While conservative blogs, as well as the cable news networks, are awash in glowing appraisals of Ronald Reagan’s life and career, some of their liberal counterparts are hesitant to provide a similar hagiography. “It would be inappropriate,” says Tom Tomorrow, “to gloat over the death of a 93 year old man with Alzheimer’s, if anyone were inclined to do so. But I don’t think anyone should shy away from a realistic appraisal of the man’s legacy — particularly right now, when the tributes are being given and the past is acquiring its gauzy haze.” He links to this anecdote about Reagan, who did not publicly mention the AIDS virus until 1987:
The most memorable Reagan AIDS moment was at the 1986 centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty. The Reagans were there sitting next to the French Prime Minister and his wife, Francois and Danielle Mitterrand. Bob Hope was on stage entertaining the all-star audience. In the middle of a series of one-liners, Hope quipped, “I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS, but she doesn’t know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy.” As the television camera panned the audience, the Mitterrands looked appalled. The Reagans were laughing. By the end of 1989, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States–more then 70,000 of them had died.
Juan Cole interrupts the proliferation of funereal observations with the acerbic accusation that Reagan’s policies “bequeathed to us the major problems we now have in the world, including a militant Islamist International whose skills were honed in Afghanistan with Reagan’s blessing and monetary support; and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which the Reagan administration in some cases actually encouraged behind the scenes for short-term policy reasons. His aggressive foreign policy orientation has been revived and expanded, making the US into a neocolonial power in the Middle East. Reagan’s gutting of the unions and attempt to remove social supports for the poor and the middle class has contributed to the creation of an America where most people barely get by while government programs that could help create wealth are destroyed.” (Cole seems agitated enough that some of his ire is misdirected; it’s our recollection that it was Bill Clinton, not Reagan, who dismantled the nation’s welfare system.)
Matthew Yglesias, who gives Reagan “a great deal of credit for democratization and anti-communism,” argues that “the most disturbing element of the Reagan legacy is probably the decisive boost he gave to a kind of blinkered anti-intellectualism in American conservatism.” Writes Yglesias:
Our two most popular recent Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, were both quite the cads. So, too, was Martin Luther King, Jr. a womanizer. Progressives, however, both rightly consider these men to have been admirable leaders despite this aspect of their personality. [Despite this, we] don’t go around saying: What the country needs is some more womanizers! Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to have concluded that, via the mysterious quality of moral clarity … that an inability to comprehend policy details and nuance is an important qualification for high office. This is madness.
Of course, there is ample appreciation for Reagan in the blogosphere as well — but we’ve been so overwhelmed by the rose-colored television coverage we saw over the weekend we felt compelled to offer up a corrective. As Kevin Drum notes, “An obituary should tell the whole story, good and bad, not act as a hagiography. Coverage of Reagan that didn’t include anything negative would be a lie.”
But there is something to be said for sentimentality, and so we’ll close with Juan Non-Volokh’s choice of song to honor the former president: “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones, an early 90’s tune about the fall of communism, for which Reagan is often given credit. (The song, we must also note, was a favorite of your Blog Reporter in his youth.) Here are the lyrics:
A woman on the radio talked about revolution
when it’s already passed her by
Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about you
you know it feels good to be alive
I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now
there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
watching the world wake up from history
I saw the decade in, when it seemed
the world could change at the blink of an eye …
Click here to listen to part of the song.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.