Stanley Scism

Comments by liberal Sean Wilentz and conservative George Will in ‘Left Starts to Rethink Reagan’, Newsweek 2008/5/12, p28-30:

Wile: ‘intellectuals, generally being liberals, didn’t think much of Ronald Reagan at the time…now they can no longer ignore him. His impact on the world and country, whether you like it or not, was so important that to ignore him is to ignore an entirety of American politics….overcome their own passions, their own dislikes. Some people had to grow up. Some people, it was a matter of all their ideas ripening.’

Will: ‘intellectual is not a synonym for liberal….emerged, particularly in the 1970s, a conservative intellectual movement….

Murray Kempton did for Dwight Eisenhower….take a step back and say, “Wait a minute, this man, who did after all run the most complicated war alliance in history, who had dealt with De Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt and all the rest, was not a child. He was a subtle, devious, guileful man” ….Reagan’s famous jokes were, I believe, to keep people at a distance…an armor of affability….

Reagan didn’t fit the mold…what mold, and who made it?

Wile: Reagan led ‘with the same spirit and optimism and forward-looking hope that liberals had projected, but in the name of policies that were frankly conservative.’

Will: ‘you cannot govern this country if you’re a pessimist….

Reagan simply understood when people said…Eisenhower’s smile was his philosophy….said that when the American people are happy, good things happen: they invest, they save, they have children. So he thought that getting America back to cheerfulness was an intensely practical program.

Wile: ‘two things that, if you stood looking to the future in 1980, would have been amazing. One is, we don’t have top marginal income tax at 70 percent. We are never, in our lifetimes, going to see that again. Secondly, the Soviet Union does not exist.’

Will: ‘a really effective leader undercuts his or her reputation by their various successes of leadership….Margaret Thatcher came into power when there was a question: Westminister…or…Transport House, the headquarters of the labor movement in Britain. She broke the power of the unions….so successful that people wonder now, what was the big deal? What did she do?

Wile: ‘Reagan was much more serious than people have given him credit for. He understood that governing required compromise….happy to go out and make a speech that made hm sound like he was the greatest doctrinaire….he’d go to the back room and get done what he could get done.’

Will: ‘You should have ideas, and they should be clear, but most of all they should be few—three at the most. Rearm the country, cut the weight of government and win the cold war. After that we’ll see.’

Wile: ‘Ronald Reagan made some very grave errors whle in office….the Iran-contra affair the S&L crisis….Deregulation… some things went right but a lot went wrong.’

Will: ‘One of the worst things that ever happened to American education but one of the best things that happened to American conservatism was busing of schoolchildren for racial balance. This just crystallized the sense of a lot of working-class Americans policies were imposed on them by people who had no intention of ever being exposed to them themselves. All these people sending their children to private schools were telling others which public school their kid should go to.’

Wile: ‘ways in which the liberal Democrats interpreted the resistance to their policies, which was always to blame the people who were resisting for being narrow-minded or racist, not up to their own enlightened idea of the way Americans ought to be….a contempt…an elitism that was not a part of the Democratic Party of Harry Truman…came into play in the aftermath of the black-power movement and Vietnam….you don’t go about winning people’s votes by saying, “You’re a small-minded racist”’

Will: ‘’68 was one kind of fracturing of the Democratic Party, but in a way, less important than the fracturing of ’72, be-cause that set ythe precedent for the Obama-Clinton divide between the well-educated and affluent liberals and the others….conscious, tough, skillful disenfranchising of organized labor and of the big city machines, by George McGovern. McGovern was thought of as a soft prairie farmer. He was one tough cookie, a man who took a nonexistent Democratic Party in South Dakota and produced a senator—that was himself—not many years later. What happened in ’72—the formalized, aggressive takeover of the Democratic Party by one faction at the expense of another—is what we’re seeing playing out right now….in ’76 Reagan makes a strong run and in ’80 he makes it into the White House over the remains of the badly divided Democratic Party.’

In The History of the American Presidency, John Bowman provides general and brief sketches of each president’s personality and accomplishments (or lack thereof) while in office.  Several examples are instructive.  Here’s one (we’ll plan to include others later):
GEORGE  WASHINGTON (1732-1799, president 1789-1797)

Son of prosperous farmer, trader, and iron foundry operator, he spent his youth in usual country gentry activity—riding, hunting, fishing, boating.  His formal schooling ended at age 15; he was obviously literate and intelligent, and kept careful diaries and expense accounts, but was not the student of history and ideas that Jefferson and Madison were.  His half-brother Lawrence’s tales of military service excited young George, and he wanted to go to sea, but his mother wouldn’t let him, so he settled for surveying—that at least allowed him to spend a lot of time in the woods.  From age 15 to 21 he spent much of his time this way.

