The USA in Ronald Reagan's Time 1981-1989
by Mike Donovan
“Cold War II” - Hollywood Movie Star Becomes President - ‘Morning in America’ - Disciples of Christ – First President Divorced - Very Superstitious - VP George Bush – Dixon High - Eureka College – “Well ...” - Jellybeans - Raid on Libya --- Married Nancy Davis 1952 -- Iran/Contra Scandal - “Reaganauts” - Alzheimer’s Disease.
Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980, 489 to 89 and then trounced Carter’s former VP Walter Mondale in 1984 by a score of 525 to 13
“He counted on America to be passive. He counted wrong.”
Reagan to the nation after the raid on Libya 1986
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Opening Take
Cabinet
Cabnotes
Bio
Election of 1980
Inaugural
Reagan’s White House and the Troika
Travis Bickle Shoots President Reagan 3-30-1981
Out of Control Here, In the White House
Shoot Pope - 5.14.81
A Wacky Deal
Orisak 6.7.81 - Sadaam Checked
Evil Empire/Focus of Evil
Abscam Sends Senator to Jail - May 1981
Gulf of Sidra Incident- 8-19-81
Falkland Islands Conflict 1982
KAL-007
Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing - October 23 1983
Grenada Invasion - October 1983
Terrorist Attack on US Embassy in Kuwait - December 12 1983
Central America 1981-1984
US-German Relations 1984
Election of 1984
Warren G. Reagan
A Sad Day in 1984
SDI
Bonzo Goes to Bitburg
TWA 847 - TWA 840
Lime Street - August 1985
Geneva Summit - November 1985
Donald Regan Throws Weight Around Against Women
Style Wars
Disco Death
The Raid on Libya 1986
Libya Raid Changed History
Arab League is Mad
La Belle Postscript
Der Go De Judge
Goldwater-Nichols - October 1986
Russian Relations Plummet at the Summit - October 1986
Nick Danilof Incident - 1986
AAA Act of 1986
Congressional Elections of 1986
Stark Attack - 3.17.87
The Iran-Contra Scandal 1987
Nuclear Arms Reductions 1987
Personal Note
Vincennes - Happy Fourth Everyone!
Passing the Baton to Bush
The Teflon President
After Office
Conclusion
Sources
OPENING TAKE
In the Election of 1980 John Anderson, a mild mannered looking guy with glasses, polled a strong five million votes at the head of the Independent Party. JA’s candidacy got hot for a little while and had a following with the younger crowd, so Anderson's candidacy probably hurt Carter more than it hurt Reagan. Anderson won no electoral votes but was a factor in every close state. The Libertarians under Eddie Clark had their best showing to date.
Popular vote 1980 ---------------------Reagan R) 43,899,000
Carter D) 35,484,000
Anderson I) 5,720,000
Clark L) 921,000
Popular vote 1984------------------------Reagan 54,451,000
Mondale 37,565,000
When Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984 he became at 73, the oldest person ever elected to the office. When he died in 2004 at the age of 93 he was the oldest ex-president.
They called it “The Reagan Revolution.” But I disagree with the many who say it was all about him as an individual. He was the only one that could have pulled it off. If any conservative Republican had won in 1980, it would have been something of a revolution. It happened to be Reagan’s Revolution. If Syd Downes had won as a Republican, the history books would have chapters on the Downes Revolution. That fact that the man who led the conservative charge had so much talent and charisma, certainly helped the cause.
In the interest of attempting a balanced presentation I recently put my admiration of Reagan to the test. I asked myself a fair question; ‘what did you not like about Ronald Reagan?’ I was stuck in heavy traffic as I mulled this one over. A few red lights later I had to throw in the towel. In all honestly there was nothing I disliked about Ronald Reagan. I liked everything about him. I liked his politics, his personality, his heart, his voice, his appearance, and his life.
Being a Reagan-lover in Massachusetts was not an easy gig in the 1980's. Reagan was the laughing stock of the left for all of his months in office, but there were a few (million) of us that really loved him. Unfortunately, I never met any of them. All I heard was hate.
Ronald Reagan was the most hated political figure in my lifetime. The stream of abuse, especially from intellectuals, was breathtaking in scope and passion. Millions of Americans couldn't sleep at night because they were so consumed with hatred for this decent and honorable man. I became a “reactionary.” I became a registered Republican as a direct reaction to the hatred and abuse heaped on President Reagan.
After the Cold War ended in defeat for Communism at the tail end of the Reagan term and during the Bush years 1989-92, the hatred began to subside a little. The center fell in with thinking of Reagan as a perhaps a great man, although the left still hated his guts. When he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the hatred naturally fell off still more. When he died in 2002 he got yet another bump in respect.
The passage of time is almost always kind to former Presidents who were unpopular when they left office. Truman is now considered a great president but when he left in January 1953 he couldn't have won 25% of the national vote.
So all these things; time, the fall of Communism, Alzheimer's and death, have made Reagan's legacy fairly positive to the high school senior of today who first learns about him.
But if you had been there during the eight years he led the nation, you would know of the the hatred poured upon this man in an unrelenting torrent of disgrace.
W Bush 2001-9 got plenty of hate. Young conservatives probably can't agree with my saying that Reagan was hated more. But you folks have FOX News and Rush and Laura and others in the right-wing support systems. When Reagan won, if you liked him you were all alone on a raft in the North Atlantic. There were no famous right-wing talk shows taking his side in these years. Zero. It was in this corner, the biased mainstream liberal media who think of Reagan as a clown and always this smug air about that, and in this corner, nothing.
Bush II arrived in Washington when neo-conservatism had already lived in power under Reagan, Bush 1, and the Republican revival of Newt Gingrich. So even though the left and most of the center hated W. Bush, he had some open support, and did not represent a dashing of the left hope of total victory.
But Reagan came to power at the end of 12 years of the total dominance of the left in every aspect of American life, political and cultural. Overturning the left called for a great great deal of reactionary liberal hate.
I had only begun to change at the time of the 1980 Presidential election. I was torn between my hippie roots and my steady history studies that were beginning to open my eyes that there are always two points of view. But I couldn't pull the political trigger in 1980. I couldn't bring myself to vote for that old righty Reagan and I was disgusted with Carter. I didn't vote. It wasn't out of apathy, it was just the opposite.
The Vietnam War had given the revolution of the left a powerful momentum that carried it coasting a few years after the war ended in 1973. In 1974 conservative senators had long hair and bank presidents would admit with a laugh that “of course I smoke pot.” There were only a handful of squares left in the country and we all laughed at them, especially conservative politicians, if you could spot one. The whiffle cut career military man was not a very hip person in 1974. John Wayne and his type had become a laughing stock. Even old fashioned entertainers in Las Vegas like Sammy Davis Junior or Bob Hope were just stale icons of the unhip to be laughed at, not respected.
What was more important, the left (and I) believed without a doubt that the trend would continue on forever. Politically and culturally, the train would never stop. The triumph of the left would rule the world. This was only the beginning, the best was yet to come.
When the Nixon-appointed Gerald Ford couldn't get elected in his own right in 1976, that only proved it. The conservative politicians were being shown the door. Not just today, but forever.
The train began to slow down for a number of reasons. Hippies had to grow up and get real jobs. They got their hippie girlfriends pregnant and the two of them had to join the conservative world of survival. The American economy took a disastrous downturn, and suddenly the feeling of leftist euphoria was gone with the wind. Left or right didn't matter so much when Burger King isn't hiring and you're disappointed.
The left political momentum of the anti-Vietnam War faded as the War did. The left didn't have a sure-fire winning issue to rely on anymore. Now they had to slug it out fair and square with conservative intellectuals on every issue. Remember, by 1971, even conservatives were 85% against the war and unwittingly allied with the left. But by the Carter era, that was changing.
Conservatives suddenly weren't afraid to show their short hair in public anymore. A new young crowd of disco dancers were rejecting the hippie value system, and most people were feeling either a political backtrack to the center or right, or worse, becoming absolutely apolitical. Selfish apathy was anathema to the passionate revolutionary left and it swept America in 1975-1977. The gas lines and the unemployment broke up the hippie party and replaced with the Party Party. It was an escape into entertainment as a political statement a little bit similar to the Amrica of the Post WWI “Roaring Twenties.” These were the “whoring seventies,” when it was so easy to score the home run it was unbelievable.
Left and right were slugging it out in the ring, to the shock of the left crowd who never thought the right could last a round. The deciding blow came with the Iran Hostage Crisis. Carter bungled the affair and made most Americans feel frustrated with America being pushed around all over the world. All of a sudden the idea of an old fashioned square guy waving the flag, a man who had held his ground even through the hippie storm of 1968-74, did not seem so laughable anymore. And the celebrity lefty leaders were getting too grey to pied-piper the young into the voting booths. The Jerry Rubin children were either too young, too moderate, or Rubin didn't have any. The left had no superstars to match Reagan. Any lefties with talent were in the selfish world of entertainment and had never even entertained the idea of a political career. The left had declared all politicians corrupt for so long, had declared the political profession ignoble for so long, that they woke up in 1980 with no talent pool, the victims of their own propaganda. The major leaguers lefties had grown old, and the minor league system was depleted beyond all hope. The Reaganite politicians waltzed in to an empty room. What kind of dork wanted to be such a low-life scum as a politician?
So when Reagan won in 1980 it wasn't to the left just a despicable Republican clown serving out a term, as with the two Bushes. This was the great dream crushed and snuffed out like a cigarette. It was the unthinkable. After all that hard work, the left was not going to totally triumph in culture and politics. When Ronald Reagan, that nit-wit fascist said “So help me God” the left cried “God help me.” The dream was dead. That's why they hated him so passionately.
It wasn't him, it wasn't his policies, it wasn't his corrupt cabinet members, it wasn't Iran-Contra. It was the end of the dream and they took it out on one man. Reagan took all the flak for being the symbol at the head of the counter-counterculture parade.
Reagan’s campaign slogan was, “Morning in America.” When he won, left was “Mourning in America.”
CABINET
Secretary of State----------------Al Haig—1981-1982
George Schultz----1982-1989
Secretary of Defense—Casper Weinberger-1981-1989
Sec. of Treasury------Donald T. Regan------1981-1985
James A. Baker III---1985-1989
Att. General----------William French Smith-1981-1985
Ed Meese 85-89
CABNOTES
Haig was too arrogant. A divider and egoist, not a uniter.
Don Regan wrote a good memoir of his time in the Administration.
Ed Meese was probably the worst choice for cabinet post. The left hammered him relentlessly for malfeasance. Meese was an albatross around the neck of conservatives for years because some of the charges were true. When Mike Dukakis gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in the summer of 1988 the crowd went wild when the subject of Reagan's corrupt Attorney General came up. Meese was one of Reagan's Warren G. Harding cronies.
George Schultz bored me in person, but reading his book I think he is the unsung hero of the victory in the Cold War. “Shultzie” worked long and tough for US interests with many foreign leaders in these critical years. His memoir of his years in office as Secretary of State should be required reading in all US High Schools. If they can force everyone to read Howard Zinn they can force everyone to read George Schultz. Not that that would ever happen. That would be fair and balanced and our schools are anything but that.
“Cap” Weinberger was too hawkish for me, and that's pretty bad when you're too hawkish for me. There were times however, when Weinberger was very good for the national defense. Too hawkish on some matters, Cap was the only one hawkish enough on others, so the results were mixed.
Casper Weinberger was not a “people person.” Cap had feuds with many of the other Reagan cabinet members, especially Haig. The cabinet simply was not big enough for these two ego's and in the showdown, Haig acted like a brat and resigned.
The personal scandals in the Reagan cabinet were cited by the left, with some fury, as a case of grave irresponsibility at the top. But I believe that their motivation was simple hatred of the right, not some great love of justice.
Charles Lashua had to resign as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in 1987 for taking bribes in return for political favors. Reagan claimed knew nothing of the so-called “Lashua Files.”
BIO
Ronald Reagan was the son of an Irish mid-western shoe salesman with a drinking problem. Jack Reagan couldn't choose between Jim Beam and Tom McCann.
Ronald was a Taft baby. Little Ronnie was born in Tampico, Illinois on February 6 1911. Father Jack, was never physically or verbally abusive to Ron but stayed away on drinking binges from time to time, and changed jobs several times. As a result Ron lived his childhood in five different towns and cities in Illinois. From Tampico the Reagans moved to Chicago, then on to Monmouth, Galesburg, back to Tampico, and then settled at last in Dixon.
His mother Nelle was a deeply loving person and this he passed on to our country through his own warmth and kindness. His parents were of separate religions but Ron eventually chose one that neither of his parents had belonged to, the Disciples of Christ.
Ron was preoccupied with becoming a football player and played lightweight division as a freshman (like Carter at Annapolis) before making the Dixon High varsity as a junior. He played the offensive line.
Needless to say he was also active in school theatre.
For four summers beginning with his sophomore year, Reagan was a lifeguard at Lowell Park on the Rock River (named for the poet James Russell Lowell.) He claims to have saved more than 77 lives. Hopefully that makes up for the body count in the Libya raid and the Central American capers.
Reagan dreamed of attending Eureka College (enrollment 250), a Disciples of Christ institution where he had a hero worship of a local football star who played there. Applying for financial aid as a needy student, Reagan lived his dream. He became a starting member of the Eureka varsity football team. Ronnie was involved in a variety of other extracurricular organized activities, including three years as a male cheerleader for the varsity basketball team. Reagan has this in common with president George W. Bush, who engaged in this shameful activity at Yale. It hurts to have to report that about both those “guys.”
While he was playing for Eureka the team had a road game in Springfield. Jack Reagan had taken over a small shoe store there and it gave Ron a chance to visit his dad and see what the old man was up to. The Great Depression had taken the sole out of the shoe business just like any other, and Jack was working in a run down third-rate shoe store in a bad part of town. When he saw his dad’s digs Ron had to turn away to wipe the tears from his eyes. The sad reality was that his father would never realize his dreams of one day owning a fine shoe store.
After Eureka Ronald Reagan went to Chicago to literally knock on the door of every radio station there to try to break into broadcasting. But Chicago gave him a cold wind and it was back to Dixon to regroup.
RR then followed some sound advice and tried again to break into radio at the ground floor, but this time in the small tri-city area to his southwest. At WOC in Davenport, Iowa, he finally caught a break and soon found himself broadcasting live Big Ten college football games for Iowa. But after three games the gig was up and it was back to Dixon in the middle of the great D. But this time Ron had a little advantage. Daddy Jack was one of the few loyal Democrats in Dixon and was rewarded with a small time local federal job when FDR won the Presidency. It didn’t pay much but it was a job at the height of an unemployment hurricane and Ron could now look at his father without wanting to cry. I wish I could say the same. (I'm only kidding, dad! My father is 74 and has become a professional actor, appearing on many TV shows, in a career he didn't even start until he was 69 years old!)
A job opened up for Ron Reagan at WHO in Des Moines, a step up from Davenport. RR was an all-purpose disc jockey and announcer and in addition was employed to “broadcast” Chicago Cub major league baseball games. What he did was create the illusion that he was broadcasting live from the stadiums but it was really just re-creating the plays that were sent in over the telegraph. I cannot understand how people were so stupid as to fall for this. He was honestly trying to trick them and it actually worked. What a bunch of rubes! One time the wire connection to Chicago went dead and Reagan had to pretend that a player kept fouling one pitch off after another until the wire was repaired and the fake game was resumed. He told that story more often than the fake batter fouled off those pitches.
As lame as this part of his WHO duties may seem today (and shame on those who write that Reagan was a major league play by play broadcaster,) it helped get Reagan off the farm and off to Hollywood.
Ronald pitch to WHO the ingenious idea that they should pay for him to accompany the Chicago Cubs to spring training in Southern California. By really getting to know the team he could do a better job at phony broadcasting when the season started. To his surprise and delight they accepted the idea and in 1937 Reagan was a WHO reporter assigned to the Cubs spring training camp on Catalina Island.
Now comes an example of weather changing history. One day Reagan was in LA and there was a terrible storm. All boats back to Catalina, 26 mile across the stormy sea were grounded. So Reagan used his free day to visit a friend at a movie studio. The friend told Reagan he was a natural and got him a screen test that very day. The screen test was a success. In no time flat Reagan was out of the Midwest and acting full time. He was in with the in crowd. He was soon under contract and appearing in movies. At the height of the Depression Ronald Reagan was rich. He called his parents to come west. And he forgot all about how the Cubs were doing.
Reagan appeared in many so-called “B movies” before his breakthrough came in The Knute Rockne Story. Reagan played football star George Gipp and was a smash success in the hambone role of “the Gipper.” Then came a legless role in King’s Row and stardom.
When on 12.7 the Japanese bombed Hawaii, Guam, Malaya, Wake, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines, Reagan was already in the Army Reserve and reported for duty. He was rejected for battle service because of extremely poor eyesight. He served in the war as a movie actor, making and narrating films for US training and intelligence. He finished the war with the rank of Captain Reagan.
Some incurable critics of Reagan mention his war service behind the lines as a mark of his personal cowardice. Correction, a lot of left wingers who never served in he military at all disparaged Reagan's war service as a mark of personal cowardice.
The man reported for duty. He was a football player. He says in his biography that he had his healthy share of fistfights because he was the only Catholic kid in the neighborhood. Reagan was no coward and he would have gone to combat they had wanted him and he was already in the reserve before the War began. Does that sound like a man who wants to shirk military service?
After the war, Reagan returned to the movies and became the President of the Screen Actor’s Guild. He worked against Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. In was in these duties that he met his second wife and the first lady of the 80’s Nancy Davis.
Here's how they met. It seems that another actress with the same name Nancy Davis was being justly accused of having Communist sympathies, but Hollywood people were beginning to mix up the people with the same names. A friend of Nancy asked Ronald Reagan to straighten things out and when he met her they began dating immediately. Ron married Nan in 1952. He couldn't just say no to Nancy.
By the mid-1960’s Reagan was out of show business completely and the ‘acting’ governor of California. He was one of the very few politicians that stuck to his right-wing guns throughout the late 60’s and early 70’s. When even squares rejected square, this square was square enough to stay true to his act. He supported the war in Vietnam, condemned the anti-war demonstrators and the students taking over the college campuses, and waved the flag like he were in one of his old war movies.
Ronald Reagan in the late 1960's and early 70's wasn't just a laughing stock of the hip left he was the laughing stock for the hip left. I was a teen-aged lefty hippie in the early 1970’s and Reagan was considered to be so laughable that we didn’t even hate him. He was a joke. Of course once in a while we’d hear a rumor that some day he might run for president, but that was hard to take seriously. If we ever did ponder the thought it was with a shudder of terror. “If that guy ever got in” it was invariably said, “we’d definitely have World War III.” I heard that line a thousand times. When RWR ran against Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976 I was relieved when he lost. Whew, we don’t want world war three. That was close.
This left leftover prejudice against Reagan was put into play when he finally did make president in 1980. The left did not judge him based on his performance. They judged him based on prejudice going back to the late 1960’s. It was no coincidence that Reagan was elected on the shoulders of a new conservative youth movement, with the help of an older conservative Party base. Reagan shocked the left by carrying the young voters in a large way. 98% of the leftover lefties were decidedly against this man, and would have remained against him if he had personally given each of them a new house on Long Island. Reagan was the devil. But the new batch of young voters didn’t have this inbred hatred of Ron Reagan from the hippie era. Their minds were fresh and entering the 80’s unpolluted by the Nam/Kent State hysteria.
