bill. While both wielded American military power, Reagan did so without rupturing our traditional alliances, as Mr. Bush has so stupidly done. Indeed, this reckless, regressive Presidency has somehow made that one look cautious and prudent.
And although Mr. Bush resembles Reagan in his detachment from policy detail, the old actor’s public performance and rhetorical skills far surpassed those of his aspiring heir. For conservatives, this contrast must be painful to contemplate.
Invidious comparisons aside, the Bush team may confront yet another problem if they are tempted to exploit Reagan’s legacy. Her name is Nancy Reagan.
Officials who underestimated or ignored the former First Lady often learned they had made a bad mistake as their heads bounced down the White House driveway. They complained about her astrologer, her designer frocks, her epicene Manhattan friends and her expensive new porcelain. But she maintained an influence over her husband enjoyed by no other adviser.
The persona she projected in those days may not always have seemed attractive, but she usually exercised her extraordinary power in ways beneficial to her husband and, more importantly, to her country. Bright and tough, she showed little patience for the useless time-servers and right-wing extremists who had survived the transition from California. Despite her upbringing in a very conservative family, she was a political moderate in the Reagan milieu. Last year, she sensibly quashed the right-wing enthusiasm for replacing F.D.R.’s profile on the dime with her that of husband.
Now she’s the object of tremendous national sympathy and admiration—and the spokeswoman for a cause that cuts directly against the President’s "faith-based" aversion to scientific progress. She believes that embryonic stem-cell research may someday relieve the Alzheimer’s disease that destroyed Reagan’s mind, and in that conviction she possesses the kind of credibility that suffering can confer. (She wouldn’t be the first conservative to learn deeper compassion from a terrible personal ordeal.)
Her friends predict that in the days to come, she will speak out with increasing frequency and determination on behalf of stem-cell research, which the President has hindered with federal restrictions and constraints on spending. Surely she remembers how he spurned her private pleas three years ago, when he was pondering that decision. She must know that the Bush administration’s hostility to science goes well beyond the stem-cell issue, with its big, destructive cutbacks in funding for disease research.
According to press reports, Mrs. Reagan isn’t expected to appear at the Republican convention next September (though it isn’t clear whether she wasn’t invited or declined to participate). No doubt she remains a Republican, at least nominally, and she may eventually deliver a pro forma endorsement of the President, despite her well-known coolness toward the Bush family. Yet she hardly shares the religious-right ideology that motivates this generation of Bush politicians.
And lately, in pursuit of her passion for medical research, she has displayed no reluctance to consort with Democrats. Among her closest friends is Casey Ribicoff, widow of Abraham Ribicoff, the late liberal Democratic Senator from Connecticut, who told The New York Times that Mrs. Reagan was infuriated by the President’s stem-cell decision.
Last month she spoke publicly at a Beverly Hills benefit for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, where she received an award from the actor Michael J. Fox and a kiss on the cheek from singer James Taylor. Both entertainers happen to be staunch Democrats and supporters of John Kerry, an outspoken supporter of stem-cell technology.
"Ronnie’s long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him," she said on that occasion. "Because of this, I’m determined to do whatever I can to save other families from this pain. I just don’t see how we can turn our backs on this."
Let’s hope that her husband’s death brings some final relief to the grieving Nancy Reagan—and that she is as serious as she says about fighting for medical progress.
Conason is Michael Moore after 6 months of Ultra-Slimfast.
Conason should spend a year at Betty Ford.
Looks like your favorite author has laid another turd on the table.
Would that be the "strained attempt" of which the author speaks?
I could only bear to skim it..Conason's eyebrows appear before me as in a nightmare if I dwell on him.
Unbelievable. Even the death of Ronald Reagan can be twisted into an attack on Bush. What a punk.
Indeed.
Surprise, surprise, Joe Conason using any excuse to bash President Bush. Joe's ignorance is boundless.
I agree that this article is off track by far, but the premise that President Bush should be careful with trying to make comparison's to our 40th president. The reason is that he will fail if he does. What I have seen over the past week is that Reagan's vision of America was the driving force that made him a success. I do not see that vision in this President I see someone who has been lucky enough to be compared to Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
All someone has to do is remind Dubya just how frippin' stupid Algore looked in "Reagan-mode" during the 2000 debates. Stylized Hair and Rosy Cheeks, the works!
Looks like a DU troll to me.
"I see someone who has been lucky enough to be compared to Bill Clinton and Al Gore."
Since you just signed up today maybe you should elaborate on this.
Moderate what?
I myself, long ago, made the comparison FOR MYSELF that President Bush reminded me a great deal of President Reagan.
Didn't you get the memo? Bush can do nothing right.
And this irate behavior that Nancy Reagan would direct at George W. Bush would be based on - what? Joe Conason has grasped at straws before, with predictable results. He manages to cause the straws to drown.
The best response to Joe Conason is just to allow him to keep on talking. It must be his eating mouth that is talking, because his rectal orfice has more native good sense, than to spill so much fecal matter....
Joe, do yourself a favor, take your meds.
Nancy's new White House china was donated, not paid for with tax payer money. Conason knows that. Just like the new china Eleanor Roosevelt chose during World War II, and like Jackie Kennedy chose during her regal "reign".
His snide "designer frocks" comment exposes his contempt for Nancy. (I don't believe Nancy ever had to coordinate her clothing to conceal deception. She never had hold a pink press conference!)
As far as warning President Bush about the ire of Nancy. Could he be more transparent in his mirror thinking? Hillary's the one who demands payback.
Hillary's the one with access to the FBI Files of her enemies.
And Hillary's probably the one who gave Joe the idea for this dastardly column!
Joe's intent is not to warn President Bush, it's to push his own agenda at the expense of Nancy Reagan. Never ask "how low can Joe go"? The bottomless pit of Hell awaits.
What a communistic moron to argue that 70% tax rates were a good/fair thing????? Even the king Democrat JFK knew that such high marginal tax rates killed the economy. Reducing the marginal tax rates to something more reasonable was the #1 reason our economy turned around. Even Clinton's tax increase to a 39% top marginal rate was a Reaganistic tax policy compared to the tax rates of the 70's. Reaganomics is alive and well was the single most important tax reform in our lifetimes which lead to the best economic times in our nation's history.
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