Finally got around to readoing the prez & beer thread and what struck me was grampster's post:
I spent a couple of days with Ronald Reagan as a LE body guard when he was Governor of California. He was in my town on the stump for Nixon. In fact, when I drove Gov. Reagan from the airport, I had Jerry Ford in the back seat with him. Ford was a long time congressman representing the district I lived in. Interesting conversation going on. There were student riots breaking out at Berkley and Reagan had me get him to a phone so he could call out the California Guard.
I found him a delightful man and very well read. He carried a couple boxes of books around with him and had several newspapers he read daily. Knowledgable about a lot of things. He and I snuck out of the hotel and I took him to a men's store nearby so he could buy an overcoat. He was very good in remembering names. At the fund raising banquet that night, the muckety mucks told another officer and I we could go in the kitchen and they'd have some food for us. Reagan was a few feet away, and he turned around and told the guy to set up another table in the auditorium close to the dais. He said "Take care of these men, they're with me." A little while later, while we were chowing down, he looked over at us, winked, and gave a thumbs up.
I got a couple of personal notes from him later when he was President. He was nothing like the man he was portrayed to be by critics and those who did not like him. He was smarter, bolder, better read, kinder, faithful than all of his critics. He outsmarted them, out manuvered them and made fools out of most of them. He was a great American.
I am not a big fan of the Reagan fetishists. They strike me as creepy, as all hero-worshippers do.
I think this comes from my foundational beliefs about humanity, as I believe that humans are born bad/sinful/etc. and that every triumph, civilizing achievement, and effective act of compassion is through excruciating effort(0) (be it immediate or developed over time). I think that even the best of us are flawed and that when one of us is presented as a paragon of virtue or some such, there is something corrupt at their heart. It may be petty, it may be gross, but all are flawed.
That being said, in Reagan, we had the usual leftist smear of the "dumb conservative." Leftists and the general public must really be dense for this myth to live on as long as it has. EVERY Republican candidate has been dumb and only losers can be accorded any civility and not so labeled.
As grampster discovered, Reagan was no dunce. Matter of fact, Reagon was a pretty fair policy wonk and had the proof: his radio addresses during the 1970s. Some might say, "He had speechwriters write them and he just read the script." Well, he did read from a script for those addresses, but 2/3 of the time, Reagan was the one who wrote it and did so in
long hand. These survived and were put into book form:
Reagan, In His Own Handhttp://www.amazon.com/Reagan-His-Own-Hand-Revolutionary/dp/074320123XThis was all conveniently forgotten for the 1980 campaign, which was a darned nasty affair during which Jimmy Carter's wife even got nasty.
WHat does it say of the media when Bill Clinton was orgasmically described as a Deep Thinker
TM for marking up & editing the works of his speech writers, but Reagan was an amiable fool despite writing 750+ speeches just in the years 1975-1979.
The media may have been mostly in the tank for Clinton, but it was completely IN the tank for Obama, and they insisted he ride their shoulders to keep from getting wet. The way they fawned over BHO's bio and his extensive list of no-account jobs with nothing to show for them relative to any of his opponents, primary or general election was something to behold.
Yeah, BHO is such an intellectual and living embodiment of leadership, especially compared to Reagan's thin resume of Screen Actor's Guild (union) president (multiple terms), two terms as Governor of California, primary candidacy in 1976, his enlisted and officer's service in the Army, and his film career.
(0) As such hard-won achievements, they are to be admired & appreciated and those responsible lauded for overcoming their human nature.