By the time the 1980 campaign approached, the national mood had sea changed. The Iranian hostage crisis under Carter had swung the middle to the right. The left remained its conceited self, but the swing vote swung Ronnie’s way. Furthermore, the old base of conservative Republicans re-appeared without embarrassment for the first time since Goldwater counted his vote bag in 1964. With America getting pushed around the world for four years, especially in the Middle East, masses of Americans wanted a return to force, not retreat, in foreign policy. They weren’t going to get that under a compromise liberal Republican. The country and the Republican Party were not looking for a RINO to lead their party in 1980. They wanted a hawk.
The Nixon-Ford interlude of timid Republicanism was over. Those poor Vietnam Republicans had been forced to weigh every move against the overwhelming leftist mood of the voting public. Only a cautious liberal Republican (liberal for a Republican) could hope to go very far in this era. The left had the Vietnam War as the number one issue and it was a winner because it was a loser. As long as the Vietnam War was un-winnable, so was left power.
But now in 1980 that hopeless quagmire was behind them. Much had changed. We had seen the Communist genocide in Cambodia. The nation had been saddened by the plight of the boat people of Vietnam desperate to flee the new Communist regime. We had seen the oil sheikdoms of the Gulf push us around during the energy crisis. Iran had slapped us around like a schoolyard bully, and that one was ongoing. Men were cutting their hair and wearing a tie on occasion without being called a dork. Woman were shaving their armpits and wearing dresses again. One or two occasionally didn't put out! Things were indeed changing. The time was right for the nomination of a true conservative, a Ronald Wilson Reagan for President in 1980.
But how could anyone vote for this guy if he would start World War III as his first order of business?
ELECTION OF 1980
America made its point twice about the Carter era, first in 1980 and then in 1984 when America rejected Carter's VP, Walter Mondale.
Boring Independent 3rd wheel John Anderson hurt Carter.
Having said all that about the return of conservatism, it can said on the other hand that Reagan beat Carter only because two helicopters malfunctioned in the Iranian desert. If the hostage rescue mission had been a spectacular success with shooting and casualties in the bargain on both sides, then Carter wins re-election. Carter’s general pacifism could have survived another election, even with a tough economy, if only the rescue mission had worked. He would have become a great hero to both left and right. He couldn’t win the center or the center/right without those hostages and while he and Vance were negotiating with great vigor, it was not enough. Iran would tease but that was all. The Iranians made Carter beg and Iran elected Ronald Reagan. In the long run, they should have given up the hostages! Reagan’s 8 years set off a long-range US foreign policy that became, in increments over three US Republican Administrations, dangerous to Teheran.
Author Gary Sick goes further. He says that the Iranians virtually elected Reagan with a behind the scenes bargain that the Republicans should be ashamed of. Sick writes that the Republicans struck a secret deal with those in control of the hostages to make sure they were not released until after the election. The Iranians would be paid back with secret arms deals once the Reagan team took over. Sick worked in the Carter administration, so he is biased. Sick is both a hard researcher and an insider, so while his charges have never been proven, they are obviously serious and possibly true. Gary is a good writer. I just wish he wouldn't make so many jokes in his books. I don't go for Sick humor.
John Anderson was popular with the young liberal voting block, which of course Carter was counting on carrying. Without Anderson in the mix Carter might have won a close one and all of human history would no doubt have been different. Reagan's presidency represented a great change in American politics and American politics affects everything.
Many Democrats were mad at Jimmy Carter on Election Night because he went out and made his concession speech one full hour before the polls closed in California. This deprived some local west coast Democratic candidates of many needed votes. Tip O'Neil called the Carter people in a rage. They told him that Carter just felt like he had had enough and wanted to call it a night. O'Neil snapped at the Carter liaison man that “You people came into the White House acting like a bunch of jerks and I guess you're going out the same way,” and then he hung up. At least two Democratic Congressmen lost a close election that night and they blamed Carter's early concession for the loss of decisive voters who stayed at home. Al Ullman of Oregon and Jimmy Corman of California agreed with Tip O'Neil when they woke up the next morning realizing they had suffered a close defeat.
I was sitting at the back of the old Ding Ho comedy club about two weeks before the 1980 election with my best friend Barry Crimmins and we discussed the choices. Barry is today a writer and an author and his positions are to put it mildly, radical left. In 1980 he wasn't quite as left as he became later but certainly he was to the left of center at the time while I was slightly to the right. I said to him one night (I can diagram the seats we were sitting in), "I'm not going to vote for either of them. But if I were forced to make a choice I would vote for Reagan for this reason and this reason alone. If each of these men were taken into an alley by a mugger, there was only one guy that might come out of the alley with the mugger by the scruff of the neck, and that would be Reagan. Barry reluctantly agreed with me. He might not have feel that way two years later, and Barry satirized Reagan on stage for the next 8 years as a major part of his comedy act. But that night in that corner of the Ding he agreed with me that if forced to choose, Reagan was the better choice. I say it not to knock my best friend, but because it says so much about the way the world was at that moment in 1980, that even a leftist like Crimmins was fatigued from America's position of weakness and the failure of Carter in general.
By the time 1984 rolled around I was a strong supporter of Reagan and Crimmins was his enemy, but still my friend. The enemy of my friend is still my friend.
INAUGURAL
The outgoing President Carter had high hopes that his good name would be salvaged at the 11th hour of Inauguration Day 1981. He and his team had worked hard to try and get the Teheran hostages released. This was day 444 of an ordeal that began on November 4, 1979 when the Iranian students conquered and occupied the American Embassy in Teheran.
When Carter and Reagan were riding in the limo to the swearing in ceremony at the Capitol Building, Carter was on the phone still trying to negotiate the release of the hostages!
There was a jet plane on a runway in Algiers containing all of the American hostages. The plane was going to go home to America and the crisis was going to end. But if it did not take-off before Reagan was sworn in, then Carter would be deprived of the chance to say that he had negotiated their release.
Some lefty writers ripped the Reagans for having an elaborate and costly inaugural celebration. Nancy spent too much money on her gowns, therefore the new administration was bad.
REAGAN’S WHITE HOUSE AND THE TROIKA
The three most powerful people in the first RR White House were Ed Meese, Mike Deaver and Jim Baker, the “Troika.” Nancy was more powerful than all three combined, but we’ll get to her later. For now I’ll just say no to “Fancy Nancy.”
The powers behind the throne could be separated into two groups. One was the California Mafia, the people who had been with Reagan in California and were now moving on up to Washington with him. The second group were the practical political choices from various political and geographical regions. These included people Ronald reagan had never even met before and some people who had actually opposed him vehemently in earlier campaigns.
The loyalists included Ed Meese who was Reagans’ Chief of Staff in Sacramento days. Meese would come to a bad end as Attorney General under a cloud of misconduct allegations. My friend Crimmins used to say on stage that “We lefties proudly despise Ed Meese and people like him. We hate Meeses to pieces!”
Mike Deaver was another of the California crowd who were loyal to Ron and liked by Nancy.
TRAVIS BICKLE SHOOTS PRESIDENT REAGAN – 3-30-1981
The Reagan Presidency started out with a bang.
On March 30, 1981 Reagan was leaving a Washington hotel and heading for the limo when a loser dork insane fat guy shot him. John Hinckley managed to get one Devastator bullet to ricochet off the limo and under the President's armpit.
Reagan didn't even realize he’d been shot. A secret serviceman pushed Reagan violently into the limo when the shots rang out and both Reagan and the SS man thought that the pain in the president's chest was the result of being pushed into the car. They both thought he had dislocated a rib muscle. Reagan wanted to go back to the White House but the SS officer noticed some blood coming from Reagan's mouth and ordered the limo to the hospital. Reagan said he would be ok, but the Secret Serviceman would not listen to his boss. He ordered the limo to the hospital. Reagan walked into the front door of the emergency room, gave everyone a smile and a wave and collapsed.
For some time the docs could not find the wound, but they knew there had to be one. More than once they grunted things like, “He's fading fast,” and “we're going to lose him.” These are not good sentences for one to hear. The docs found the bullet and it was dangerously close to the President’s heart. There was even some thought given to leaving it there, and letting him live out his life with the bullet still in there. That's how dangerously located it was. They thought they might lose him during the extraction. After dramatic doc to doc debate, and consultation with Nancy and close friends, the decision was made to chance it and get the bullet out. It was touch and go, but they did it and save the man's life. Just before he went under for the knife, Reagan said to the young Doctors,
“I hope you are Republicans.”
One doctor responded,
“Mr. President, today we are all Republicans.”
Reagan began to respond,
“That'll be the da....”
And then he passed out.
Shooter Hinckley’s motives were pathetic. He wanted to impress a movie star actress he had a mad crush on and he decided to imitate the lead character in the violent movie Taxi Driver. Have you seen pictures of this John Hinckley guy? The clown couldn't score in a woman's prison and he thinks by killing the President he's going to sleep with a Hollywood movie star. The Scorsece film starred Robert DiNiro as Travis Bickle (the worst thing in the movie was his stupid fictional name,) a tormented nobody who commits a crime to get the world’s attention. In one scene DiNiro plans to assassinate the presidential front-runner to impress a woman. But he is foiled before he gets a shot off at ‘Palantine’, a man whose slogan was the breathtaking, ‘We Are the People.’
A good historical movie on the event is The Day Reagan Was Shot, (2002), starring Richard Dreyfus as Al Haig. The movie is especially rough on Al Haig’s poor performance in the crisis. The Secretary of State more or less told the world that he was temporarily running the country, when he had no such authority to do or say this.. Haig thought that he was third in line to succeed. Since VP Bush was out of town on a plane and Reagan was incapacitated, Haig thought that he was dictator for a day. But his ideas were based on the Constitutional rules that were in place when Haig was a boy learning government in school. In the 60’s the laws of succession had changed and Haig was well down the line of succession now and did not know it.
Reagan handled the shooting with humor and aplomb. He saw his wife in the operating room and said "Honey I forgot to duck." RR told the docs with a faint smile, "I hope you are Republicans." One young doc lied back, "Mr. President, today we are all Republicans."
The bullet was lodged one inch Reagan's heart and removing it was a close call. He could easily have died. The President lost almost 50% of his blood.
Al Haig managed to reach Vice President Bush who was 34,000 miles above the ground on a flight to a speaking engagement in Texas. Haig told Bush to turn the pane around, but couldn't tell him why. The line to the plane was not secure.
If RR had died and Bush had taken over, and won re-election twice, George Bush could have been president from 1981 to 1996. The 22nd Amendment does not apply to partial terms. There is no prohibition against 2.8 terms, only three.
A jury later found Hinckley not guilty by a jury for reasons of insanity. John the movie buff has had plenty of time to rent his favorites in a mental hospital but on rare occasions been allowed outside for family visits.
Reagan's popularity went up enormously as a consolation for suffering a bullet wound. He became a national hero. Travis Bickle made Palantine a cinch for 84. The drifting and apathetic center suddenly loved Reagan. The diner big-mouths at 7 a.m., they all loved Reagan now. That is a powerful bloc, when you consider how many diner big-mouths there are merely in your own neighborhood.
But there was no consolation for Jim Brady, a Reagan press secretary who took a Bickle bullet in the forehead, and suffered brain damage. Poor Jim had to be consoled by having a gun control bill named after him.
A Washington police officer was also wounded.
OUT OF CONTROL HERE, IN THE WHITE HOUSE
The low-light of the crisis came when Secretary of State and Four Star General Alexander Haig had a meltdown that made him a laughing stock for the press and the left, and ruined his career. Haig had enough clout to run for President later, but his star was never the same after the Reagan shooting.
Haig and a few of the top defense people were in the situation room watching Larry Speaks speaking to the press about the ongoing situation. Speakes was deputy Press Secretary to Jim Brady, who was suffering from a severe head wound. All three major networks had falsely reported that Brady was dead. Donald McColgan of UPI asked Speakes if Vive President Bush would become the acting president if Reagan went under anesthesia and Speakes answered, “I cannot answer that question.”
From composites of the principles we get Haig shouting, “What's he doing there. We've got to take control!” then leaping out of his chair and rushing up the stairs like a bat out of hell. He crashed into the press room just as Speakes was leaving the podium. Speakes wrote later that Haig literally knocked him aside with his four star shoulder and grabbed the podium mic. Haig thought he was taking control but Speakes wrote later that, “Haig had completely lost control. He was nervous and short of breath. I had admired Haig for some time but from that day on I never felt the same about him. He had a complete meltdown.”
That's a strong indictment coming from a fellow Republican and fellow Reagan insider. Larry Speakes was no Howard Zinn looking for the worst in every Republican and writing of historic events accordingly.
Charles Beerbottle of CNN asked Haig,
“Who is in control of the government right now?”
Hothead Haig handled the question with his moment of truth, and it really was. This was the same snake that brought down Nixon with leaks while pretending to be Dick's dear friend wondering where all the leaks were coming from. This was the same lizard that had intimidated all the Gerald Ford team so that the national healing process became a hoax as Nixon's people, led by Haig, ran the Ford White House from first class seats while Ford's people flew coach.
Haig said,
“Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State, in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the Vice President.”
Haig went back to the situation room where Cap Weinberger confronted him and told him he was in error about the chain of succession. Haig snapped arrogantly (as if he had any other way of speaking) that,
“Cap, you'd better read your Constitution. That is, if you know how to read.”
Weinberger held his temper as the others explained to Haig that Cap was correct. The line of succession had been by amendment changed and the Secretary of State was now way down in line to succeed the President after the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, the President Pro tempore of the Senate and the White House janitor were ahead of haig in the line. The immature schoolboy was falling back on a civics lesson he head learned when cigarettes were 8 cents a pack.
SHOOT POPE 5.14.81
"Shoot Pope" was the headline in the NY Daily News on May 14 1981. They were still hanging on to an old custom in the newspaper business of giving command sentences for headlines. (FIND BABY'S HEAD – Ok, I'll put that on my list of things to do today.)
The Polish Pope was riding through St. Peter’s Square tenderly waving to his loving fans when a feeble excuse for a man named Mehmet Ali Agca lunged forward and shot his holiness in the stomach. The Pope was rushed to the hospital and survived the wound for more than 20 years.
The perp was a Turk. Agca was convicted and spent 19 years in an Italian prison. He was sort of released in 2000. From there he was transferred to Turkey where he spent another 5 years in a Turkish prison for murdering a journalist. He was released from the Turkish jail on January 12, 2006. And they say that American justice is lenient! The guy shot the Pope and killed a journalist and now he was sipping expresso in an Istanbul bar.
Why did Agca do it? He was mentally unstable of course, but was deemed fit for trial, so that probably doesn’t explain everything. Did he act alone? Mehmet said at first that the Soviet Union had hired him, but he also changed his story more often than a John Kerry campaign position. MAA became something of a European Lee Oswald mystery man.
If the Soviets were involved, the shooting had Cold War significance. But why would the USSR want to kill the Pope?
It was reported that Agca was working for the Bulgarian secret police. Bulgaria was controlled by the Soviet Union, the Pope was Polish, Poland was rebelling against their Soviet overlords through the labor organization Solidarity, and the Pope was openly supportive of Solidarity. The chain of logic led some investigators to conclude that The Russians had shot the Pope by way of the Bulgarian secret police. Soon this became something of common belief, even if unproven.
Over the 80’s this explanation became discredited. A book came out called ‘The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection.’ The Communists it turned out had nothing to do with the shooting and what was more, everyone who thought so was now exposed as a paranoid neo-McCcarthyist.
In March of 2006 the Italian Parliament made an investigative study of the sad event of 5.13.81. Its conclusion? “The commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the Pope Katrol Wojtyla.”
Update … To assuage public outrage over his release, Mehmet Agca was returned to Turkish prison to serve more of his term for killing the writer. He is scheduled to be released this year, 2010.
The current Pope might be waiting for him with forgiving arms. He recently forgave the woman who dropped him with a textbook football tackle for no reason at all in December of 09.
A WACKY DEAL
The sale of US-made AWAC reconnaissance jets to Saudi Arabia was a controversial issue in 1981, a carryover over from an initiative of the Carter administration.
The problem was that the US had always guaranteed to Israel that it would be given enough quality military hardware to have a slight superiority over its combined foes in the region. The sale of AWACs to the Saudis would indicate a change in policy towards equality and balance of power between Israel and it’s neighbors. Israel therefore objected to the sale of these planes.
The Israelis had US eternal support but had little to offer us in return except democracy and friendship in a hostile and anti-democratic region. The enemies of Israel had more materially to offer to Sammy. They had a lot of oil and were being actively courted by the Soviet Union. U.S. need for Middle Eastern oil and the desire to compete with the Soviet Union for ME influence put America in a delicate position. It wasn’t so much that America wanted influence in the sandy states, it was more that it could not allow the Soviets to gain that influence. The Cold War was in full swing and the Middle East was a key battleground. How to maintain US friendship and alliance with Israel while at the same time improving business and political relations with the non-democratic Sheikdoms was a problem that Reagan and Al Haig had to address with urgency. The USA had to make friends with both the Hatfields and the McCoys.
OSIRAK 6.7.81 - SADAAM CHECKED
Without giving advance warning to ally United States, Israeli fighter jets bombed and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction in the city of Osirak, Iraq on June 7, 1981. It was pre-emptive war and the US condemned it publicly while adoring it privately.
This precedent is looming in the situation with Iran in 2012. The Republicans running for president keep pledging that if elected they will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel is not speaking as loud on the subject, but a repeat of Orisak could come out of either Washington or Tel Aviv, or both in the not too distant future. Certainly a pre-emptive military strike on Iran is more palatable today in world opinion because of the legal precedent of Orisak, and because of the seriousness of the attack on 9/11.
And what would have happened in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf if the Israeli’s had not done this? What If Sadaam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and had nine nukes to play with? Would Bush One have been able to do the Desert Storm thing? Would W have been able to take over the whole country of Iraq in 2003? Maybe the Israelis should have had a marching band going down Pennsylvania Ave during that DS victory parade in the spring of 1991.
EVIL EMPIRE/FOCUS OF EVIL
Reagan’s most controversial move in 8 years was not anything he did, but two things he said, two times he used the word ‘evil’ to describe the Soviet Union. Critics mocked him condescendingly for this for the length of his Presidency. Yet when Communism fell at the end of the decade, the left celebrated along with everyone else. The round peg fits into the square hole. If Reagan was so stupid and arrogant and irresponsibly unsophisticated in making the two statements, why did the entire world celebrate the fall of Communism in 1989-1990?
The first use of the ‘e’ word was in one of the first speeches in his Presidency when he said the Soviet Union was “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Thousands ripped him for saying this for the rest of his term, as if he was reactionary neanderthal pig warmonger.
As if it wasn’t!
How simple do we have to make this? There were still millions of Russians imprisoned for political crimes in Gulags all across Siberia and this guy was out of line for calling the USSR evil? They had imprisoned half of Eastern Europe since 1945 denying the most basic human rights everywhere they took over. And Reagan was a pinhead for calling them evil? Russian people were so afraid of the KGB that they were afraid to talk to each other for fear of being informed on and sent to labor camps and Reagan was naïve for calling them evil? Some of their older leaders in 1981 actually had consorted with Stalin, a man who supervised the forced starvation to death of at least 20 million Russian peasants who did not adequately embrace Communism.
