Krugman and Herbert vs. Brooks

Today, I sent the following letter to the New York Times:

You seem to have a war raging between three of your columnists (Brooks, Herbert and Krugman) over the significance of Ronald Reagan's kicking off his 1980 campaign for president at the Neshoba County Fair, near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, and the fact that he uttered the term "states' rights" during his speech.

To me this is somewhat a "tempest in a teapot". Since the early 1950's. Reagan was a reactionary, an apologist for big business and an enthusiast for small government. (I am old enough to have lived through all this.) Didn't he meet his second wife Nancy when he vetted her to see if she was THE Nancy Davis on some Hollywood blacklist? (She wasn't.)

To me, his appearance at the Neshoba County Fair was of a piece with all his other actions. His administration's domestic policies did a lot of damage to this country. His administration also nurtured a generation of young reactionaries who have since risen to high places such as the US Supreme Court. So let's not lose our perspective on all this. Like him or not, Reagan was for sure "Reagan." And anyhow, the last time I looked, Mississippi was still part of the United States. *******
(end of letter)

The Wall Street Journal has their take on this, which, while skewed as usual, is quite informative. The latest salvo was today's column by Bob Herbert.

I would like to expand a bit on what I said in my letter. Reagan was able to reach out to moderates, as he did while Governor of California (while also gutting the state's mental health system), when selecting George H. W. Bush to be his running mate (the latter had accurately characterized supply side economics as "voodoo economics"), and in selecting Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the US Supreme Court.

He did eventually sign on to the extension of the Voting Rights Act and the Martin Luther King, Jr., birthday holiday. He was also quite capable of raising taxes, and he ran up huge deficits, which, Dick Cheney to the contrary notwithstanding, did matter. He may have been a great president, in that he knew what he stood for and how to communicate it, but, domestically at least, he was not a great president, but rather a great reactionary.