Philly.com blogger Will Bunch announced today that he's at work on a book about "The Myth of Ronald Reagan." I greatly look forward to it, since it's about time somebody wrote that book, especially with the right doing everything it can to pretend Reagan held all sorts of positions that he never held. From the announcement:
It was Reagan who not only single-handedly won the Cold War and toppled the Berlin Wall but also caused the greatest economic turnaround in American history, and that's not all. It was Reagan who looked Iran in the eye and caused them to give up our hostages in a matter of minutes, who taught us that "deficits don't matter" and was steadfast about never increasing taxes, who never compromised, who reduced federal spending and ended big government -- as so many political candidates have told us. He was the most popular president in modern American history -- and if only he were still in the White House today, he would have dealt sternly with illegal immigrants and appointed hard-line conservatives to the Supreme Court -- but we know he would never negotiate with terrorists, "cut and run" from a difficult military situation, or talk to our enemies.See Bunch's post for links to sources stating that no, in fact, Reagan actually did very few of those things. And that's as good an explanation of anything as to the failure of the Bush presidency- he governed in a style much closer to that of the Pretend Reagan than that of the Real Reagan. Posted by Stephen Silver at July 2, 2008 03:57 PM