I remember being delighted when he made the speech. ‘Its about time someone told it like it is,’ I thought. The last man to speak bluntly about Soviet evil had been John Kennedy. Since that time four Presidents had walked on eggshells being always afraid of any rhetoric that might hinder our hopes of achieving détente. All the while as the Soviets threatened us openly in TASS every day. Now at last was a president who wasn’t afraid to say what deserved to be said. His reward? Ridicule. He was out of line, an embarrassment to himself, to the nation and the cause of world peace.
The second shocking statement came when he called the Soviet Union an ‘evil empire.’ Again, we never heard the end of the ridicule. Left pundits still cite the foolish Reagan making this terrible statement. As if it wasn’t true! Soviet citizens had no freedom. They could not travel abroad. They invaded Afghanistan. They exported subversive Communist revolutions all over the globe. They gave 10 billion to North Vietnam. They gave Sadaam Hussein all the military hardware that US critics think we gave him.
I studied Russian history every day of Reagan’s Presidency. I was totally focused on who the Soviets were, what they were, where they came from, and where they might be going. To be in my position of awareness and then hear these statements from him made me love him, not hate him. He became my hero. I became a Republican because of Reagan’s handling of the Soviet Union, not in spite of his stupid statements on the subject. I had chosen not to vote at all when he ran against Carter because I was still undecided about politics. Reagan’s performance in office turned me Republican. I certainly did not become a Republican because of the actions of Nixon or Ford. Reagan reinvented the Republican Party, rescuing it from the doldrums it had been locked in since Ike retired to his farm in Pennsylvania in January of 1961. Reagan Republicanism had as much of a resemblance to Ford Republicanism as I have to Scatman Cruthers.
I believe that most lefties would have changed their minds to some extent if they knew more about the USSR at the time and of it’s true past.
The USSR in the 1980's was still a land where you of state oppression. Take my chosen field as an example. Russian immigrant comedian Yakoff Smirnoff states in a CBS interview that there was a Department of Jokes in the USSR where each comedian had to submit his act to examination. The DOJ would have had me in big trouble in no time flat. I would have either had to tone it down or else. Lenny Bruce and Sam Kinison would have died even younger than they did in the USA, or they would have disappeared or been forced out of the profession entirely. Sam would have been driving a trolley in Leningrad with a muzzle on.
The USSR was indeed the focus of evil in the modern world when Reagan said they were. What was so insane or laughable about him saying so? They had the nukes to kill me and everyone I knew in 20 minutes and they used threatening and hostile language against my country in their official newspapers every day. I'm not supposed to develop a healthy fear and dislike for this overt enemy? Under six presidents before him the USA had openly built up a nuclear arsenal of terror to match the one being built up by the USSR. These six Presidents must have also believed that the USSR was the focus of evil in the modern world. Otherwise, why build the missiles?
ABSCAM SENDS SENATOR TO JAIL – MAY 1981
The FBI set up a sting operation in the Carter era to entrap corrupt public officials into taking money for political favors. The arrests carried over into the trails held in the first year of Reagan's term.
In May of 1981 a jury convicted New Jersey Democrat Senator to Washington Harrison Williams of accepting bribes. Williams ended up serving nearly 3 years in Newark prison. Newark is bad enough when you're not in prison. Williams was the first US Senator to go to jail since 1901. The Senate was preparing a vote to boot him out of the Capitol building, when he wisely resigned. If he hadn't, HW would have been the first person expelled from the Senate since the Civil War.
Five US Congressmen were also convicted, but Jack Murtha was acquitted. He is on tape listening to the bribe offers but saying, not at this time, maybe later. Mostly Murtha got off the hook because he is on the video suggesting that taking these illegal bribes might lead to the creation of 1,000 new jobs in his district.
Murtha went on to become a revered hero of the Democrat party, so all was Abscam forgiven.
Williams got out of jail in 1986 and went on to become a full time cab driver in Salamanca NY.
GULF OF SIDRA INCIDENT 8-19-81
The internationally recognized limit for sovereignty in off-shore waters is 12 miles. After 12 miles, the water is international, not national. But Libya under its truculent leader Muomar Khadaffi was opting to defy these laws and make a special law for its Mediterranean frontage, the Gulf of Sidra. Qaddafi first declared its limits there to be 24 miles, twice the usual, and then drew a line across the top of the Gulf and said that everything below this line was Libyan waters. He called it "The Line of Death" and warned foreign powers to stay out or enter at their own risk.
Reagan did not like this new Libyan policy and decided to deliberately hold naval exercises in what the US considered to be international waters, in the Gulf of Sidra, and dangerously within Muommar's Line of Death. US and Libyan military aircraft began to play cat and mouse games. The Libyans in their Soviet-made jets would approach US Navy jets trying to scare them off with a political message, but the end result would always be the Libyan jets retreating for their own safety because the superior technology of the US aircraft superseded everything. The Libyans would retreat back home with F-14's in courteous pursuit. These little incidents happened more than once.
But the stakes went higher on August 19, 1981 when two SU-22 Russian-made fighter-bombers fired a missile at two US F-14 Tomcats. The results were predictable. The Tomcats fired two Fleer Ultra II missiles at the Libyan jets and sent them spinning down in flames into the Sidran Sea. Both Libyan pilots ejected from their cockpits but only one survived as other guy's parachute failed.
The Gulf of Sidra shoot-down was big news for a week or two.
There would be more and bigger sparks in the Gulf of Sidra in 1986.
It is possible that the Libyan pilot fired the missile by accident. Simple logic would tell any sane Libyan pilot that it would be suicidal. But the US pilots were trained to engage the enemy when fired upon and had to splash the 22's.
FALKLAND ISLANDS CONFLICT
In 1982 Argentina decided that it was sovereign in the off shore Falkland Islands of the South Atlantic even though the British had been living there for over a hundred years. Argentina suddenly seized the islands from the British.
Britain tried to warn Argentina that if they did not give the islands back it would lead to war. Margaret Thatcher made her position clear and the Argentineans evidently thought she was bluffing. Either that or they thought that they could win a war with a great power. Britain may have been old and a shadow of it’s former military self in 1982 but it was certainly a great power compared to Argentina.
I watched all of this unfold with amazement as the British Navy organized an armada and sailed to Argentina to retake the islands and start a war. For two weeks the world watched the progress of the British armada as it steamed slowly to war. What were the Argentineans thinking? Did they not know of the British military tradition? Did they not realize that no one would dare intervene to save Argentina even if they wanted to? The American alliance protected against such an intervention. The USUK alliance protected Britain's flanks, even if the US did take an officially non-partisan stand. How were they expecting to hold out against a first rate military power? The Argentines had some good French fighter-jets and a serviceable navy, but still, everyone knew they couldn’t possibly win. Everyone except the Argentineans.
The United States was in a delicate position. The last thing in the world it wanted to do was return to the ugly American image in the mind of South Americans by supporting Britain. But Big Sam was the best friend England had in the world. How could the US not remain true to that friendship? Secretary of State Al Haig was sent to Argentina to try and negotiate a solution but his efforts came to naught.
The Pope sent out many edicts declaring that peaceful solutions must be found to solve the crisis, the most useless gesture of all time, but at least it showed he was feeling better.
The clash took place as feared and almost a thousand men died before it was all over. The British won the war but lost two large and modern warships sunk and several damaged by air to surface missiles. There was hard ground fighting. 252 of the KIA were British servicemen.
An Argentinean battleship, the Admiral Belgrano went down in a heavy fog with heavy loss of life to a British submarine torpedo. Nobody really felt good about that one.
After the war the military rulers of Argentina who had started the war by taking the Falklands were deposed.
The Falklands remain in British possession.
KAL 007
On August 31, 1983 one of the most dangerous incidents in the history of the world took place. The Soviet Union shot down an unarmed civilian airliner with 269 people aboard including a US Congressman from Georgia, Larry MacDonald of South Dakota.
Korean Airlines flight #007, a 747 jumbo jet left New York City, landed in Anchorage and then continued on its way to Seoul, South Korea, its final destination. The Soviet Air Force shot the airliner down for violating Russian airspace. All passengers and crew perished.
The Russians claimed that KAL 007 had been a spy plane. The USA responded with proper but controlled outrage. Reagan on the night of September 5 made a bellicose speech to the American nation and there was an international crisis with ramifications for the entire world. Both superpowers were at the height of their nuclear capabilities and the Gorbachov love-fest was still in the future. 1983 was as cold as the Cold War ever was and KAL could not have happened at a more dangerous moment, given the preparedness of the two nuclear forces worldwide, and the volatile political atmosphere.
The Reagan administration was speaking for the nation and the world when it expressed anger over the incident. However from inside the White House there was immediate concern lest the shootdown undermine all the progress being made in US-Soviet relations at the height of the cold war. The Reagan administration wanted peace, not war. They wanted progress not regress.
Was KAL 007 a spy plane or was it not a spy plane? Would the United States deliberately use a civilian airliner as bait to test the response systems of the Soviet Air Force and SAM missiles? That is exactly what many critics asserted, including veteran journalist Seymour Hersh who makes this claim in his book The Target is Destroyed. While I found the book convincing, there were soon other books out there disputing his findings. These books seemed equally convincing that Hersh was wrong. Then there were more books with completely different theories; then more books. We have now reached a point where KAL 007 is, along with Lizzie Borden and John Kennedy, one of the great endlessly debated mysteries of crime.
The latest spectacular theory out there is that the passengers of KAL 007 landed in shallow water, that most of them were rescued alive, and that they were then imprisoned in Soviet labor camps. If this is true then the USSR abducted a US Congressman, Larry MacDonald, a couple of dozen other Americans and a couple of hundred other civilians. Are these people still alive? Were some of them murdered?
More than one research team has come to this conclusion. Only two bodies were ever recovered. Russian divers inspected the fuselage intact many years later. No debris was ever found or spotted.
One author even believes that ten US fighter planes were shot down in a dogfight that accompanied the downing of 007! That’s up there with a relative of Oswald who actually insisted that Governor John Connolly shot JFK.
It is a great irony of life and history that the number of this flight was 007, as that is the number associated with spy mysteries and the fictional character, James Bond. The flight of KAL 007 is one of the great unsolved crime mysteries of all time and one of the most important. James Bond was always stopping some madman who was going to destroy the world..
I do not believe for one minute that KAL 007 was a spy plane sent into Soviet airspace to bait the Russian into shooting it down in order to gauge the Soviet state of air defense. It doesn't make sense. With satellite technology, there was little we didn't already know about Soviet military capabilities. Add to that human intelligence from defectors, plus all sorts of other sources and it doesn't add up. I do not believe that the Reagan administration would be so heartless to do something like that, and if the CIA did somehow have the blackheart to do it, they would need a better reason to do so than testing Russian air force reactions. Its hard to buy the idea that any US agency would allow a United States Congressman from Georgia to die a horrible death for such limited goals, and in peacetime.
BEIRUT MARINE BARRACKS BOMBING OCTOBER 23, 1983
The worst day of the Reagan presidency was October 23, 1983.
The Lebanese Civil War had led to the installment of a multinational peacekeeping forces there, especially in Beirut. The US Marines had a large contribution to this Multi National Force, the MNF.
A suicide truck bomb drove into the lobby of the Marine Barracks on October 23. The explosion was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in the history of the planet. 241 Marines were killed. They were all innocent men, only there to help keep peace.
At almost the same time, the terrorists attacked the French Marine barracks in Beirut and killed 58 French soldiers with a similar bomb. Few Americans today can recall that any French soldiers died that day too, let alone many.
10/23 was one of the worst days in American history, and probably the worst in the history of the Marine Corps. The Democrats in Congress gave the Reagan Administration and endless beating over this tragedy.
It should be noted that before the attack, there was never a big news story about Democratic leaders screaming that the United States has no business being there to help keep the peace. Maybe an isolated statement here and there, but there was no movement on college campuses to "Get our troops out of Lebanon!" But after the tragedy the Democrats and the student left screamed holy hell at the Reagan administration for the catastrophe. He was personally to blame for all these deaths.
The critics won. The United States withdrew its peacekeeping force from Lebanon. Terrorism was rewarded. In 1984 Reagans charge Mondale with saying that the Beirut Marines had “died in shame.” They certainly didn’t die in shame, but they did die in vain.
GRENADA INVASION - OCTOBER 1983
Most Americans in September of 1983 had never even heard of the nation of Grenada and certainly could not locate it on a map. By the end of October 1983 Grenada was famous.
The United States invaded the island nation of Grenada in the West Indies in October of 1983 in order to thwart a Marxist/Cuban-backed coup that had taken over the country. Reagan decided that a Marxist regime on our doorstep was unacceptable, no matter how small that Marxist regime. The Reagan team saw the coup as being Cuban led and Cuban backed. By proxy, Reagan interpreted the leftist takeover of Grenada as a Cold War assault from the USSR, since the USSR sponsored and backed Cuba.
The US armed forces encountered surprising resistance from Grenadian soldiers. 45 Grenada troops were killed in the two days of fighting.
Were the Cubans really behind the coup and in the process of taking over the government? 27 Cuban soldiers were killed in the fighting, if that helps to answer that. Collateral damage included 24 civilians dead.
The US was not the only country worried about Marxist island states in the West Indies. Reagan had the full diplomatic support for the Grenada operation from the OECS, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. Barbados and Jamaica sent 300 troops into Grenada as part of “Operation Urgent Fury” as it was called on the corny Military Op planning board.
The most cited reason the administration always gave for sending 7,000 US troops into the small island was to protect the American students at Grenada’s medical schools. It was feared that the notebook wielding kids would be taken hostage by the coup leaders. I don't really buy this. Its hard to imagine that these rebels would be so unwise as to stir the wrath of the nearby United States by recreating the 1979 Iran hostage crisis so Reagan could use it as chance to show the difference between him and Jimmy Carter. The USA probably did not have the students in the front part of its thinking when Grenada came up on the menu as eagleburger. Mostly it was to stop the Cubans, the Soviets and their Marxist Latin followers from gaining a second strategic political foothold in the Caribbean. The threatened students were more or less a pretext for a political thrust in a threatened region. By the protect those students logic anytime there is political turmoil in any place in the world, we should invade, lest one of our tourists or visiting students is abducted or harmed.
Coming in the immediate days following the disaster in Beirut, it was widely suggested and believed that Reagan had simply picked on a little country for a cheap victory to compensate for the setback in Beirut. I prefer to think that the Reagan team and our military leaders are a little more sophisticated than that. I choose not to believe this simplistic accusation, but I never wholeheartedly condoned the US decision to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of a sovereign neighbor. Some of the charges of the left against the Grenada invasion have merit, but the charge that an insecure macho Reagan invaded a nation to save his and our wounded pride is poorly aimed and simplistic punditry. Unfortunately this juvenile analysis was widely believed by the left as an inarguable fact.
The left had a field day pummeling Reagan for invading Granada. But the fact that he did it, and no one could stop him, set a marker for the rest of his presidency and in fact for his successors. It was the first time the US had used any real military force since the end of the Vietnam War. The left could scream and shout all they want after the fact, but they had not been able to stop him from doing it, nor did America then throw the Republicans out of office as punishment. The Grenada invasion did not hurt Reagan or Republican popularity in the USA.
I agree with Norman Mailer who said that if we had to do what we had to do in Grenada that was one thing, but to then go around strutting proud and waving the flag like we’re some big powerful country was deplorable and embarrassing. Some right-wingers did react this way but those extremists don’t speak for all conservatives. Knee-jerk flag-wavers are always around, just like the left-wingers we booted out of Granada are always around too.
In retrospect the Grenadan people don’t seem to mind what Reagan did. The 25th of October is a national holiday in Grenada, marking its liberation from the Marxist jackalopes. The name of the holiday says a lot. It is called “Thanksgiving Day.”
TERRORIST ATTACK ON US EMBASSY IN KUWAIT 12 -12 – 83
On December 12, radical Islamic terrorists attacked the American and French Embassies with suicide car-bombs in Kuwait City. It was supposed to be an even bigger blast off than what happened in October in Beirut.
But most of the bombs failed to detonate properly and only five people perished, none of them Americans. If 20 American had died that day the entire history of US-Middle East relations might have unfolded differently. The reaction in the USA would have been major. Instead it was relatively minor.
The attack was complex and well-planned, but 'no battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy,'
During the Gulf War of 1990 – 1991 the left often hit hard at GHW Bush that the U.S. was supporting a Kuwaiti state that was autocratic and repressive. Daniel Patrick Moynahan said on the Floor that “Nothing large happened here. A nasty country invaded a smaller but just as nasty country.” The left echoed Danny's sentiments, saying outright at times that Kuwait was just as autocratic and undemocratic as Iraq.
That is not true. The terrorists who struck on 12-12-1983 were given long Kuwaiti prison sentences. Was Kuwaiti justice just as nasty as the punishment the same assassins would have received if they had tried to kill Sadaam or a platoon of Iraqi soldiers?
Kuwait was not as open or democratic as Israel or Norway, but compared to the other Arab states in the region, it was the most liberal. Every general history or political survey of the region published before Sadaam took Kuwait, said so. On the bell curve of the Middle East, it was anything but the harsh repressive ogre that the lefties suddenly decided it was, in January of 1991, just to use this sudden hatred for evil Kuwait as an excuse to hate George Bush who was rescuing it.
By not executing these terrorist islamic extremists, Kuwait created a magnet for a lot of future trouble. These prisoners became super-heroes whose voices from prison must be heard and they must be set free. Several terrorist acts were committed over the next several years with freedom for the Adawa 7 as the demand for having hostages released or bridges not blown up.
CENTRAL AMERICA 1981-84
Throughout the Reagan years, the central issue between left and right was Central America. It was a little version of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s when the left and the right took sides in the US over a distant civil war. Central America, like the Spanish Civil war was a palate on which to paint our own political differences from a safe distance, more a political exercise here than a critical crisis, though sometimes argued as if it was.
The bad guys in the eyes of the conservative Reagan team were the Sandinistas and their regime, now in control of Nicaragua. Reagan saw the Nicaraguan Sandis as the cat’s paw of both the Soviet Union and it’s Communist crusade. They saw Nicaragua as guilty of exporting revolution in the form of propaganda and weapons to their neighboring states, particularly El Salvador, the poorest of the Central American nations.
The American left angrily saw the opposite. They saw America as promoting right-wing dictatorships that were a mile worse than any Marxist regime in it’s modern form. They saw the Latin Marxist as only a little more radical than European socialist and since they were already socialists themselves it wasn’t hard to make a leap of faith that Daniel Ortega’s side was a righteous one. The left saw aid from the Soviet Union to Nicaragua as no more immoral than U.S aid to dozens of politically friendly countries all over the world. The left felt that they could wave the American flag and still root for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and against the forces we supported.
Our Hessians down there were called the ‘Contras.’ The name was originally intended as a condemnation. It was based on the Spanish word for counterrevolutionaries. When Ortega tagged it on them it stuck. From now on the rebels trying to overthrow Ortega in Nicaragua and trying to prevent a lefty revolutionary overthrow in neighboring El Salvador were to be called the “Contras.”