In 1753, he became a major in his state’s militia serving alongside British regular forces in their war against the French and American Indian allies.  He was inexperienced, lost many men, and also lost Fort Necessity to the French.  When the war ended, he returned to being country gentleman.  He married a wealthy widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, who had two young children, became active in church and social affairs, managed his extensive properties, and joined the provincial legislature in 1758, where he introduced no major legislation and made few speeches.  He legally inherited his mother’s estate in 1761 and life went on.  But the war with France ended in new taxes by Britain, and resulting rising resentment by Americans.  Washington wrote privately of his dislike for the “despotism” of the British, and attended the First Continental Congress in September, 1774, where he impressed other delegates with his military knowledge and sound judgment, but he made no speeches and was not appointed to any committees.  He was now 42.

 The next year, the Second Continental Congress appointed him Commander in Chief of the Colonial Army, partly to further involve the Southern colonies in the war against Britain.  (So far, most of the rebellion against Britain had been in the northern colonies.)  During the war, a third of the colonists supported Britain, one third supported the Revolution, and the remaining third simply wanted to stay out of the conflict.  Washington led seldom more than 10,000 men, and these spread very thin against the world’s greatest army.  Many soldiers deserted or quit as soon as their terms of enlistment expired—many had farms, and therefore harvests to get in.  Washington as commander in chief he faced the strongest British forces and lost many battles, but won enough that counted, and, finally, with significant aid of French, German and Polish aristocrats, won in 1781 as the new nation’s top hero.  When he resigned his commission in 1783 and, while putting down a demonstration by troops who had not yet been paid, he donned his spectacles to read his address to the soldiers, he said, “I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”  He retired to his Mr. Vernon estates and public works projects.

The form of government America had at the time—a confederation—did not work well, so leaders called a Constitutional Convention in 1787 to amend the government.  He attended as head of his state delegation, and fellow delegates elected him convention president.  As such, he required delegates to remain in Philadelphia to finish the job.  The new constitution established a presidency and Washington was the almost unanimous choice.

As first president, he knew his every action set precedent:  “I walk untrodden ground.”  His first four years he spent mainly in organizing new government—establishing oaths of office, taxes on imports, federal courts, government finance, national mint, and planning a new capital.  He remained above the details and turmoil, and let department heads act independently.  He avoided interfering in legislative and judicial branches.  Meanwhile, political parties began to form around secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton, who wanted a strong central government, and secretary of state Thomas Jefferson, who wanted more states’ rights.

Washington wanted to retire after his first term, but Jefferson and speaker of the House James Madison persuaded him to return, and he won a second term unanimously.  This time, his attempts to stay neutral applied to the war between Britain and France.  The treaty John Jay negotiated with Britain dealt with trade and with British forts on the frontier, but failed to address British ships stopping American ships at sea and abducting American seamen into the British navy.  Washington’s signing the treaty anyway brought him hostile criticism.  When in 1794 he raised money with an excise tax that hit hard farmers across the mountains in western Pennsylvania, who for transport reasons habitually distilled their corn into whisky and sold it that way, they rebelled and talked of setting up another nation, and Washington had to send 15,000 troops.  As his second term ended, Washington clarified he was tired of the presidency.  He resurrected his farewell speech of four years previous and published it in a Philadelphia paper.  He retired, again, to manage his properties.  In 1798, he was commissioned Lieutenant General and Commander in Chief of the American forces “raised or to be raised” in case war with France erupted, but the threat fizzled out and he went home.  His last letter, to Alexander Hamilton, mentioned the need for a national military academy.  Soon after, he rode horseback on a cold, snowy day, became ill, and died 14 December 1799.

People in many nations mourned his passing.  Napoleon called for ten days of national mourning.  To this day, his nation honors him.  Although his aloof manner, distaste for democratic elements of political life, and commitment to preserving the prerogatives of wealth would make him difficult to elect now, he still has international esteem.

LESSON:  From him we learn discipline, self-control, dedication, decorum, impartiality, conscientiousness, self-sacrifice.  In a word, character.