PRO AND CON: Would Reagan be all wrong or alright for today's Right? (with POLL)

FRASER SHERMAN OFFERS HIS TAKE.

Republicans often talk about how much they long for a new Ronald Reagan — but I have a feeling that if Reagan was running today, he couldn’t win a vote for dog-catcher.

Oh, I can understand why pundits such as Ron Hart long wistfully for the Reagan presidency (as Hart has observed more than once). Reagan was tremendously popular for most of his term (much less so near the end) and that carried over to conservatism in general, pulling the country to the right of where it had been a few years earlier (whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s certainly a true thing).

After eight years of Bush showing how bad conservative leadership can be, it’s natural that Republicans long for a leader who could win people back to their side. But even if Reagan were available for another run, he wouldn’t have a chance to win their support.

In the first place, Bush actually preserved more of the Reagan legacy than Reagan-worshippers want to admit. Massive military spending, including billions of dollars wasted? We got that in both administrations. Tax cuts for the rich that would supposedly benefit everyone (but didn’t)? We got that too. A huge federal deficit (though Reagan’s was only a fraction of the red ink Bush built up)? Yes on both accounts.

Other parts of Reagan’s policies and accomplishments would utterly horrify the right-wingers who say they revere him. As Salon pundit Glenn Greenwald pointed out recently, Reagan’s policy was to “delegitimize” terrorists by treating them as common criminals, to be tried in courts, rather than as the soldiers they imagined themselves to be.

I can’t see many Republicans embracing that part of Reagan’s legacy. Even though the Bush “enemy combatant” approach (which Obama is continuing) has led to numerous innocent people being locked up in Gitmo — as court hearings have repeatedly shown — when I bring this up in columns, commenters inform me that rather than set prisoners free, we should have shot them all as soon as we caught them (because nothing serves the cause of justice and freedom more than murdering innocent people).

Reagan also signed a treaty that banned the use of torture. And even though our government’s use of torture has accomplished absolutely nothing except to blacken America’s name, the right wing remains convinced that the Bill of Rights includes the right to torture (at least as long as it’s someone they dislike). I can’t see a candidate with Reagan’s track record on that issue winning right-wing support.

And the one thing, above all, that guarantees the Republicans of today would hate Reagan?

He negotiated with our enemies and made peace with them.

True, he did support massive levels of military spending, and spent much of his time in office talking pretty tough; even so, he was able to reach out to the USSR, convince them he was serious about peace and strike a deal. Ending the Cold War was the landmark accomplishment of his presidency.

Even at the time, conservatives hated him for it. He was an appeaser. He was crazy to think the Soviets would ever make peace without a military defeat first. It was all a trick to lull us off guard.  If anyone tried negotiating peace today with say, Iran, we’d hear the same outrage, but a hundred times worse.

Just look at Obama. Even though he’s overseeing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, Hart (to name just one pundit) suggested in a recent column that he’s too worried about offending people to protect America. If fighting in three wars is Hart’s idea of being inoffensive, I shudder to think what he’d consider aggressive behavior.

Or consider Sarah Palin, who recently told an interviewer that Obama could get more respect if he “decided to toughen up” and “secured our nation ... say he decided to declare war on Iran.” Just imagine what she’d say if Obama took a Reaganite approach and negotiated with Iran (even though they’re nowhere near the threat to us the USSR once was).

Admittedly, this is partly because Obama’s a Democrat, and nothing he ever does will be militant enough for Republicans (the fact that he doesn’t want to wipe Islam from the face of the Earth probably doesn’t help). But I can’t imagine a Republican peacemaker winning them over either. The right doesn’t really want Ronald Reagan, they want their fantasy of Reagan.

The real Reagan’s policies on war, terrorism and torture would be too liberal for them to stomach.

Fraser Sherman is a former reporter for the Destin Log.

JAY STONE OFFERS THIS REBUTTAL: Frasier’s Folly: Reagan would be elected today in a landslide

Frasier Sherman’s column from last week, which claimed that President Reagan could not be elected today, is so far off base and riddled with inaccuracies, it is hard to know where to start to refute him.

First of all, let it be known that I worked directly for President Reagan as special assistant for legislative affairs.  So, I had a ringside seat at his administration and its policies.  

Let’s examine the deficit: Reagan inherited a disastrous economic situation from President Carter and a Democratic Congress.  Inflation was in the double digits, interest rates were around 17 percent and the unemployment rate was near what it is today. Taxes had been increased on income, new regulations had been imposed on the private sector and a general “malaise” (as Carter put it) enveloped the country.

The Democratic House passed one deficit budget after another, and Reagan kept vetoing them until he could persuade the Senate to modify it.  Remember that even though the Senate Republicans had a majority for the first four years of Reagan’s term, the Democrats filibustered virtually every reform and deficit reduction bill passed by Senate Republicans and they had to modify them to obtain passage.

Once Reagan passed the across the board tax cuts that he campaigned on, an economic boom started that was the longest peacetime expansion of the economy ever seen before or since. Despite cutting rates, the growth of the economy provided huge revenues to the government. I think America would like to see that again, instead of gargantuan spending bills and bailouts that Obama and the Democratic Congress have inflicted upon us.

Sherman says that “Republicans would hate Reagan” because he negotiated with our enemies.

Remember that he backed up his negotiations with strong military spending and not giving in to the Soviets on Pershing missiles in Europe and Soviet expansion into developing countries like Nicaragua. It is laughable to say that conservatives “hated” him for that. We had to fight off the Democrat appeasers like Jim Wright and Congressman Boland who wanted to criminalize assisting the freedom fighters of the world.

Can you imagine Reagan doing what Obama has done … going around the world apologizing for America and bowing to foreign leaders?

I don’t know what Sherman is smoking, but his premise on Reagan is all wrong. I would like to see a poll asking who people would prefer as president: Reagan or Obama. Reagan would win in a landslide.

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You can vote in that poll at the right hand side of the page.

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Jay Stone is a Miramar Beach resident.