Congress voted some funds for support for the Contras. During Reagan's second term the fund was cut off. It was very bad down there, a very ugly civil war between right wing-dictatorial Christians and the Sandinistas. Nuns and reporters were shot in cold blood sometimes on camera.
For 8 years the left was very mad at Reagan for his support of the Contras. The Contras with the help of the CIA conducted a campaign of killing. The term ‘death-squads’ was attributed to them throughout these civil wars.
The mainstream media was always against our support of the Contras. It has carried over into history. The polemic books about the Reagan years always fail to present both sides of the story fairly. The crimes of the Sandinistas are not told and the crimes of the Contras are. These are lies of omission. The word 'communist' is never used to describe our foes down there, only ‘Marxists’ now and then. Yet these people never hesitated to call themselves Communist. Castro and the Soviet Union were certainly ruled by a Communist Party and they backed the Sandinistas, so why can’t left and center left writers use the word 'communist' in describing them? The main article of faith on the left since about 1966 is that all US anti-communism is unfounded paranoia, and we must mock and roll one's eyes at all of it. Admitting the existence of strong individual Communists, strong Communist states and strong Communist movements takes the fun out of mocking anti-Communists. Recognizing the existence of Communists would force the left to concede that the right at least has a valid point of view in their opposition. But as long as they are euphemistically called 'Revolutionaries' or 'Marxists' then its still cool to laugh at the anti-Communists at home as idiot McCarthyists. (this is also almost always the case with lib historians on the Vietnam War - they studiously avoid calling the North Vietnamese 'Communists' which of course, they openly were.)
Reagan openly and avowedly supported the goals of the ‘Contras’. At one point he told the press “So I guess that makes me a Contra too.” As Mike Dukakis said of Reagan many years later, “I didn’t agree with him on much but at least this guy had an anchor.” He certainly did on Central America.
The most important fact about Central America as a political hot potato in the US is that is was only hot for the left. The conservatives generally were not all worked up about Central America one way or another while the left was hoarse from shouting their rage. Central America never passed the US diner test. I never once overheard a discussion on Central America at a diner or bus stop or even in a comedy dressing room. It got a lot of coverage in the media and the left screamed about it for eight years, but the average American was not motivated one way or another on this issue. That is a fact and I lived it. I know. It doesn’t make either side right or wrong but it is a fact that should be told. No one cared about Central America except a half-a-million hot-head lefties who wanted to bash the Reagan administration and threw a climbing hook into the subject for purposes of attack. They claimed they were compassionate about poverty and suffering down there but later on in the 1990’s and beyond there was and still is plenty of poverty and suffering in Central America but the left never says a peep about it because it no longer has any anti-Republican rewards points. The left is always selective in it’s compassion.
Even when the mud hit the fan over Iran-Contra, Central America still did not pass the diner test. The media was exited beyond belief but the average American still was more concerned about the price of oil, the stock market, or even the Quebec independence movement. The Iran-Contra scandal was big news only in the sense that Reagan's team was caught doing something illegal. But the Central American policy per se was not proven wrong by Iran-Contra. The illegality of transferring arms to the Contras was an issue but it did not mean that the USA had decided to side with the left on general policy in Central America, although the left worked hard to try to spin that angle on it. It wasn't as if before Iran-Contra the nation felt slightly to the right on Central America and that after Iran-Contra a seas change swung national opinion slightly to the left. That did not happen.
The bottom line was always this. Reagan was doing such a great job with the Cold War and the restoration of American pride that Central America was the only issue the left could grasp on to and attack with. They made a secondary issue the primary one for 8 years because they were losing on all primary fronts. “Oh yeah? Well what about Central America?” was their battle cry. It rang hollow.
Even if Reagan's Central American policy could have been irrefutably proven wrong, it would not have changed the way I felt about him or the overall performance grade of his term. I could concede that maybe he did take the wrong side in that civil war and still vote for him in the next election with ease.
US-GERMAN RELATIONS 1984
On June 6 1984 Ronald Reagan gave a speech on Omaha Beach in Normandy. It was part of a ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Francois Mitterand, the French President was at the ceremony, but Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany was not.
Kohl was hurt by not being invited. HK felt that West Germany had joined up with the good guys and should now be respected as part of the same team. Helmut felt that the ceremony were directed against Germany and they should instead be conducted with Germany, at least with West Germany, the one that had joined the Democratic team. Mitterand assuaged Kohl somewhat by inviting him to a ceremony at Verdun commemorating the dead of WWI. There, the French and German people looked to that ceremony as a mark of reconciliation.
Meanwhile in East Germany 1984 saw a small community grow inside the West germany Embassy in Berlin. This was small group of East Germans who wanted to flee Communism but couldn't get over the wall. They thought the next best idea was to go to the West german Embassy in East Germany and ask for asylum and assistance in escaping to the west. They became a political pawn in east-west relations, local and international. Eventually they were allowed to emigrate but only after they first agreed to vacate the embassy.
In late November 1984 Kohl visited Washington for an official state visit. Kohl worked on various important subjects with Reagan and Shultz. Then came discussions about the upcoming anniversary of V-E Day, May 8 1945. An economic summit was planned for May of 1985 in Europe. Reagan would also participate in anniversary ceremonies of V-E day. This time Kohl wanted Germany included somehow. The Chancellor didn't want a repeat of the humiliation of D-Day and became emotional when he mentioned the gesture of Mitterand in conducting the bipartisan ceremony at Verdun. The Reagan team saw that he was in ernest and that inclusion of the German nation in the proceedings would be a positive move for German-American relations.
Kohl also stressed that the only way that his nation could improve ties with the west, would be to improve ties with the east. In other words, if the United States would not or could not assist in improving relations between West and East Germany, then relations between West Germany and the United States would suffer proportionately. Schultz wanted improved relations between the Germanys, but the US was worried about German unity leading to German revanchism. The United States both desired and feared German reunification.
ELECTION OF 1984
In late 1983 Reagan had a lead in all the polls over any Democrat candidate. The once candidate the Republicans worried about was John Glenn, the astronaut. The right couldn’t paint him as a lefty. The man was a national hero and was never soft on defense issues, even though a Dem. I thought Glenn was so unbearably dull that he never had a chance and I wondered why he was wasting his time. He ran again in 1988 and nothing changed. Just as dull, and bland, and just as determined to not look in the mirror and see how much he as wasting his time running for president. One thing you could always see in Glenn was that he wanted to be president as much is not more than any of the others, with the possible exception of Jesse Jackson. The one good thing I will say about Glenn is that deep down he was an issues oriented candidate. He was personally bland in his speaking style, but inside he was a man of sincere and patriotic convictions. Glenn was a warrior politico stuck inside the body of a passive physical presentation.
A lot of people thought Glenn had a reach chance. He finished fifth in Iowa and third in New Hampshire. He had tried to tell the voters of New Hampshire that,
“I share the same values of the people of New Hampshire; mom, the flag and apple pie,
if you will.”
That is the type of lame bland talk that I am referring to. Who wanted to sign up for four years of that? “Apple pie if you will?” No. I won’t.
WALTER MUNDANE
The ‘Also Ran’ Walter Mondale was not the most exiting candidate ever nominated for the office of President. Comedian Pat Paulsen referred to him regularly as Walter Mundane. Mondale's favorite slogan was “What ya see is what ya get.” The American voters responded accordingly.
Mondale had too much baggage. As Jimmy Carter’s Vice President, he was as vulnerable as a wounded turkey in a field of famished tigers. The country was in a generally conservative mood and here was Carter’s VP, a man who was absolutely to the left of Carter on most issues inside White House confidential debates (all the post-Carter memoirs back this up) and he expected to defeat a movie star nice guy who had restored patriotism, and survived an assassination attempt like a sterling soldier. Good luck, Walt.
It was a classic case of someone with the political power base to win the nomination, but no real ability to win the general election. He was Barry Goldwater in reverse, the Democrats conceding that “we can’t stop him, and he can’t win.” Walt was a bit more popular with his party than Goldielocks in 64 but the analogy stands overall. Throw in Bob Dole in 96 with a similar situation. No one can stop this old political hand from winning the nomination, and no one can stop him from losing in November.
YOU GOTTA HAVE HART
Gary Hart of Colorado got into the race and looked like a winner for a little while. He claimed to have a a barrel of “new ideas.” He really just kept bragging about how young he was. Vote for youth, per se, was his real campaign platform. That approach had a serious chance of succeeding, because millions of voters are shallow. But Hart was shallow too, so that one cancelled out in the end. It takes slick skill to control the shallow. A Shallow candidate comes up short sheepherding the shallow.
DRIVE THE FERRARO TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Ronald Reagan won in a true landslide in 1984, but many historians would suggest that the more important story in the election was the presence on the Democratic ticket of a woman, Geraldine Ferraro. I do not agree. It's not that I think her presence was not significant. It was. It represented progress. But Geraldine in 84 was politics finally catching up with progress that had long been won elsewhere. A woman VP in 1984 was not the vanguard of the women’s liberation movement, it was the byproduct of decades of work by others in the front lines. The more important story of 1984 was the voters overwhelming approval of Reagan conservatism and the rejection of Jimmy Carter’s liberal Vice President, Fritz, the man who had actually objected when Jimmy Carter got tough with the Soviets after they invaded Afghanistan. The nation showed how liberated from the liberals it really was when polls showed that Ferraro’s presence on the Democratic ticket did not even help that party with its women voters!
Her high point in the campaign was during the VP debate when she snapped at George Bush for being “patronizing” when he tried to “explain” something to her about foreign policy. Her supporters in the studio audience cheered for her wonderful snap. Ferraro’s voice and tone was harsh. Speak, so that I may see thee. I wanted to like her but never did. She had the typical smug put-down style of her party.
During the campaign, Reagan called Carter’s handling of the Iran hostage crisis “a humiliation and a disgrace.” [NBC]
During the campaign the Mondale/Ferraro team gave Reagan a steady beating over his failed mission in Lebanon and the Marines who died there in 1982. VP Bush finally decried his anger over his opponents suggestions that those Marines “died in shame”.
The Democrats scoured the record and found that neither Mondale nor Ferraro had used those specific words, even though they had said the equivalent dozens of times. Then Mondale began traveling the country loudly demanding that Bush apologize for falsely suggesting that the Democrats had said something they had not. Walt said that Bush should admit his error but “doesn’t have the manhood to apologize.” This was the desperate last resort of a man way behind in the polls.
It was all silly because M&F were saying that, and repeatedly. For example, in the middle of the controversy Ferraro made this forked-tongue denial of the shame accusation,
“No one would ever suggest that those Marines, who were killed
through the negligence of this administration, ever died in shame.”
Mondale also made a strategic error when he admitted that he would raise taxes if elected. He tried to play the honesty card by claiming that Reagan will also raise taxes, but, “he just won’t admit it.” That was not wise.
1984 was the first presidential election I ever participated in, the first time I voted. I even went to see the two candidates with my own eyes when they came to speak in Boston. When I saw Mondale speak on the Boston Common, the crowd listened respectfully and I enjoyed the speech. When I saw Ronald Reagan speak on City Hall Plaza I could barely hear anything he said above the shouting of the incessant hecklers. They literally gave me an earache. Reagan had to acknowledge them with a zinger several times in his talk, because they were disrupting the speech so much.
The contrast helped decide my vote. It is typical of the Democrats. They always lead the league in impoliteness. On issues I’m often with the Democrats. But overall it’s the attitude of the left that pushes me to the right. It’s that way now, and it’s been that way since I first crossed over about 1979. Once I reached the center I was shoved to the right by the rudeness of the left. There’s no respect for anyone that disagrees with the left. You are pathetic and stupid and immoral if you hold any conservative views.
1984 - Reagan Throws Mondale Out of the Ring
After the results came in the excuse towel was rolled out. It was only Reagan’s “personal popularity” not his policies that won the election. I still hear that lame explanation from older political pundits and liberal historians today in 2010. They are still spinning that one on us. He only beat an incumbent and won re-election in a landslide because he was personally popular. As if both personality and policies aren’t part and parcel of the same voting package. And as if the people who voted for Reagan would take their vote that lightly.
The night after the election Mondale gave a sour grapes press conference in which he blamed his defeat on Reagan’s decisive advantage in being a Hollywood ham in front of a microphone. He said that “Unfortunately I have never been too comfortable in front of these.” With that he pushed the group of condensed podium microphones out of the way of his voice as he spoke. Is that the lamest excuse of all time? 'I’m not a show biz guy. That’s why I lost. I prefer one on one conversations, not speeches in front of microphones. Cameras and mics are for Hollywood types and I’m not.'
Hey pal, you’ve been in politics making speeches in public for 20 plus years. You are a United States Senator. You won several rounds of debates to win the nomination of your party for the number one office in the world. You told the world that you are the most qualified man in the nation to be president and you shouted it from the highest mountain. Your face was on 8 million flyers and you stood before thousands of mobs giving energized rah-rah speeches denouncing the Republicans. But when the election results come up bad you suddenly become this sad sack that isn’t comfortable in front of microphones. That is really poor. You’re like the movie star with 30 cameras and 50 TV lights in their living room explaining to the interviewer that you’re a private person who shuns publicity.
ROLLINS AND ATWATER - BOONDOCK SAINTS FROM HELL
The 1984 campaign was managed by Ed Rollins. I read his biography. I needed a barf bag to get through the brag-blizzard. His book made Howard Cosell seem like a humble man. His profane simplistic book is a disgrace to the glorious science of political literature. There isn't a finely tuned sentence in the book. After reading Sam Roseman and Robert Sherwood for a month, picking up Ed Rollins' book is a drop down an abandoned mine shaft.
And yet, when I see him on live TV he is articulate, gentlemanly and not talking about himself. It seems an odd reversal of the formula. Usually the spoken word reveals the vulnerable imperfect person while their writing makes them better than they are in real life. Just opposite with Rollie.
WARREN G. REAGAN
Ronald Reagan had many men and a few women around him who were so far morally inferior to him as to make one question his judgement. Those who supported RR always had to weigh these clowns against the quality of Reagan as a leader.
Ed Meese certainly comes to mind. Even his wife came under critical fire. The left hated the Meeses to pieces.
For the second term Reagan got a new White House Chief of Staff, but it wasn't his decision. Treasury Secretary Michael Regan wanted more action than he was seeing at T and one day he asked Jim Baker into his office. Baker was the White House Chief of Staff. Regan asked Baker if they could swap jobs. Baker spit out his coffee but let him continue. Baker heard Regan out then went along with it, partly because he thought being WHCS was an overrated job that was more headaches than real accomplishments and he thought being treasury secretary might be a more productive post, if not in image. The two men brought the idea to Reagan who said, “Why not? If that's what you guys want, I don't see what harm it can do.”
Post reporters Jules Witcover and Jack Jermond write in one of their books (Trivial Pursuit) that the switch did indeed do much harm to Reagan in his second term, but since both of those writers are partisan Reagan-haters without a fair-minded bone in their body, I can't fall in with the suggestion, but note it here. Jules and Jack hate everyone in the Republican party and find any excuse to bash anyone in it. This story gives them a chance to bash Reagan, Regan, Baker and even Mike Deaver who played the middle in bringing the switch the Treasury idea to the President.
A SAD DAY IN 1984
One summer day in 1984 the Federal Communications Commission “liberalized” some of it’s laws. Until that sad day television stations were limited to 16 minutes of commercials per hour. That law was lifted one sad day and from this time on there would be no limit to the amount of commercials sold per hour. The networks heard the outcry and said “don’t worry, we don’t usually use all 16 minutes anyway - nothing will change.” That was of course false. There are often more than 16 minutes per hour. The last 8 minutes of Jeopardy for example includes one minute of programming and seven minutes of commercials. I time it. Plus the new ruling opened up the way for full blocks of commercial hours. So now instead of 16 minutes of commercials in 60 minutes we get 60 minutes of commercials in 60 minutes, the so-called “infomercials.” Now sponsors sponsor sponsors and nothing else. Thanks, FCC. Where’s draconian intolerance when you actually need it?
On the same day the FCC lifted the 10% rule. This was a law that required commercial stations to dedicate at least 10% of its programming to news and information. They also lifted the 5% law. This one required at least 5% of all programming to be locally produced. The drop in locally produced programming was noticeable overnight. I used to get comedy spots on local TV shows in the early 80’s but after 1984 they became tougher to come by.
The Motion Picture industry on the same day came up with the new “PG-13” rating. This said that this given movie probably shouldn’t be seen by anyone under 13. Compliance was voluntary. It was nicknamed the “Indiana Jones rating” after that infantile overrated blockbuster film that inspired some parental protests. Indiana Jones, starring Harrison Bored, seemed like a movie for the whole family on the outside but didn’t exactly turn out that way when you paid the money and took the kids inside. PG-13 changed all that. PG-13 means it's racy but you can handle it, so don’t go in .. unless you really want to. (I have a show next month and I agreed by e-mail to “keep the language PG-13.” There are PG-13 movies out there that are riddled with profanity to the point of overkill, but they don't show any extreme nudity, so they get PG-13. Keep the language PG-13 means say anything you want, if you really break it down.” I talk on stage and get paid. How can I violate PG-13 language when its all ok? That leaves them room to complain with discrimination and subjectivity.)
So TV got liberal in the name of rank commercialism movies got high and mighty conservative on the same day, a very sad day in 1984.
SDI
The Strategic Defense Initiative, known popularly as ‘Star Wars’ popped in and out of the headlines through many of the middle Reagan years. SDI was a defense system in outer space designed to stop nuclear missiles in flight with lasers fired from satellites.
SDI produced two fierce debates that logically contradict each other. One was a barrage of criticism that the concept was ludicrous and would never work. It would be a trillion US dollars down the drain. The other debate whether to agree to a persistent Soviet Union demand that the United States stop this aggressive Star Wars program. Abandonment of SDI was supposed to be our price to pay to get the Russians to come to the negotiating table.
The Soviets knew that the USA was always under pressure at home to have negotiations with the Russians take place, no matter what the terms for meeting. Schultz and Reagan were determined for eight years to insist that the United States would not make concessions to anyone as a condition for negotiations. A negotiation is a negotiation and a concession is a concession. You don't make concessions in exchange for negotiation, you negotiate for concessions. The whole concept was insulting. SDI could be bargained away at a summit, but would not be given up as a condition for the meeting.
Here's the contradiction; If the Star Wars program was so ludicrous, why were the Soviets so fearful of it? Why did they say they were building their own, a better one?
We should still build it to protect the earth from meteors.
BONZO GOES TO BITBURG
Why did a famous rock band (The Squids) release a song in 1985 called Bonzo Goes to Bitburg? Answer: To mock President Reagan for visiting a German military cemetery and for being in a bad old movie.
A president visits a cemetery and the world holds its breath for weeks of controversy. These are stories that only count for much in times of peace. With the ongoing insurrection in Iraq, with Americans dying in combat every week, a similar incident by President Bush today would not create such a large controversy. But it was a slow news year, and in 1985, the visit of Reagan to Bitburg dominated the news for weeks.
The problem was that some Nazi SS corpses were in Bitburg, and it seemed to some that Reagan was out of line for visiting.
The visit was intended as a ceremonial stop to accentuate the positive state of German-American relations. It wasn't supposed to be such a big deal. Instead the Bitburg business created a crisis
The President was planning on visiting Dachau concentration camp. His trip to Europe was for an Economic Summit planned for the first week in May 1985, but along the way there were ceremonies to attend. But then Reagan decided that a trip to Dachau was too negative. He did not want to taunt the German people over their role in the evil past. he wanted to emphasize the positive relations between West Germany and the USA over the past 40 years.
