Got a late start on my morning blog jam session because I had to get the edited text for my book on the Ronald Reagan myth and all the other bells and whistles back to the publisher, Free Press. The runway has been cleared for publication just in time for Reagan Day -- Feb. 6 -- and when the cover art is finished I look forward to sharing it with everyone. Thanks for your patience when I took some time off to work on this project -- I'm very excited about the end result.
Anyway, it got me to wondering what the Gipper would think of the last two crazy weeks in American politics. After all, you'll probably hear the name "Reagan" involved about 14,000 times this week in St. Paul, and even Barack Obama claimed that the GOP icon was one of the models for his acceptance speech.
Really? I thought Obama's speech was a huge success politically, in finding just the right tone for taking the fight to John McCain and for spelling out his policies in greater detail. But I don't think it was very Reaganesque. The Great Communicator was a master at presenting a clear and simple agenda; in his successful 1980 acceptance speech that was lower taxes (mainly for the rich, but...), anti-Communism, and what history now shows was a shameful repudiation of Jimmy Carter's unpopular but forward looking energy policy, larded with his huge dallop of "sunny optimism." What were the comparable "three things" from Obama's speech? Hard to say, isn't it? What's more, Reagan used self-depriciating humor to connect with voters. Obama, um...doesn't.
As for the Sarah Palin mess, Reagan would probably pause and say, "Well..." He wouldn't be freaked out by the whole situation with the daughter, since God knows he had enough issues with his own kids. That said, does anyone really believe that Reagan would have tapped the untested Alaska governor for vice president? Sure, his vice presidential selection process in Detroit was much more chaotic and last-minute than it should have been, but in the end he went with pragmatism, and with experience. In George H.W. Bush, he choose a man who'd been a congressman, head of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, director of the CIA, and a vetted candidate for president.
McCain went with the mayor of Wasilla.
And one reason that McCain chose Palin over the guys he wanted -- Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge -- is that he was too weak to handle a revolt from the right-wing base of his party. Reagan, on the other hand, kept a promise that he made in that 1980 election to pick the first woman for the Supreme Court, and not only did Sandra Day O'Connor prove to be a highly qualified choice, but Reagan brushed off conservatives who believed -- accurately as it turned out -- that she wasn't sufficiently anti-abortion. In spite of that, those same conservatives mostly still worship at the Reagan shrine.
I don't see any bronze statues in John McCain's future.
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
E-mail Will by clicking here.
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