A tale of two Presidents
The President of the United States was said by his detractors to be a cowboy, a wreckless and naive man with no sense of diplomacy and an uncontrolable urge to send in the Marines. They mocked his intellect, and labored mightily to produce a general image of him as "an amiable dunce." They called him an extremist, a creature of the Far Right. He ran up record deficits- but brought the nation out of recession through tax cuts that sent the Democrats through the roof with cries of favoritism toward the rich. He had a strong and idealistic view of foreign policy, doing things everyone said were undoable if not downright foolish. A hostile media did their best to discredit him, "misunderestimating" him every step of the way
The parallels between Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Walker Bush are striking-striking enough that both Morton Kondracke and Boston Globe Leftist H.D.S. Greenway feel compelled to remark upon them on the day we bury Mr. Reagan. Predictably, Kondracke's article is balanced, giving due credit to Mr. Bush for the strong qualities he shared with Mr. Reagan while noting that he lacks other positive qualities Reagan had- and that, on others, the jury is still out. Greenway, predictably, writes to dismiss the notion that the younger Bush is in any sense Reagan redux. And of course, nobody will ever accuse Bush 43 of being a "Great Communicator-" a fact which makes it difficult for him to overcome the calculated hostility and contempt of the media elitists, as Mr. Reagan did.
But they're both making the comparison this morning. That's an ominous sign for John Kerry - especially as the Bush Recovery grows stronger and stronger and victory in Iraq at a low price and with a timely and graceful exit comes closer and closer (whether or not the media and the President's critics, whose every prediction about Iraq is looking increasingly foolish, see fit to admit it).
Usually when a President leaves office, his personality gives way to that of someone new. But it's interesting that on the day that Ronald Reagan is laid to rest, a President who has modeled himself after him sits in the Oval Office, and in the midst of his re-election campaign people are arguing about the degree to which he resembles Mr. Reagan.
George W. Bush may not be Reagan redux. He may well lack "the Gipper's" talent at communicating and- perhaps fatally- at reaching out to others. He is a divisive figure, whereas Reagan- to a degree which continues to amaze me, a quarter-century later- turned out to be a uniter, a healer. But the vision and the approach to the nation's problems are the same- enough the same that, in a very real sense, this is Ronald Reagan's third term.
We'll decide on November 2 whether there is a fourth.
The parallels between Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Walker Bush are striking-striking enough that both Morton Kondracke and Boston Globe Leftist H.D.S. Greenway feel compelled to remark upon them on the day we bury Mr. Reagan. Predictably, Kondracke's article is balanced, giving due credit to Mr. Bush for the strong qualities he shared with Mr. Reagan while noting that he lacks other positive qualities Reagan had- and that, on others, the jury is still out. Greenway, predictably, writes to dismiss the notion that the younger Bush is in any sense Reagan redux. And of course, nobody will ever accuse Bush 43 of being a "Great Communicator-" a fact which makes it difficult for him to overcome the calculated hostility and contempt of the media elitists, as Mr. Reagan did.
But they're both making the comparison this morning. That's an ominous sign for John Kerry - especially as the Bush Recovery grows stronger and stronger and victory in Iraq at a low price and with a timely and graceful exit comes closer and closer (whether or not the media and the President's critics, whose every prediction about Iraq is looking increasingly foolish, see fit to admit it).
Usually when a President leaves office, his personality gives way to that of someone new. But it's interesting that on the day that Ronald Reagan is laid to rest, a President who has modeled himself after him sits in the Oval Office, and in the midst of his re-election campaign people are arguing about the degree to which he resembles Mr. Reagan.
George W. Bush may not be Reagan redux. He may well lack "the Gipper's" talent at communicating and- perhaps fatally- at reaching out to others. He is a divisive figure, whereas Reagan- to a degree which continues to amaze me, a quarter-century later- turned out to be a uniter, a healer. But the vision and the approach to the nation's problems are the same- enough the same that, in a very real sense, this is Ronald Reagan's third term.
We'll decide on November 2 whether there is a fourth.
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