On April 11, 1985 Larry Speakes spoke to the press about the trip to Bitburg scheduled for May 5. The administration did not know at the time that a few Nazis were buried in Bitburg. Reagan even thought that he was visiting a cemetery where some American GI's were buried along with the regular German soldiers.
It should be noted that Chancellor Kohl had assured the Americans that no Nazi SS dead people were buried in Bitburg. A few days later another top German official reiterated the false fact. No SS were buried at Bitburg.
When the press found out that some Nazis were buried there and that the American president was going to lay a wreath there, a major controversy arose. People at home and around the world called on Reagan to cancel the trip to Bit. They Jewish community worldwide was especially bitter on Bitburg. The extreme American left was calling Reagan a Nazi for going to Bitburg. That's a Bitburg much. When it was learned that no Americans were buried there, the pressure increased against Ronald's going.
Jews all over the USA and the world protested the visit. America and Reagan were condemned as if an actual war crime had been committed. The USA was the best friend that Israel and the Jews had in the world. We supported Israel through all its acts of violence in the battles of the Middle East. America has condemned some Israeli actions but never wavered in our support. The United States was there for Israel in 1948, in 1967 and in 1973 when we were willing to risk a nuclear war with Russia in order to defend Israel's right to exist. If the Soviet Union had intervened in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the United States would quite possibly have gone to war to defend Israel. Millions of Americans would have died to save Israel. The United States provided four billion dollars worth of aid to Israel every year in Reagan's time. That was in the form of a gift, not a loan. And this is the thanks we get? Yitzak Rabin said that Reagan "will never be forgiven." I could quote another hundred examples, but you get the idea.
Calling Reagan an insensitive Nazi, and accusing him for an unforgivable offense for putting a wreath on a graveyard where some SS troops were buried was ten times as wrong as the wrong he may have committed.
The heat storm just kept building as the trip to Bitburg loomed. I remember it very well. It was all over the TV and newspapers for weeks like some sensational murder trial. The United States Senate passed a resolution telling Reagan he must cancel the visit. The vote? 82 to 0! Even right wing religious jerk leader Jerry Falwell, usually a dependable friend of Ron called on Reagan to cancel the trip and admit that he was wrong to have scheduled it in the first place.
The Soviet Union showed its hutzpah on the Jewish issue here. The Communist newspapers wrote that the United States was showing that it was allying itself to Nazis, past and present. But we shouldn't be surprised, they said, since the USA had already shown that its national policy these days was sponsorship of "state terrorism."
The Soviet Union should remember a few things about its own role in World War II. Hitler could never have started World War II in the first place without the evil Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 when Nazi Germany and the USSR became actual allies. The Russians helped the Nazis to conquer Poland.
Hitler's Nazis could not have then conquered France, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, without the corrupt evil deal arranged with the Russians securing his eastern flank, and enabling the Wermacht divisions to go west and blitzkrieg. France and a few other countries. They have a nerve to call us out for collaboration with fascists because one guy drops a wreath on a grave-sight as a gesture of forgiveness and conciliation.
Russia enabled the Nazis and enabled the Holocaust. Anti-semitism practically originated in Russia. There were pogroms in Russia when Hitler was in diapers. Thousands of Jews were beaten, deprived of jobs and rights and murdered in cities all over Russia long before there ever was a Nazi party.
The worst place to be a Jew in the middle of World War II was Poland. One fourth of all the victims of the Holocaust came from Poland. It was the Soviet Union that conspired with the Nazis to dismember that sovereign nation in 1939. Hitler took the western part of Poland and then when Poland's army was disintegrating into nothingness, the Russians invaded from the east and took that half of Poland for itself. To make sure that the Polish Army would never rise again the Soviets executed 20,000 Polish Army officers in the Katyn Forest and when the bodies were discovered after the war, the Russians tried to blame it on the Nazis. It wasn't until the mid 1990's that the Russians finally admitted that they had murdered these 20,000. It was easier to admit it then because Communist rule was over and blaming a predecessor is an old Russian tradition, easily honored under the circumstances.
The real blame lay with Kohl for telling the Reagan team early on that there were no Nazi troops buried at Kolomenshoe (the cemetery in Bitburg). Both Reagan and his close advisors asserted later that if they had known there were SS Nazis in the Bitburg ground there they never would have agreed to go. But once the publicity for the trip began to grow it was too late. By the time Reagan and the State Department learned the truth, the publicity for the trip would have made cancellation as big of a problem as going there.
Caving in to pressure was not a trait of Ron Reagan. If people had asked him to cancel the trip gently and courteously, it might have worked. But when they pointed their finger at him and called him names and stridently demanded he cancel this evil trip he was planning, it aroused his stubborn temper.
Now here's the height of "doyeee!" in the whole affair. A liberal member of the West German parliament named Al Dregger wrote letters to all the US Senators who were against the trip. Dregger opined that the trip to Bitburg would be an insult to his brother. You see, brother Dregger had died a German soldier on the Russian front. Al's offended at the idea of his sacred bother's memory being dishonored by the visit of an American president to a Nazi grave.
This means that Dregger actually thinks that there was absolutely no linkage between the deeds of the German Army and the goals of the Nazis. Dregger also thinks that the German Army did no evil in World War II. The German Armies that overran and occupied 15 countries were completely innocent men.
There are books that argue quite effectively that German civilians weren't exactly innocent in all of the WWII business. The German regular army soldier can hardly be considered pure and holy. Certainly the German soldier is a step worse than the see no evil civilian. Every German soldier had to take a personal oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer. The vast majority of German soldiers were delirious with joy over the initial glorious victories of World War II. In the North Africa campaign, the Americans were shocked at the arrogance of the German POW's taken there. Almost to a man the German soldiers taunted their captors that Germany was going to win the war and they, the Americans were the ones that were doomed. German prisoners actually begged not to be shipped back to the United States for internment because they were certain that they would be sunk by the unstoppable U-boat forces of great Germany. So much for German rank and file holiness compared to the all-evil SS. Civilian silence and acquiescence is evil enough. Picking up a gun and fighting for the Nazi cause is worse.
You can apply that kind of stretched logic to anything and make it ok to condemn anyone. You had a drink with a guy who once used the n-word. You are bad! 99.9% of those red in the face about Bitburg were neither warriors in World War II nor victims of Nazi deeds. They just hated Reagan and used the trip as an excuse to attack him as a bad man which he never was. Many of those who were victimized by the Nazis had more forgiveness in their hearts than the coffee-house libs staging protest marches. Ann Frank wrote in her diary neat the end of her days that "In spite of everything I still believe that people are good at heart." Ann can forgive but the college protestor in 1985 cannot.
There were a few voices of support.
90 year-old General Matt Ridgeway, one of the famed heroes of WWII called Reagan to offer support, and more than mere words. Matt said he would go to Bitburg with Reagan and stand beside him at the ceremony. Ridgeway would shake hands with a Luftwaffe officer over the graves. Reagan took him up on the offer.
Kissinger told Reagan that canceling the trip would do a lot of damage to our reputation in the field of foreign policy while proving nothing. A General Chain of the USAF chipped in with this rather pertinent piece of info. Chain had served at the US Air Force base at Bitburg and he said that every Memorial Day for years there was a ceremony at Bitburg at which officers of Germany, France and the USA laid wreaths over the graves of Bitburg and not a word of protest had ever arisen over it locally or anywhere else.
Reagan refused to back down and was determined to go to Bitburg. A trip to Bergen-Belsen was included in the itinerary for the same day. It would have looked bad to refuse to go visit a concentration camp for a memorial service and then go to Bitburg.
When reporters said he was insensitive about the Holocaust Reagan told the story of how when he worked on war information movies, he illegally made personal copies of the footage of the camps being liberated by the American troops. This story was twisted into an outrageous lie. The story made the rounds that Reagan had claimed that he had been there and had shot the film himself. Reagan had made no such boast, but I remember when that story was being tossed around. It made no sense that Reagan would make up such a lie since it could be so easily disproved but it showed the length that people would go to try and throw dirt on him.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl convinced Reagan that canceling the visit would cause the German people to force the resignation of his government. Reagan believed him. In addition Reagan on principle wanted to stand by his friend.
On May 5 1985 Reagan visited Bitburg. Just before he arrived, some reporters planted fresh roses on the SS graves and tried to take pictures of it, but Reagan's advance team picked up the flowers before the scums could take the photos.
The left screamed in anger in print and speeches worldwide, but on the scene at Bitburg there was a very small protesting element. The visit went on without incident, unless you want to count Kohl wiping tears from his eyes during the ceremonies.
Helmut Kohl was grateful to Reagan for his profile in courage. The visit damaged Reagan politically, but it did help German-American relations considerably.
TWA 847 -- TWA 840
Airline hijackings of Americans and Jews by Arab terrorists was a constant threat in the Reagan years. These hijackings were not a major direct military threat, but were a threat to our national security because of our traditional concern for each of our citizens. This ‘leave no one behind’ policy makes a high-stakes game out of any international incident in which Americans are kidnapped, harmed or threatened.
Today, incidents of violence are taking place regularly against American forces occupying Iraq and by the current scale the 1980 hijacking incidents were not so impressive and might not seem so to some people today. But the 80's were times of peace when even a singular personal murder trial such as the one against millionaire Claus Von Bulow could grip the nation's readers and television viewers for weeks. Its hard to underestimate the dramatic impact these terrorist hijacking incidents had on every American. These attacks on US citizens throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s has plenty of bearing on why we’re occupying part of the Middle East today in the 0’s.
Two of the worst hijackings came on the same airline route. In 1985 terrorists hijacked TWA Flight #847 en route from Rome to Athens. A year later TWA Flight #840 was sabotaged by a bomb while flying from Athens to Rome.
First the notorious 847. June 14 1985 Arab terrorists hijacked a TWA Boeing 727 before it could land in Rome. A group calling itself the Arab Revolutionary Cells bounced the plane around the Mediterranean for three days. They rested in three airports. The terrorists demanded to know who were the Jews and the Americans onboard. When they located and identified one young man as an U.S. Navy diver named Robert Stetham they beat him until he was near death, then they shot him in the head and pushed his body out onto the airport runway.
The terrorists demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. In the end the Israelis released a few. The hostages were free but at un unfair price. Terrorism had been rewarded.
On April 2 1986 Arab terrorists exploded a bomb under the seat of four doomed Americans on a flight from Rome to Athens. The plane survived the explosion and landed safely in Athens. But the passenger manifest was four persons light. Four Americans had been sucked out of the plane falling 30,00 feet to meet a horrible death in the name of a twisted version of Allah. One of the victims was Demetra Klug. Talk about killing innocent civilians. Demetra Klug was an infant. Her mother Maria Styllan Klug was holding the baby in her arms when the bomb went off.
LIME STREET - AUGUST 1985
When Yuri Andropov took over as the new Gensec of the USSR in 1982 he got a letter from a 10-year old girl from Maine named Samantha Smith. Her dad taught literature and writing at the University of Maine, and her mother was a social worker. When she was only five she wrote a letter to the Queen of England.
Samantha wrote to Yuri wanting to know why Russia wanted to conquer the world, and why the two countries couldn't be friends. In 1985 she wrote back asking why he hadn't responded to her letter from three years ago.
Andropov, the ex-KGB man, wrote back a long and tender letter. The two letters were published in Pravda and in many US newspapers. Everyone was charmed. The Soviets invited SS to come and visit Moscow.
The Politburo was just using her to promote the idea that the USSR was a peaceful and loving country, and thus undermining the Reagan-Schultz publicity campaign that said the USSR was up to no good and the United States shouldn't trust them.
So Ms. Smith went to Moscow and was treated like the Queen of England, the leader that never wrote her back because it didn't promise any political capital. The media made Samantha an international sensation and a new TV show went into production called Lime St., starring famed actor Robert Wagner and introducing Samantha Smith. I found the whole thing saccharin nonsense and quite annoying. The USSR had sneaky motives in making her the Princess of the Kremlin at a time Reagan was trying to tell the world that the Soviets were cheating on every arms agreement they had ever agreed to and were fostering bloody trouble in several spots all over the globe including Angola and Yemen. But who wanted to hear such rhetoric when Samantha Smith was being carried around the streets of Moscow like the all conquering heroin for peace, and by implication, making a fool out of Reagan for saying the Soviets were aggressors? They girl they called “Smitty” was not making US foreign policy any easier. Jesse Jackson and Jimmy Carter could not have done a more effective job with one of their patented travel junkets in contradiction of standing US Policy. Sam was an unwitting tool of the well-oiled Soviet propaganda machine. She was so ignorant about real foreign policy that if she were alive today she could be a host on The View.
Then on the rainy windy night of August 25, 1985 Samantha Smith was on a small Bar Harbor Airlines plane coming in for a landing at Maine's Lewiston-Auburn Airport. The plane crashed 1.3 miles short of the runway and Samantha Smith died. The nation mourned. The Russians mourned. The producers of Lime St went on with the show because the first three episodes were already in post-production. Robert Wagner and George McGovern attended the funeral in Lewiston.
I think her father had more to do with the letter writing to Moscow than she did, but I can't prove that. The man taught creative writing at a college and we're supposed to believe that the initiative to write the Queen of England at the age of five came from Samantha.
GENEVA SUMMIT NOVEMBER 1985
The new leader of the USSR was like a rock superstar. Mik Gorbachov was hotter than Mic Jagger during his first years in office as General Secretary of the USSR.
The American President was seen as the super-hawk, while Gorbachov was viewed as the super-progressive, which is unfair because that was only true relative to their systems. At face value to an objective student from Mars, Gorbachev was the totalitarian reactionary and Reagan the progressive liberal. People couldn't see the forest for the trees because of image perception.
On November 19-20 1985 these two great men met in Geneva Switzerland for the first superpower summit in many years. Nothing particularly concrete was achieved, but the fact that the two men in charge of the nukes met at all was plenty concrete enough. The world breathed a little easier to see them smiling, shaking hands and relaxing in front of the fireplace in small talk. Reagan's acting experience and polished demeanor helped immensely, as did Gorby's.
When Reagan returned home from Geneva the nation welcome him as a conquering hero. It was one of the high water marks of his presidency.
DONALD REGAN THROWS WEIGHT AROUND AGAINST WOMEN
Don Regan stirred up an incident at the Geneva Summit.
Donald Reagan told the press that women generally can't understand the things being discussed here, things like “throw weights” on missiles. You can imagine what trouble that caused.
Congresswoman Pat Schroeder hit the roof and offered to fight him in the ring “anytime, anyplace.” Women all over the country put down their romance novels and wrote editorials to the local papers denouncing his ignorance.
Women generally are less interested than men in arms control issues, but that doesn't mean they can't understand them if they wanted to.
A valid criticism would have been that they tend to be less active in studying political issues than men (except in college when it’s required.) Millions of females who are exceptions to the rule would be furious with me for writing this, but the exceptions prove the rule even if there are a few million of them. I'll bet that more men than women read Madeline Albright's memoir of her tenure as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.
The irony was that Regan was the stupid one for saying that. The sexes are equally intelligent. Of course, the movies today and all the TV shows and commercials make almost the men stupid and all the women brilliant, - because more women watch junky TV shows and want to sit through bad movies, so the most money is to be made by flattering them.
STYLE WARS
The Style Wars matter at Geneva concerned the two first ladies of the nukes, Raisa Gorbachov and Nancy Reagan. The Summit was more style than substance in terms of real negotiations, but style created substance in relieving the tensions that could trigger World War III.
The reporters were frustrated by this lack of concrete throw weight stories and they created a running story about the fashion competition between the two top women. Who had the best color schemes? Who had the more expensive furs? Fashion editors discussed who was wearing what. It was all over the TV and in the newspaper columns.
That wasn't a wrong, and we can understand that it was a fun little minor story. What made it bad was when reporters tried to get attention for themselves by asking the two women about it right to their face while they were before a hundred cameras.
“Mrs. Reagan, is there a style war going on between you and Raisa?”
You can imagine both of their tense and controlled anger faces and their forced answers to those questions. I didn't often feel sorry for Nancy Reagan in the glory years, but I almost wish she would have pulled a Katherine Hepburn and asked if she could hold the reporter's camera for a minute, then “accidentally” drop it on the floor, say “oops” - then give the patented Nancy-dagger look, and say, “any other stupid questions?”
But both women had to keep their cool in the interest of peace, and decorum. It was awkward enough for the two women to try to pal around Geneva holding hands and posing for pictures without this extra tripe.
“Style Wars” was, of course, a clever twist on the famous infantile movie Star Wars.
DISCO DEATH
Sergeant Kenneth Ford grew up in a poor black section of Detroit. He was in Berlin in April 4 and ready to party. Him and his pal went out to the La Belle Disco club to compete in a dance contest.
At about 1:30 a.m. a young woman named Verena Chanaa planted a bomb in the club. She knew that La Belle was popular with US servicemen and wanted to take a few out. At four minutes to closing time, 1:56 a.m. on April 5 Verena's bomb went off. Sgt. Ford got much of his face blown off but survived. His pal was critically injured but also survived. A young Turkish woman was dead. She was an innocent bydancer.
Ken Ford died from his injuries two days later. Reports reached the Reagan Administration that Khadaffy, the leader of Libya, was behind the attack.
THE RAID ON LIBYA - APRIL 1986
In April of 1986 President Reagan put a Mediterranean sea change on the foreign policy of the United States. America had rarely attacked a sovereign nation at peace. But this was the new world of Middle East terrorism and Reagan decided that the United States had had enough. The USA would re-write the rules of international law. The American raid on Libya was one of the most important events in the 20th century. It marked a new era in Western foreign policy responses to terrorism. The age of blackmailing the pacifist giants was over.
Back in March of 1986 Libyan gunboats shot at US planes and in response the US jets blew them out of the water killing 53 Libyan men. Tensions between the two nations were high.
Then in April came the “irrefutable” evidence that the Libyan regime of Muomar Qaddafi had been responsible for busting up the dance contest at the Patty La Belle Discothèque. Sgt. Kenny Ford was going to be avenged.
Reagan approved a retaliatory air raid on Libya.
24 F-111 bombers and other assorted fighters left airbases in the UK and attacked several sites in Libya on the night of April 15, 1986. There were a lot of collateral civilian casualties.
Among the civilians killed was one of Qaddafi’s adopted children, 16-month-old Hana. Qaddafi was almost certainly personally targeted. The US lost one plane with two flyers KIA. Their US jet crashed into the Mediterranean.
France refused to allow the Americans to over-fly French airspace. Much was made of this unfriendly political gesture and feelings against France ran high in the United States. This to me was unthinking and a little bit unfair. France is a Mediterranean as well as an Atlantic country. It has a significant Arab population and has close political ties to many Arab states, far closer than the USA. Great Britain was relatively removed from the Mediterranean, had a smaller Arab population and had fewer close relations with Arab states. The UK was a very close friend and ally of the US. France was a luke-warm friend and ally of the US. The refusal of France to allow the overflight of the attack force over its airspace was both predictable and understandable and did not necessarily imply that France was not serious about trying to stop terrorism. But that, of course, was the criticism. France looked out for its selfish interests, but that's life.
Protest over the Raid on Libya from the left and from the Islamics erupted all over the globe. Islamic mobs burned American flags in retaliation. Liberals in America and Europe predicted that this would create a backlash. “This will create even more terrorism,” the experts warned on all the networks, while the anchormen and women nodded along and edited their stories with bias.
On the other hand the majority of 'person in the street' Americans supported the raid on Libya. Sadly, much of this support came from the knee-jerk tendency of macho people to support any US military action, a sadistic self-satisfied joy having little to do with the details and the political strategy involved.
LIBYA RAID CHANGED HISTORY
There was nothing in US history to compare with this type of military action. Reagan set the legal precedent for pre-emptive punitive offensive action followed by Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. It was a first, and the boldest and most important decision Reagan ever made.
The Israeli mission against Orsiak was not punitive, it was to take out what it perceived to be a direct military threat. This punitive strike against a nation at peace for what it did in sneaky fashion was a unique moment in global political history.
Without the Reagan attack on Libya changing the American mind-set, the Desert Storm operation probably never gets Congressional support, the US doesn’t bomb the Serbs in the 90's, and without all of these three in sequence, there is no 2003 invasion of Iraq. The switching from defensive to offensive foreign policy was gradual, in three steps, with a Clinton half step in the middle. US foreign policy may be too aggressive today, and that was the great debate of the 2004 and 2008 Presidential Election. But in the 70’s US Foreign policy was too defensive. Terrorism is a new modern warfare technique. Reagan brought the country past outdated Carter pacifism and into the terrorist age, one which calls for aggressive self-defense.
ARAB LEAGUE IS MAD
The Arab League called an emergency meeting to plan a response to the US raid on Libya, but in Damascus a meeting of the worlds top terrorist leaders beat the Arab League to the punch.
All the big shots of terrorism were there in Damascus. The PLO was there of course. These famous terrorist groups were often at odds with each other, competing for power among the powerless, but this time it was different. The chairman of the meeting said that “The terrorism is coming through America. It is an organized terrorism; a terrorism of the state.” The Abu Nidal faction said, “Reagan is a cowboy.” Akhmed Jabril, a veteran hijacker said that “You will witness things so big even Reagan will be amazed by the volume and cruelty.”
OPEC voted to condemn the attack. Iran issued this warning, “US citizens will not be safe anywhere.”
But OPEC also denied a request from Libya to boycott the sale of oil to the USA. In other words we’re plenty mad and 'death to America!' but let’s keep those money spigots open. Syria condemned the attack but in a ‘surprisingly subdued’ tone. Egypt gave lip service condemnation in a public statement because US-Egyptian relations were on a positive march and President Mabarik woudn't rock the boat on behalf of a Libyan neighbor that had hardly been a great friend of Egypt. The bottom line was that Libya did not have many true friends, even in its own back yard. Terrorism was Libya's only useful weapon. The United States had at long last made enough foreign relations progress with the Arab world since the low point of 1973-4 to test the waters and defend itself in the Middle East. The 4.86 raid on Libya was a monumental turning point in Middle Eastern politics as well as American foreign policy.
Most of the support for the April raid came from rank and file Americans plus the Israeli leaders. An NBC Wall Street Journal push-poll found that 40% of Americans “feared that it might lead to” more, not less terrorism. 23% thought that it would make no difference. Only 23% checked off that the attack “would stop Libyan terrorism.”
This is slick and unfair. Nowhere is the polled allowed to say that the attack would reduce terrorism, the most likely positive outcome if there might be one. Who in their right mind would think that any action would “stop” terrorism? And what sane person of any political bent would not “fear that it might” lead to more terrorism? “Believe” and “fear” it might lead to more terrorism, are two different questions but they get blended. It’s amazing that the numbers weren’t 99% feared it might lead to more terrorism. I definitely might hit the lottery tomorrow.
NBC Anchorman Tom Brokaw then had to add a slanted disclaimer when he reluctantly reported poll numbers supporting the attack.
“69% supported the President, as they often do in a crisis.”
It was unfair an unnecessary to add “as they often do in a crisis.”
LA BELLE POSTSCRIPT
Ken Ford's buddy died a week after the raid so the final tally was two US dead, one Turkish woman, and about 200 other shocked revelers wounded in the attack.
The individual perpetrators were arrested in the late 1990's and tried in London in 2001. Three men got 12 years, and Verena the “trigger-gal” got 14. They all pleaded out for second degree murder, which explains the light sentences.
DERE GO DE JUDGE
For the first time since 1986 Congress successfully impeached someone. It was Judge Harry Claiborne and it was for tax evasion. Harry was branded and sent packing on July 22, 1986.
GOLDWATER-NICHOLS - 10-86
A bi-partisan bill passed in October re-organizing the military command structure and trying to make the President more answerable to the Congress for foreign policy initiatives.
Barry Goldwater, the famous Republican, was one sponsor, and Nick Nichols of Guam was the other sponsor (D.)
The head of the JCS, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would now be an independent funnel to the Oval Office, not a person temporarily loyal to his branch. The head of the JCS was now the head of the Army, Air Force, Navy or Marines, serving on a rotating basis.
GN also worked on the problem of inter-service rivalry rendering US military efforts ineffective and inexcusably so. Poor co-ordination between the services had caused needless and tragic problems both in the Iranian rescue mission of 1979 and in the recent military operation in Grenada.
The experience in Grenada was the last straw. 19 Americans died, but research concluded that even that number was too high, and inter-service rivalry was partly responsible. The Navy was jealous of the Army and on and on with that nonsense. I hate reading about that in WWII, I hate reading about that in Washington. Its the stupidest thing in the world, and if Goldwater Nichols alleviated that then three cheers for Goldwater-Nichols.
The GN Bill also required the president to make an annual report to Congress about the overall direction of his or her foreign policy. This was a reaction to some the Reagan 007 rogue spy foreign policy initiatives with the CIA and all that.
Both Hugh Shelton and Richard Meyers (each a chairman of the JCS under W) say in their recent memoirs that Goldwater-Nichols was huge. It really changed things for the better in so many ways for US military capability and performance.
RUSSIAN RELATIONS PLUMMET AT THE SUMMIT OCTOBER 1986
The summit at Iceland between Gorbachov and Reagan was supposed to lead to arms control agreements. Expectations in October of 1986 were high. This was going to top Geneva.
But Gorby was determined to make the USA give up it’s Strategic Defense Initiative, described earlier. That was the same SDI the left said repeatedly was unsound scientifically and could never work. The USSR had been working on its own SDI program but knew it was lagging behind the USA in this program.
Suddenly the USSR was willing to make concessions all over the place if the USA would give up SDI. Reagan and his Secretary of Defense former Marine George Schultz had no intentions of giving up SDI. They believed that MAD, mutual assured destruction, was no longer acceptable as the only deterrent to a Soviet nuclear attack. The US actually wanted to take a lead in military capability, not just achieve a ‘mad’ parity between itself and the USSR. Liberals condemned the Reagan team for wanting the USA to achieve military superiority. They thought it was an immoral goal as well as an impractical one, and they were wrong on both counts.
In Iceland Gorbachov tried to stare Reagan down with a determined smile over SDI, but Reagan returned the Russian aggressive smile with an American defiant frown. The two sides left Iceland in a cold freeze instead of the nuclear freeze that Democrats like Gary Hart and Alan Cranston were clamoring for.
NICK DANILOFF INCIDENT
Soviet American relations underwent some needless strain in the fall of 1986 when an American journalist was arrested in Moscow on charges that he was a spy. Nick Daniloff was busted a mile from Red Square on September 2, 1986.
The Reagan Administration demanded his release and charged that the arrest was merely a babyish Rus retaliation for the arrest of a Soviet spy in Washington just a few days earlier. The Daniloff case was headline news for about two weeks in 1986.
The Russians were threatening to put Daniloff in prison. Progress in arms control was put on hold or worse, set back.
I was angry over Nick's arrest.
The matter was finally settled and Daniloff was released, but the United States had to release one or two Russian spies to get the matter smoothed over.
In 1989 I paid full price for a paperback copy of Daniloff's story, Two Lives, One Russia. By page 50 my jaw was open in disbelief. Daniloff did everything he should not have done when in the USSR. Even though they set him up, he still totally deserved to be arrested!
It should have been obvious that he was being set up for an arrest. He should have minded his own business in Communist Moscow in 1986. The Russians were looking for someone to arrest and so they set the bait for some fool who wanted to play Johnny Hero in the Cold War. They tempted Daniloff into carrying packages out of the Soviet Union when he wasn't legally allowed to. They appealed to his ego as brave freedom-loving westerner. Nikki D was tempted into playing a role in a stage play and he bit the hook. Reading Daniloff's account changed my mind on him and the entire incident. Daniloff was at fault and he did the entire world a disservice by getting himself arrested.
Nick teaches today at Northeastern University which is a mile from my house. He is the top instructor at the NU school of Journalism. I do a good impression of him. I mean, one of my best. It's from an interview on the ABC TV show, Nightline, and I really can do him good. Too bad it's useless unless I do a fundraiser at the NU School of Journalism.
AAA ACT OF 1986
South Africa was a racist nation with minority white rule forced on a majority of blacks. The emblems of the white rulers looked remarkably like the Nazi fascist regalia, as though they were in-your-face lovers of racism and fascism. The US left and the conscience of the world had been screaming about apartheid since about 1960. With each passing year the momentum had been building up for the world to demand democracy and liberation in South Africa.
In the 1980's things came to boil.
Congress passed the Anti Apartheid Act of 1986 over the veto of President Reagan.
The momentum of progress had forced the United States to act. The momentum was so strong that a conservative President's veto couldn't stop it. The will of Congress forced the US to initiate and enforce many economic sanctions against South Africa until it got its act together.
The AAA Act,
“Declares that U.S. policy toward the victims of apartheid is to use economic, political, diplomatic, and other means to remove the apartheid system and to assist the victims of apartheid to overcome the handicaps imposed on them by apartheid. Sets forth actions the United States will take to help the victims of apartheid.”
Whenever the left read the dirty laundry list of the Reagan Administrations moral offenses, they always ripped him good on his indirect support of Apartheid by not doing enough to combat it. America had the power to lean pretty heavily on South Africa if it wanted to, and Reagan didn't want to. I sided with the lefties on this one.
CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS OF 1986
The Democratic party made substantial gains in the mid-term Congressional elections but not enough to win control of either branch.
There were some interesting rookies. The fact that the President of the United States was a former Hollywood movie star may have opened the door for others to cross over from show biz to politics, a continuation of show business by different means. In this election of 86 a man named Fred Grandy was elected to Congress from California. Grandy was a star of the ABC hit romantic comedy TV series, The Love Boat. That same election saw the defeat of another candidate who had starred on the cowboy comedy TV series The Dukes of Hazard. Sonny Bono made the Congress a couple of years later in 88. This led to a derisive nickname for these types of candidates. They were called ‘puppettbaggers.’
Perfect.
Entertainers leave the theatre with a bag full of puppets and try to tell people what’s what in the field of politics. Certainly all the left wing stand-up comedians who pontificate about politics are a species of puppettbaggers. Today, Arnold Schwartzenegger is governor of California and I think he certainly qualifies. Al Franken of Saturday Night Live won the Senate seat in Minnesota in 2008. He writes very easy to read vulgar political books hating the right. He’s a super-puppettbagger. The trend that started with Andrew Jackson, the common man winning royalty through high office, continues on with comedians, actors, and wrestlers winning all the highest governmental posts in the land.
Just for the record, Reagan, the alleged “B-actor” is ten times the actor that Schwartzenegger could ever dream of being. And no one ever calls Schwartzenegger a B-actor (the worst leading actor of all time is, of course, Kris Kristofferson.)
STARK ATTACK - 3.17.87
First the Panay in 37, then the Liberty in 67, then the Stark in 87. A peaceful US ship cruising along, minding its own business and then ka-boom.
On March 17, 1987 the USS destroyer Stark was on peaceful patrol duty in the Persian Gulf. For reasons not entirely known, an Iraqi Mirage fighter jet fired two 352-pound Exocet missiles with the Stark as target. These Frecnh-made Exocets were first-rate weapons and they found the Stark. 37 US sailors died.
The reaction here in the United States was a misguided missile too. There was a full and furious outcry, but it was entirely a “how did we let this happen? What kind of a Navy do we have here?” anger directed against the USA, not against the Iraqis!
‘Why did the Stark do nothing?’ they cried. ‘What was wrong with that negligent captain of that ship?’ The whole outcry assault was against US military incompetence in being hit by the missiles! That made me more angry than the attack itself. America was attacked twice unfairly, first by the Iraq, then by America.
Part of the problem was that there was little or no anti-Iraqi feeling to quickly tap into.. Americans hated Iran as a matter of course, but not Iraq. Iran was the enemy (Iran and Syria.) The Lebanon Marine barracks bombings and the Carter hostage crisis were both in the recent past. Iraq had not wronged the US, was culturally pro-western, and hated Iran too, and so when Iraq apologized for the attack, agreed to pay an indemnity, and said it was an accident, America bought it. If an Iranian fighter jet had done the same thing, Americans would have been doing war dances on the town commons.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend and so the USA was friendly to Iraq and quickly settled up over the Stark. And by the way, all the hindsight moralists who screamed after 1991 about how it was the USA who build up Sadaam in the 1980's never said a damn word about it while it was going on (and it's arguable that it ever really was.) And I heard very little outrage against Iraq for doing it. It was pretty amazing, really.
So the outcry was against the commander and the officers of the Stark for not properly defending the ship. But most important, the aftermath of Stark was a predictable outcry against United States military presence in the Persian Gulf.
All of a sudden the entire policy towards the Persian Gulf was being questioned. Critics were wondering if America wasn't causing a lot of the trouble just by being in there.
If a Democratic president had put US warships on routine patrol in international waters in the Persian Gulf it would be an accepted part of the national defense. But since a hated Republican was in charge at the time, the Dems attacked. Congressmen were asking on the Senate floor, “I ask you then what are we doing in the Persian Gulf?” I dunno, Perhaps implementing standard national security procedures in the region that had been approved by every president since Franklin Roosevelt.
The outcry against the Reagan administration for being in the Persian Gulf was so predictable that it offers a clear motive for this “accidental” attack. The main reason the Mirages attacked the Stark was to provoke this political reaction and get the US armed forces out of the Gulf, clearing the way for Iraqi hegemony, the hegemony that Iraq attempted in 1990.
If we assume that Sadaam Hussein had designs on invading Kuwait as far back as 1987, then an accidental stray missile slamming into a US warship would perhaps secure the US flank for Sadaam. The home front USA would give him a Vietnam style boost to have a free hand in the Gulf. Iraq could apologize, survive the damage in direct relations with the current administration, and at the same time stimulate the demand that the US not get involved in conflicts in the Gulf. It almost worked. Reagan and G. R. Brindel, the commander of the Stark took all the heat, not the Iraqis.
It wasn't fair. The US was not at war. It is the natural instinct of anyone on peacetime patrol to presume all approaching radar blips to be non-belligerent. It’s only natural. Plus the United States prides itself on the quality of its mercy, or. Do Americans really want commanders of US Navy warships to shoot first and ask questions later in time of peace?
Now a few words about the Boston Globe, a paper that once published an article of mine about sports, and a paper I delivered door to door in South Boston as a boy for two years.
A few days after the tragedy at a service for the Stark’s dead, Reagan gave a eulogy. The next day the Boston Globe headlined REAGAN LAUDS SHIPS “HEROES”. The fact that they put the word “heroes” in quotes struck me as snide, cynical and critical, as though Reagan has a nerve calling these guys “heroes,” when he was the one that put them needlessly in harms way. That’s how I read that headline and since that day I have purchased the Boston Globe an average of one day a year. Okay, maybe three. But before that headline I had bought it about every other day for my adult life. From that day on I switched from a Globe man to a Herald man and I haven’t looked back. The Globe’s has a roundhouse right of an anti-Republican bias. It’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Other people call the Globe ‘liberal’ but all liberals love conservatism as long as it comes from a liberal, so its not an issue of liberal or conservative. It’s about Party.
For more detail on Stark read the book, Missile Inbound; The Attack On the Stark in the Persian Gulf, by Jeffrey L. Levison and Randy L., Edwards, (Naval Institute Press c)1997). I didn’t.
The timing of the accident was no accident. When Sadaam invaded Kuwait later, as he was planning to do, he hoped the Congress would not allow the President to react and come to the rescue. Congress would interpret the mood of the people as already opposed to our meddling in the Persian Gulf and Sadaam would be allowed to keep Kuwait. With the prize of Kuwait he could win the war against Iran and control all the oil of the Middle East outside of Saudi Arabia. He was counting on the fruits of the Stark, and it probably helped him in Congress but not enough to change the vote that supported Bush One using military force.
THE IRAN-CONTRA SCANDAL 1987
It dominated the news off and on for more than just the year 1987, and it was always boring. The United States had secretly sold spare parts for F-14’s and some conventional weapons to its enemy Iran. The Iranian money would be diverted to help the Contras in Central America.
Was this a rogue operation by some cowboys in the Reagan Administration who never told him because they knew he would never approve such an illegal action? Or did Mr. Reagan give it a nod and wink without actually leaving a paper trial behind?
These were the two biggest questions for more than a year and I say again, it was all very boring. The media just wanted to get him and they thought that this time they had. So they magnified the story into headline news for about 300 days. Even if these charges were true, there was still a balance of power issue superseding it all. The Cold War was still on and Washington did not want an Iran so weak that it would be vulnerable to a take-over by the Soviet Union. Washington also didn’t want Iraq to win it’s war with Iran and become a domineering power in the region either. So the arms and spare parts were sold not because the Reagan team was callous and insensitive to the fact that for political gains elsewhere, America had sold rifles to the will Indians. The Reagan team saw this as a win at both ends. They wanted to get spare parts to Iran, and used this convoluted deal to set up a different reason why they were doing it. It was set up almost to get caught, and certainly with a plan B in case they do and that’s what we saw with Ollie North taking the fall for a policy that everyone wanted. The one thing the Reagan Administration dared not tel the American people was that it wanted to help Iran gain some military strength back. That deal could not risk getting caught without other deals tied in elsewhere to confuse the picture, which it did. The whole Iran-Contra scandal was confused ... and boring.
I know for a fact that Kissinger would agree with me completely. I probably heard it from him in the first place. I also know that some sophisticated European pundits understood this reasoning, and were surprised to see it coming from a cowboy like Reagan. They didn’t think he could “get it” like a European veteran leader could.
This is a letter that I wrote to Ronald Reagan in 1987. I got a form letter back a month later thanking me for being his friend in these trying times. I think it was the first time I ever wrote to the White House. I was going to put this in the appendix, but then I remembered that I never read anything in the appendix in any book, even though I always plan to. So I won’t even have one in my book. I’m having my appendix taken out.
From me to RR,
“Dear Mr. President.
I fully support your recent decision to provide limited material assistance to Iran. I do not like Iran and all it stands for but I realize, as I believe you do, that the threat of Soviet expansion in the Middle East is of far greater importance than our dislike of Khomeni and his anti-Americanism.
It seems odd to me that the same people who cheered Jimmy Carter when he told Congress that any move by the Soviets in the direction of the Persian Gulf would be responded to by all means “including the use of military force” are now shocked that we assisted Iran in maintaining its air force. If we should defend our security interests in direct combat with the Soviets on and over Iranian soil, how can we not hope that Iran maintains a security deterrence of its own?
Iran is surrounded by Soviet influenced Iraq on the West, Soviet occupied Afghanistan on the East, and the Soviet Union itself on the North. I do not believe that the Russians plan to invade Iran, but I do not believe that we should tempt them by allowing a weak and chaotic Iran to present itself before them.
Far from being unpatriotic, I believe that communication with and assistance to Iran shows a mature patriotism, one that places long term American security interests above simple emotional reactions to complex affairs.
Sincerely;
Mike Donovan”
Of course Reagan never read this, but someone on his staff did, and every written letter counts for more than one vote. It’s a weighted vote. I wrote a support letter to each of the Bush presidents, on different issues, but did not get a thank you note from either, and was disappointed. I wrote to Reagan twice and got a letter back twice. But he never called me, the stuck up snob.
For the last year and a half of his presidency, the media acted like Reagan had been exposed as a corrupt fraud and now he just has to play out the last few games of a defeated season. “What started out as a successful presidency has of course deteriorated into a failed one thanks to Iran Contra.” That sort of thing and it was endless. The public didn’t latch on to it, and basically nobody cared that much except the media and some educated liberals outside of it. Reagan went on to oversee the beginning of the liberation of East Europe form Communism, negotiated a dramatic arms reduction deal with the Russians, and presided over an era of prosperity, and as he is doing that the media kept casually referring to his “downfall” as though it were a fact because of Iran-Contra, as if that one scandal was the only measure of his presidency. It was logical for them to extrapolate Iran Contra into the measuring stick for his presidency, because they had no other cards left to play. Reagan had been too all round successful and popular, and Iran Contra was their only play. So the liberal media, especially ABC and CBS, milked it and exaggerated its real significance. Peter Jennings was the smuggest of them all.
NUCLEAR ARMS REDUCTIONS 1987
In December of 1987 a new era in modern history began when the USSR and the USA signed a strategic arms reduction agreement. START was a big step up from SALT. There had been arms limitation agreements before. But arms reduction agreements hadn't happened since the Washington Naval Conference of 1922.
It didn’t come a moment too soon. When this agreement was signed, the nuclear arsenals of each of these two superpowers topped off at about 40,000 strategic nuclear warheads with delivery systems capable of sending 20,000 of these to any point on the globe. Each bomb was many times more powerful than Hiroshima, some so large as to make the Nagasaki bomb look like a firecracker. Your average strategic nuke in 1987 could create a crater big enough to drop two cities into it.
Beginning in 1987 the trend has been reduction. Today each side has the capability of delivering only one tenth the nuclear military power it possessed in December of 1987.
The velvet revolution was just beginning at the end of Reagan’s term. Most of the great upheavals in the USSR and Eastern Europe came on the watch of George Bush the First. But the big break-though began under Reagan. The river poured through the breach under Bush.
Reagan has often been credited with handling the Russians well throughout his presidency, certainly in my house. It had all come full circle in his 8 years. Carter let office with the Soviets in the ascendancy world-wide and America on the decline. Reagan came in, got tough with Russia's and answered Moscow’s truculent rhetoric by giving it right back for a change. RR restored US superior strategic nuclear strength, and played a game of defense budget. He thought he could outspend the Soviets and gain the military advantage when the Russians dropped out because they had empty pockets like a card player who can't meet the raise. That worked, and forced the Soviets to the bargaining table with a more reasonable attitude than they had shown for decades.
US-Soviet relations were changing rapidly near the end of Reagan’s term. Gorbachev had launched Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR and the nations of eastern Europe were beginning the beat the war drums of independence.
The USSR had always made it a firm policy that it had to be surrounded by states that were friendly to the USSR and these buffer states had to be without power. They had two choices; to be within the Soviet sphere of influence or face military occupation.
But now in the closing days of Reagan the sea was changing. Nations like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Iran, Japan and China were growing stronger. The question was, could the USSR allow a balance of power in its own geographical spheres. Could it abandon its old mind-set which came from a word ruled by Stalin and Hitler. These were new times and new leaders. Even today, the relation between NATO and Russia is not easy to define. Nor is this paragraph.
PERSONAL NOTE
I am always studying history so much that I am sometimes fall way behind on current events. Such was a time in December of 1987. I was reading stacks of Russian history books, and was all wound up in the Russian Revolution or the life of Lenin, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or deeds of Peter the Great. I had not been following the negotiations for START. Not at all. On the night of December 7th when I turned on the nightly TV national news saw this story with Reagan and Gorbachev signing and shaking hands leading off the national news. The announcer explained that they were actually signing a treaty reducing nuclear arms for the first time in history. They were shaking hands and smiling warmly. It was a blockbuster breaking news story and was the first twelve minutes of the broadcast.
I just started to cry and couldn't stop. I cried like I cried when John Lennon was murdered. They were tears of joy mixed with some sadness about how bad it all was that something like this was necessary at all. START was only a start, but it was so moving, such a great moment in history. After studying all that hate in the history between our two countries and getting all worked up about it all the time, and then being blindsided by this incredibly beautiful moment, this sincere and determined attempt to try to put an end to the Cold War and try and find peace through deeds, not rhetoric, it was too much to handle. I really lost it.
The START reduction momentum continues on even today under Obama. It is still all about reductions, not limitations or freezes..
VINCENNES - HAPPY FOURTH EVERYONE!
The Fourth of July is supposed to be a joyous national holiday. July 4 1988 was the most shameful in Fourth of July in American history. On this date a United States warship the USS Vincennes, shot down a civilian Iranian airliner without provocation, essentially murdering 290 people.
The misdirected criticism after the Stark led to the tragedy of the Vincennes. In the aftermath of the 37 US sailors killed on the USS Stark, the American people had pretty much demanded that American warships act trigger happy.
The raking over the coals dished out to commander Brindel in 1987 came back to haunt the USA on the Fourth of 88. Reagan had addressed the nation after the Stark by announcing that from now on the new policy would be to,
“Defend yourselves, defend American lives.”
No naval commander wanted to go though such a character-abuse storm again, so from now on, the rule for unidentified aircraft would be shoot first, and identify what came down later. The naggers had browbeaten the quality of mercy out of the Navy.
The Vincennes had been engaged in a running battle with several Iranian gunboats which had shot at a US helicopter a little after 2 a.m. Vincennes destroyed two of the Iranian gunboats and damaged the other.
A little before 3 a.m. Vincennes mistook a radar blip as an incoming F-14 Iranian Tomcat fighter with lethal power beneath the wings. In reality they were tracking a passenger airliner, Iran Air Flight 655 headed towards the United Arab Emirates from Bandar Abbas with 290 sleepy people on board.
The missile cruiser USS Vincennes gave several IFF requests and several warnings, but there was no response. The Vincennes declared the radar blip to be a hostile and fired 2 Standard surface to air missiles into the sky. The first missile hit Flight 655 six miles ahead of the Vincennes and it crashed in Iranian waters.
The next morning the entire world was horrified to see pictures of Iranian women and children being fished out of the sea.
It had to be the worst day in the history of the Reagan Administration, even worse than the Beirut bombing, for it is at least more admirable to be a victim than a victimizer.
There is no justifiable excuse for the Vincennes. The USA eventually paid 61 million dollars to the victims. But it would never have happened if the nation had not been so mean to the Navy over its performance in the Stark attack. The Vincennes gave the country what it had demanded after the Stark.
The captain of the Vincennes was named Will Rogers. “I never met a target I didn't like.”
PASSING THE BATON TO BUSH
On leaving office the Reagan-Schultz team actually feared that the incoming Bush-Scowcroft-Baker team would be too tough and cynical with the Soviet Union. The conservative wing of the party often accused GHW Bush of being a liberal Republican while few if any said this about Reagan. Yet it was Reagan who was the wide-eyed optimist about the changes in the Soviet world and the potential for improved relations between the two superpowers. It was Hawk Reagan who really believed in the dream of a nuclear weapons free earth, while Bush and especially his NS advisor Scowcroft were more skeptical about the dangers of trusting the changes in the Soviet Union to be fully genuine.
“THE TEFLON PRESIDENT”
They called him ‘Teflon.’ Their criticisms weren’t valid enough to stick so they blamed it on a phony slick quality in the target rather than in some defection in the arrows. This is why and how Ronald Reagan became known as the ‘Teflon president.’ (Teflon is a name-brand of a super scratch-resistant and slippery frying pan, as opposed to the scratchy ones I buy until the handle breaks off for no reason.)
‘Teflon President” was a popular phrase in his time. It was perfect for the biased media because is was borderline vicious but remained just enough in-bounds that it could be used often and safely. The anchorperson could innocently cite it in passing.
“What’s next for the Teflon president? ABC’s Benjamin Dork examines this question in his special report, ‘Ronald Reagan - the second term’.”
You know, that sort of thing.
They couldn’t make their charges stick so they made a nickname stick about how nothing could stick to this guy. The nickname only lasted for his presidency. After office you rarely heard this one. I had completely forgotten that nickname until I saw it on an old news video.
AFTER OFFICE
Poor Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a few years after leaving the White House. The toll it took on Nancy was obvious every time she was seen in an interview. Reagan gave a speech at the 1992 Republican Convention, a farewell to the people that moved me and a few others.
CONCLUSION
Reagan was a great president. Reagan won the Cold War, restored America’s faith in itself, and made it cool to be patriotic again. When he attacked Libya in April of 1986, Reagan signaled to the world that the pacifist era of Ford and Carter was over. America would not longer be a paper tiger to be intimidated by rogue states and Islamic radicals.
Reagan was someone to look up to in every way. I wish I could have worked on his security detail.
Reagan was a movie star before entering politics. Those who hate him always call him a B actor. He starred in many major motion pictures with the greatest names of his era. If he had never entered politics he would have been remembered as a prominent movie star from the film noir era. But since he was so hated, he somehow became a “B actor”. Okay, Bedtime for Bonzo was a second rate movie, but most respected movie stars from every era have starred in some clunkers along the way. Have you seen John Wayne in Big Jim McClain?
For the others the bad ones are overlooked. Reagan’s good performances don’t matter. Only Bonzo and artistic nightmares such as The Girl From Jones Beach and Tiger in Her Tank are the ones remembered. And how can I not help but stick up for a guy that starred in a movie called Donovan's Brain?
The Santa Fe Trail with Errol Flynn was a fine movie and RR’s performance in The Hasty Heart was an A plus. You have to see that movie. I guarantee you, that the Hasty Heart is a good movie.
I loved Ronald Reagan as if he were a member of my own immediate family. He is one of the main reasons why I am a Republican sympathizer. How can you come of age in the Carter, Reagan years and not see the comparison favorably for the Republicans? How can you?
Reagan’s autobiography An American Life, is a great book.
I came of age politically under Reagan. The great sea change in my political orientation was concluded during the first Reagan administration. In 1980 I was torn between left and right. I had spent too many years as a hippie to embrace this man just yet. Reagan, after all, had long been that right wing lunatic that was certain to start World War III. He was the guy that was square when the entire world had gone hip. There were three squares left in the country by the early 70’s, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan and one farmer in Montana.
By the time Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 I was a full-fledged conservative and a hard left apostate.
What made me finally turn right? Was it the Hinckley shooting and the way Reagan handled it; the way he bounced back? No. Was it his economic policies, cutting taxes, reducing unemployment and stimulating business? No. Was it his patriotism, the way he made it feel good to be a flag waver again after such behavior had been scoffed at for a decade? No.
I turned right because of the relentless unfair bashing this man took from the liberal media and just about everyone I associated with during his presidency. I tried to remain undecided and centrist but it was one unfair cheap shot after another, one damaging exaggeration after another, one smug put down, one condescending slander, one outrageous misrepresentation of his words deeds and life after another. The more they hit him the more I wanted to defend him. If the loyal opposition had just shown some reason and courtesy I might never have fallen off the centrist wagon into the right wing stable. But my sense of justice and fair play left me with no alternative but to fall in with him.
It was under Reagan that it became clear to me what the difference was between a Republican and a Democrat (and I use the terms Republican and Democrat with a natural extension to the terms liberal and conservative.)
The Republican believes that there are two points of view, a right one and a wrong one. The Republican thinks that the Democrats have the wrong point of view and the Republicans have the right one.
The Democrats on the other hand think that there is only one point of view – Theirs. That’s why they never really argue. They just condemn. They never bother to weigh both sides and then declare one better. They simply do not acknowledge that two points of view legitimately exist. They are knee deep in a Messiah complex. They are the light and the way.
In the minds of those who hate them, Republicans are just engaged at all times in some deep evil conspiracy, and there is always a demonic motive behind their conservative viewpoints and goals. This makes the Republican viewpoint a viewpoint not worth considering. The left see the Republican viewpoint not as a sincere viewpoint, but as a beard that bad people use to disguise a face of crime. The rich republicans want to hurt the little people. They enjoy it.
The liberals have a slick and evasive style of combat. It is the smiling, smug, condescending dismissal of the Republican side. By this system the Republicans don’t enter the ring and get a beating. That would imply respect. Instead they are locked out of the competition. They never get to box a single round. It is just presumed that they are diabolical and useless and when anyone tries to speak in their defense, the Dems just roll their eyes and say, “oh brother, will ya get a load of this jerk?”
The Republican will point his finger in your face and turn red telling you you’re wrong. The Dem/leftist doesn’t bother. He just walks away and laughs softly while shaking his head and then goes and hangs out with others who feel the same way and they all roll their eyes in a great orgy of self-satisfied pleasure. The Democrats don’t so much preach to the choir as they sleep with the choir. They all feed on each other and there is never any room for outsiders or for open discussion. You are either with the “in crowd” or you’re a leper.
On the issues I am still about 40% Democrat and 60% Republican, just as I was in the early years of the Reagan presidency. But because of the personal demeanor of countless millions of pro-Democrats from the man-in-the-street interview, to the personal acquaintance, to the professional media, I am without reservation, a Republican partisan. I disagree with the Republican Party on many issues and they are loaded with imperfections, scandals and scoundrels. But they are willing to conduct a fair argument on anything with anyone at any time and the other side cannot make the same claim. The other side specializes in the refusal to fight fair or fight at all, and this refusal is followed up by below the belt bashing. People who mock the right for a living on TV shows are the quintessential Democrats today.
There are exceptions to every rule. A few famous nasty right-wing talk show hosts do not represent the millions of decent conservatives any more than extreme leftist on the radio represent all decent Democrats. I don't have to answer for the statements of Ann Coulter any more than a Dem has to answer for the statements of Jeanine Garofalo. There are unfair debaters in the conservative camp and there are reasonable and fair-minded people in the liberal camp. But overall for me, there is no comparison between the attitude of the average person on the left and the attitude of average person on the right. A liberal is five times more likely to interrupt you when you’re speaking than a conservative. As long as that is true I will side with the interrupted. And fortunately for my side, you can’t interrupt us while we’re voting.
I lived the Reagan years in a liberal state (Massachusetts) and all I ever heard was how much everyone hated this man. I don’t know if I ever heard three people stick up for this prez. Yet he won the state of Massachusetts in 1984! How? He won because conservative voters learn to keep quiet and refrain from arguing with the big mouth bully liberals. They let their voting fingers do the talking.
So if you walk into a restaurant in 1984 and there are 8 adults at a table and politics come up, all you will hear are three bigmouths bashing Reagan. The five people who like him just chew on their food and hope the storm passes so that they can resume participating in the social atmosphere. Mistake not silence for inaction. They will be up with the rooster on Election Day.
That is why I came to love Ronald Reagan. Not because of his patriotism, but because of the arrows they endlessly fired his way. Of all the presidents in my lifetime, he was the most hated. George W. Bush was hated by a lot of people but Reagan took the most abuse.
They called him a phony, they called him stupid, they called him a B -actor, they called him a red-neck, they called him an actor playing a role as president, they called him a fascist, they called him a war monger, they called him a reactionary and a thousand other things. There were enough Reagan-bashing books published to fill the Independence, Missouri Public Library. People made a living bashing Reagan. There were countless “We Hate Reagan” posters, buttons, flyers, t-shirts, musical recordings and videos, poems, essays, pamphlets, and balloons. The assault on our president was torrential. It was distasteful. Can't we disagree without this visceral stuff? As president Mikhail Gorbachov once said when under severe personal attacks back home in Russia,
“The president represents all of the people. When you spit on him, you spit on yourself.”
A Republican argues by telling you that you are wrong, while a Democrat argues by telling you that you are a bad person.
SOURCES
The primary source is living through the era, VHS taping the national news three out of every four nights from 1983-8, and reading the newspapers, plus a little Time and Newsweek. Some books consulted or read in full are below,
An American Life, by Ronald Reagan.
The autobiography. It isn’t exactly the thorough White House memoir of an Eisenhower or Lyndon Johnson that I would have hoped for, but it is a full life story with a few chapters on the presidency. Fortunately many other key members of Reagan’s cabinet have all written books that fill in any missing details on the 8 years of the Reagan White House. This book is so enjoyable that I see it in a bookstore on sale or at a flea market for a buck and I regret that I already read it and can't pick it up and read it again for the first time. If you want to study Reagan, why not start here. Even if you hate him, why not start here?
Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, My Life in American Politics – by Ed Rollins – c) 1996 -
Possibly the worst written political memoir of all time. This is not to say it is useless. The stories are valuable (some of them.) But this is the antithesis of fine political writing.
Rollins is the most insecure alpha male of all-time. All he does is brag and brag about how much of a tough guy he is. Did you know that as a teenager he was a boxer? Did you care? Why should you? But Rollins reminds you on every other page that he used to be a boxer. It's so pathetic. I get it. You're a big bad man, and we should step aside when you walk down the street. Look at the title. It's just one of 2,212 reminders that he was so tough. So what? You and a million other guys. It doesn't make you that special. He's on the cover photo posing with boxing gloves.
He mentions that his career ended with a TKO defeat. If only we had the film. Incredibly, he mentions that his father taught him first and foremost to always be humble. I burst out laughing so loud that I woke my wife up in the next room. Exactly five paragraphs later he writes of his high school days,
“I loved to read and was always placed in the advanced groups. .. I was the best schoolyard fighter and the fasted runner.”
Five paragraphs after he wrote that his father had taught him that,
“If you're good you don't have to tell the world about it.”
He was a boxer, you know.
The whole book is conceit and hatred, what a terrible combo. The more I read this book the more I conclude this Ed Rollins is just a very bad human being, an awful person I would not want to know or, heaven forbid, count on in a pinch. He’s watch you burn up in a car crash and write the next day that it was all you fault for not having taken his advice on what road to drive on, when it was really because Rollins cut the brake wires. He is a scary bad person, and makes me think less of the Reagan Administration that it included the likes of him in it.
He also brags throughout the books about how much booze he drinks. Anyone who doesn’t drink hard liquor is a wimp. Here’s a guy who hates the dope smoking hippies who all need a bath (the classic redneck) and he boasts how he drinks all the other wimps under the table with hard whiskey. He heh. What a man! What a mentally disturbed individual. I politics there was a viable outlet for his brand of mental disturbance. If he was in a monastery on on a reality TV show he would be expelled fast. In politics the same bad qualities can be exploited employed and extolled.
Many people have a list of people they hate. Rollins keeps a folded index card in his wallet containing a list of people he doesn’t hate. He and his second wife are on it, and one or two people from his childhood. That’s it. He had a personal vendetta running through the book against Jim Baker, which only makes me like Baker more.
This book is useful though, and definitely has some exclusive inside rockets from the always hostile author. BNDR is highly enlightening in three ways. It gives us inside looks at the Reagan Administration, offers many provocative opinions, and we learn what a bad person Ed Rollins is.
Here is all you need to really get. If Ed Rollins read this, he’d lose sleep for three weeks sleep from wanting to find me and beat me up. Even through he’s about 68 and I’m 57, he’d still be physically gunning for me in his dreams. That’s how hostile and immature he is. Every page has him explaining why he restrained himself from punching someone out in the White House.
Rollins is a brutal thug and that’s all he is, ever was, and ever will be until the day he gets in the boxer’s mahogany box. It figures he was close to Lee Atwater. Two blackheart peas in a pod.
Caveat, by Al Haig
The General is appalled that his direction of US foreign policy is continually supersede by the wishes of the President. Haig has a really awful ego.
I liked Haig more after reading this book but not enough to say that I like him. Haig made some excellent points and arguments. As a writer Al has a much better demeanor than he does as an active person. Remove the sociology from his world and you find a fine thinker.
According to the book Silent Coup, Haig played a devious role in the decline and fall of President Richard Nixon.
Deception, by Jay Edward Epstein c) 1989 - This book pretty much confirms the Golitsyn thesis of Soviet-American relations. (See my review of New Lies For Old.) - That Glasnost, Perestroika and the independence of the Communists world's satellite states was a pre-planned stage play hoax.
It's some big deal, because Epstein is one of the big names in investigative reporting. He was the reporter who broke the story/opinion that Oswald probably wasn't the lone gunman, and now, in Deception, he's telling us that the Fall of the Berlin Wall was part of a series of staged events, orchestrated by the Kremlin as part of a great disinformation plot. Don't look at me like that, folks. It’s all in here in these books!
Dutch, by Edmund Morris
The Reagan biography that included completely invented scenes, which caused something of a controversy.
The Enduring Vision, A History of the American People - by seven college history professors - Paul E. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, Thomas L. Purvis, Harvard Sitkoff (the most famous of the bunch), and Nancy Woloch – c) 1990.
The Enduring Liberal Vision. This heavyweight textbook takes clever slick shots at Reagan, damning with faint praise and praising his opponents with faint damnation. 1,159 pages. In spite of repeatedly being politically correct to the point of being offensive, this is truly a great book. A very readable introductory work for the college freshman. Not intended for the general reader but I purchase these books second hand and they are a great pleasure to read without having a test at the end of the chapter.
From Hiroshima to Glasnost, by Paul Nitze – c) 1989 –
What a long career. Nitze is as close as you can get to being a political household name without being one. Nitze served several administrations as a top negotiator, especially when it came to arms. He led the US INF negotiating team and was part of the ice-down at Reykjavik in 86.
This is a fantastic book. PN is a great writer, thinker and player.
Memoirs, by Andrei Gromyko – c) 1989 – The Soviet Ambassador in the early Reagan years writes a mean memoir (literally.) They called him “Mr Nyet,” and for obvious reasons. It fits in with all his work, and with this writing. Andrei is a negative person. I hated this book, but it was great at the same time. How dour and disagreeable can one man get?
New Lies For Old, c)1984, by Anatoly Golitsyn
This is the most important book I have ever read. Anatoly was an intelligence officer in the old USSR who defected from the Soviet Union in the early 1960’s and tried to warn the west for many years about Soviet disinformation campaigns.
This book is the culmination of Golitsyn's efforts to warn the West. Golitsyn predicted Glasnost, and the fall of the Communist satellites in Eastern Europe, years before they happened. He said the west should not go for the bait because it was all a trick to get the west to disarm and give billions of dollars to the eastern bloc. He predicted there would be a young dynamic leader with show biz talent who would dazzle the west into concessions by his charm and youth. He said that the Soviet Union would make a great show of resisting the demands for independence from places like Poland and Georgia. But that these protests and independence movements will be orchestrated from Russia! The resistance to them will be for show, and that Russia would grant independence to all of them.
Many CIA intelligence persons believed in Golitsyn’s warnings. Others did not. Some people were actually dismissed from the CIA because they believed in Golitsyn’s theories at a time the leadership of the organization had decided against him. If Golitsyn is just an eccentric erratic footnote to history and politics, why did 70 CIA agents have to resign because they said he was the real deal and we should listen to him?
Golitsyn stresses that whenever western politicians or journalists analyze events in the USSR they never include the caution of possible disinformation, yet disinformation was a standard part of the Soviet KGB operation. So the west was falling further and further away from accurate intelligence with each naïve passing year, from the time (he places it at 1959) when the Communist bloc first started the intense practice of strategic disinformation. The disinfo campaign took counter-intelligence from the realm of spies gathering microfilm, to the height of fooling the world with a stage show of false events, the greatest hoax, the greatest stage play ever. Fiction so strong it became an historic fact. One out of hundred historians have even heard of Golitsyn, and that one doesn’t buy him. Anatoly Golitsyn might get mentioned as a Cold War story illuminating the sadly mistaken paranoia in the conservative ranks of U.S. intelligence.
Out of the Cold, by Robert McNamara - c)1989 –
A short survey of the Cold War by one of the men who fought it. I never liked this guy. The man is a passionately vague equivocator posing as a hard-nosed decision maker.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – Prentice Hall
College textbook that slickly mocks Reagan while feigning objective writing.
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, c)1992
He doesn't like Ronald Reagan and of course mocks the invasion of Grenada as an act of US aggression against a passive harmless neighbor. This is only natural since the enemy at the time were the Marxist regimes in Grenada and Cuba and Zinn was a Marxist fellow-traveller from way back when. Zinn may not be an actual Marxist but throughout his book he likes to defend them.
Newer editions have come out but this is the one given to me by my niece after she had to read it as a college freshman. Her college never forced her to read any conservative-slant history books, only liberal.
When Zinn was a college student in the 1930's he was forced to read a rigidly conservative set of history books so he tried to correct the imbalance by writing about the other side of things. But two wrongs do not make a right. The conservative orthodoxy of his youth has been sadly supplanted by a leftist orthodoxy for today's student youth. When Zinn visits a college in his old age he is greeted as the infallible God that no historian is. Just because he satisfied their emotional bias, he is declared the last word on every word he writes.
Howard Zinn passed away in January of 2010, ruining my dream of getting to debate him on TV someday and managing to last the full 15 rounds.
This is a very easy book to read, and I mean that in a great way.
Rest in “Peace.”
Perestroika, by Mikhail Gorbachov – c) 1985. First of all its boring. Its angry Marxist word exercises, condemning the west, and praising Russia. But he sprinkles in some great new positive thoughts about US-USSR relations, and included some positive plans for liberalizing Russia. But most of it was the same old hatred propaganda. People bought the book, but they didn't read it. Who could finish it? It's a grad student at Marx Institute of Advance Science trying to win a gold star from the dean. Its the same old all over the road political ravings like what Lenin wrote.
The reviewers, of course, only quoted the 10% that was new and improved and played like it represented what the book stood for.
It was the Soviet way of doing things, I suppose. Many times I have read of Soviet diplomatic technique and it goes something like this, and I've heard so many stories like this that I think this composite is on the mark.
The Secretary of State for has a meeting with the Soviet Foreign Secretary over some incident in, let's say, Togo. The Soviets had made a threat that if the United States didn't withdraw its squadron of helicopters from Togo it could lead to “dangerous consequences.” The meeting to settle the Togo crisis is being held before reporters. There will be statements, questions and answers, and then a private talk between the two secretaries.
The United States makes a controlled statement defending its actions, and promising to eventually withdraw from Togo, but it will not be ordered out by any outside power.
The Soviets guy gets up and makes a 12 minute speech that scares everyone in the room with its non-peaceful tone. They call the United States a fascist militaristic imperialist empire and that the helicopter mission is one more insult to the rest of the peaceful world.
The questions and answers reveal the same tone, but a little toned down. They don't last long.
They go into the private meeting and the two men break into an easy and friendly face,
“You know we'll be out of there by Sunday,” says the American
“We're not worried about that, just make sure that loan goes through. Who do you like in the playoffs? And don't tell me the Giants.”
We always hear about how important it was in WWII for the Japanese to always have to save face. The Russian have plenty of that too. The dialogue is invented but the picture is accurate. The Russians have to show a tough face for their home audience, and their allies, and their potential political opposition. Then they make the concessions in fact that they couldn't possibly seem about to make from their tone. The book is a contradiction, in classic perfect Soviet style.
The point being that this is essentially, what the book Perestroika is. It's the Soviet information minister ranting and raving the same old political chaos and self-righteousness, and if you read the whole thing carefully you can hopefully find the progressive bigger moment, like a needle in a haystack.
The American media was always obsequious towards Gorbachov. He caught every break in the world from the network harpies when our own president couldn't catch one. And that same thought can be extended to Russian elections. We don't trust many of our election results as being honest, yet we never suspect the authenticity of Russian election tallies. That would spoil the positive vibes, man, being cynical like that. But its standard for ourselves.
Presidential Campaigns, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. of Texas Christian University - c) 1984 – Oxford University Press.
Boller is in his 90’s and still teaching at TCU (When are they going go get a decent football team?)
Reagan as President c)1990, - Edited with an introduction by Paul Boyer is a balanced and scholastic review of the Reagan years by a collection of players. Very nice.
Ronald Reagan, The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon is the most thorough biography and the first one the student is usually recommended to read as a Reagan intro. It is the size of a phone book. I have sat down with this book many times, but unfortunately I can never get through very much of it and I eventually threw it down my garbage chute. Cannon is detached, critical and condescendingly unfair towards his subject. He feigns objectivity while carrying out a negative agenda and that is the ultimate offense for me. Be who you are and don’t hide from your biases, whatever they are. Pretending to be fair and slipping in cuts is sleazy. Look at the title. The “role” of a lifetime. That’s all you need to know. He is saying in the title that Reagan is just an actor playing a role as president; as if any decent person would leave the acting profession, become governor of a major state and then run twice for president with the mindset that this is just another acting role. But that was the number one cheap shot that the critics always fired at Reagan. Big deal. That’s all you got? ‘The guy’s just an actor!’ Well I guess that settles all the great issues right then and there. He’s just a phony actor. I heard it for 8 years.
Sleepwalking Through History, by Haynes Johnson – I'll take my stand against this book as the opponent in the ring.
This is one of the most vicious and unfair hate books I have ever read, or should I say tried to. The cover shows a photo of a tattered American flag in grim black and white. Get it? The alleged patriot Reagan actually helped to damage America.
Haynes interviewed a lot of people close to Reagan. Maureen Reagan, brother Neil Reagan, and Michael Deaver, to name three, probably had no idea that their comments were going to be sifted only for the isolated excerpt where they seemed critical of the man they admired. Johnson commits a thousand lies of omission. He gathers a hundred interviews and a few thousand facts and then only presents those facts which support his attack plan. The guy must have sharpened his knives for three hours before every writing session. You would think that Ronald Reagan was not only a bad president, but one of the worst human beings that ever lived.
I'm only done with 90 pages, but I'll tell you what his biggest touche is so far, and it is one he repeats; That Reagan was a phony because he claimed to be a conservative but he was divorced.
“It took the support of the self proclaimed Moral-Majority of
born again Christians to give the United States its first divorced
president.”
Not even the lunatic religious right ever said in the modern era hat divorced people were bad people condemned to hell. The Christian Church of all faiths allows for divorce. If people don't love each other and can't get along, it is more decent to divorce than to stay together. Haynes is putting Reagan on trial by 15th century standards. Just because he was the first one divorced means that he is a despicable hypocrite, according to Johnson.
I guess Reagan is not as exemplary when comes to honoring the sacred institution of marriage as Democrats such as John Kennedy, Bill Clinton and John Edwards.
Not one person ever accused Reagan of cheating on his first wife, nor his second, .... Haynes.
Every paragraph of this book is dripping with excessive uncalled-for cheap-shot low-blow infantile visceral hatred, disguised as professional reporting. Its got nothing to do with Reagan's policies. Its just a leftist intellectual who is furious because his opponent won the presidency twice, so now its not time for revenge at the typewriter. Its always slick and sly. Quoting Maureen and Neil as if they didn't like their loved one is the lowest form of journalism. Isolate the excerpt and anyone's mother can be made into an enemy.
“Every president of substance before him had been a builder
and at best, a creator. ...
Ronald Reagan was weightless in a sense that set him apart
from those presidents who came to power with a strong
impulse to govern. .... this old grade B actor, this spouter
of slogans ... Like many a formidable egoist, he was the son of
an unsuccessful father .... he claimed to speak for family
stability, self-reliance, continuity, church, country. Yet he
didn't stay at home or remain married to his first wife, and
he failed to forge harmonious relationships with his children
producing bitterness and estrangement among his family.”
It never stops.
“Reagan's was not a generous-spirited presidency; it
was characterized by its small mindedness and even
at times by its meanness.”
You should know, Haynes. You're a clever wizard at these things.
Do any of you know a lifeguard? Has any reader ever been a lifeguard at a beach or a swimming pool? Is this a job to be bashed for taking on, or is it a noble job? Not if Reagan did it a a young man.
“Reagan's desire to be an admired central figure was
manifested when he became a lifeguard during summers
in Illinois.”
Reagan was in the Army when the World War II broke out. he tried to get into action but his bad eyesight made him ineligible. Haynes Johnson accuses him of cowardice and deceit in avoiding military service. He repeats the lie that Reagan claimed to have filmed first-hand the liberation of the concentration camps. He never made the claim. Johnson is angrily all over the idea that the public got the impression that Reagan had served in combat when he did not. Now let's go to the back of the book in the “about the author” section.
“After three years in the US Army during the Korean War,
in 1956 he began his newspaper career on the Wilmington
News Journal.”
Was Haynes Johnson a decorated war hero involved in dangerous combat? Maybe, maybe not. I'm betting by this account he was not. But this account seems to imply that he was. My father was in the service during the Korean War too. He never claimed to be a hero for patrolling the world on the USS Missouri. In my father's bio he merely mentions that he was in the Navy from 1951-1953, not “In the service during the Korean War” with all that slyly implies.
So look who's talking .... Haynes.
How objective is Haynes Johnson? He later wrote a book about the Clinton Administration. The title? “The Best of Times, American in the Clinton Years.” It's a hatchet-job blaming all of Clinton's troubles on the vast right-wing conspiracy against wonderful Bill.
The funniest moment in Sleepwalking Through History is when Johnson cites a Gary Wills book in a footnote. “Gary Wills superb book Reagan's America.” Ha! Of course it's “superb.” I've read it. Its a carbon copy of your own pathetic unfair bashing style. If Wills had a point of view that looked at both sides in an attempt to at least present both sides fairly, even if in the end it sided against Reagan, Johnson would never have called it superb. If a leftist wino screamed from a gutter, “Reagan is a scumbag!” Johnson would call it “superb urban poetry.” The superb is in the bitter hatred that he agrees with, not the quality of the effort.
Tear This Myth Down, The Reagan Legacy and its Distortion, by Pat O’Neil -
I love the title and I love the book, even though I viscerally disagree with 90% of it. This was an itch that needed to be scratched, even for a RR lover like me. The right wing talk show hosts that were in diapers when was President always get him wrong. Who he was and what he stood for has been canned and stereotyped. And he did not win the Cold War. He contributed. The Cold War ended more because the Russians were tired of watching everyone else make money. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Empire voluntarily imploded. They lost on purpose! They did not cave in to Reagan-American superiority.
Turmoil and Triumph, by George Schultz, c)1993,
This is one of the best books I have ever read. Stock up on the coffee though. T&T is massive, and as stodgy as Schultz himself. Its top quality but its slow quality. Reagan’s biography does not have enough detail on foreign policy and we need the Schultz tome to flesh out the Reagan big picture summaries. It's a thousand and 49 pages, none of it lively, all of it worthwhile.
It is noteworthy that with all the shots that all the lefties took at everyone in the Reagan administration, there was next to no criticism of his second Secretary of State George Schultz. Although he did not have much of a background in international relations, and was a spoils appointment, Schultz handled his job better than well. Much of the success of the Reagan years in foreign policy was due to the hard work, intellect, reason, toughness (he was a Marine) and decent conservative values of Mr. Schultz. If there ever was a bigger dullard in the high spotlight, I don’t know who it is, but writing is the great equalizer against the outgoing backslapping physicality types. Through the medium of the typewriter, the great equalizer, the power of Schultz comes through in ways that he cannot demonstrate effectively to the public with his sleepy insurance salesman style of speaking. This book is a must read and should be required assignment in all of our high schools. There is no better record of US foreign affairs from 1982 to 1989. Good man.
Howard Zinn passed away in January of 2010 at the age of 84, ruining my dream of getting to debate him on TV someday and managing to hold my own. Rest in “Peace.” HZ served courageously in the USAAF in WWII.
The Unfinished Presidency, by Doug Brinkley
This book about the journeys of Jimmy Carter after he left office is full of pot shots at Mr. Reagan. It seems like Brinkley is editing the Carter story to express his own views.
I'm extremely impressed with his writing skills. If I finish this I'll try something else by him. DB is on TV a lot.
VIDEO
The Day Reagan Was Shot – 2002 - This Showtime movie starring Richard Dreyfus as Al Haig is an excellent and lively docu-drama. I learned a lot from watching it. It makes Haig look bad. Good for Showtime. Plus I was on Showtime for my first national TV stand-up spot in 1989. Any network that bashes Haig then puts me on one of its shows is a good network.
NBC ABC CBS CNN C-SPAN
This is the first President where I got to tape the news. I bought my first VCR in 1983 and I taped the national news two out every three nights. I set up a second VCR to dub off edited highlight reels of the national TV news. I essentially watched the network national news in power study time, watching the highlight reels over and over. If I tell you of a trend in how the national media treated an event, you can trust me that I did some homework. “Speak, so I may see thee.” Hearing the actual voices and seeing the moving faces of political figures is valuable. If only I had the same VCR collections of these voices and faces going back in time to all of American History. If we could listen to Jefferson when he was Secretary of State answer tough questions on his policy towards France we'd know more than a thousand David McCullochs could tell us in books, and I love books.
POSTSCRIPT
This excerpt is from Molehunt, about Golitsyn.
“Perhaps Golitsin's most farfetched view was that the Sino-Soviet split that emerged in the late 1950s was nothing more than a KGB deception. When Angleton proposed to convene a meeting of academics to hear Golitsin's theory, it was immediately dubbed "the Flat Earth Conference." [21] In Golitsin's opinion, the Soviet-Yugoslav split was another massive KGB plot, as was Alexander Dubcek's "Prague Spring," the abortive revolt that ended only when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968. Angleton believed most of these hare-brained theories.”
Golitsyn said no such thing, wise guy. He said the split with Yugoslavia was real and was the basis on which the Sino-Soviet fake split was pulled off.
COMING ATTRACTIONS,
RELEASE OF TEHERAN HOSTAGES
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS STRIKE
SECRETARY OF STATE HAIG RESIGNATION
SPACE SHUTTLE DISASTER
ACHILLE LORRO
ROYAL WEDDING
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