Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record.
Take that, David Brooks.
That is from Bob Herbert, in his op ed, in today's New York Times, entitled Righting Reagan's Wrongs?
It is powerful. It gives you all the ammunition you will ever need to take apart those who try to tell you that Reagan's actions - as a candidate and as President - can be construed in any fashion other than as appealing to racism.
Read it. If you want, read a bit more here, below the fold.
Herbert begin by laying out the context. He decribes Andrew Goodman saying goodbye to his family in New York and traveling to Mississippi by way of Ohio, to do the dangerous work of voter registration, so dangerous that he - and Michael Schwerner and James Chaney - disappeared on June 21, one day after he had arrived in state. They were murdered, their bodies discovered in the earthen dam only in August.
Herbert points out that these notorious murders were the primary claim to fame of Neshoba County when Reagan kicked off his general election campaign at the County Fair in 1980, in front of a huge, cheering, and WHITE crowd chanting his name. And he writes:
Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, "I believe in states’ rights."
Herbert directly takes on those Reagan apologist - pace David Brooks - who attempt to interpret this campaign kickoff in a benign fashion:
That won’t wash. Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.
Herberts reminds us that everyone knew - the campaigns, the media, and ye, Reagan himself.
He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about "states’ rights" to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.
And if anyone has any doubt of where Reagan's heart was, Herbert makes clear his heart does not matter, what matters is his record of actions, which includes
opposing to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964
trying to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965
opposing a national holiday for King
trying to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination
vetoing a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation
vetoing the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa
Fortunately the Congress overrode both of those vetoes.
Herbert then offers the summary which I quoted at the beginning of this diary. He then continues as follows:
To see Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in its proper context, it has to be placed between the murders of the civil rights workers that preceded it and the acknowledgment by the Republican strategist Lee Atwater that the use of code words like "states’ rights" in place of blatantly bigoted rhetoric was crucial to the success of the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy. That acknowledgment came in the very first year of the Reagan presidency.
Finally, after reminding us that Reagan owed his political success to his mastery of political symbolism, Bob Herbert concludes this powerful piece:
The suggestion that the Gipper didn’t know exactly what message he was telegraphing in Neshoba County in 1980 is woefully wrong-headed. Wishful thinking would be the kindest way to characterize it.
I agree. Nowadays we have those people arguing that Reagan had a strongly held philosophy, that it comes out in his letters. Reagan apologists are trying to make a case that the man was not casual about being president, that he was acting upon his long thought out ideas about government and society. If that is the case, then Herbert is right about his racism. One cannot say the man acted as president fully knowing what he was doing but had no idea of the impact of his actions, both as candidate and as president, when it came to matters of race.
Those who choose a public life have no right, on their part or on the part of the acolytes and devotees, to "clean up" the record, although I have no doubt such is the intent of the current administration, which has already demonstrated that intent in attempting to eradicate and suppress the evidence which would clearly show the President did not fulfill his military commitments. History should judge any public figure on the entire record, not merely the achievements, but also the warts.
I have no ideas about the policies of the NY Times with respect to its editorial columnists. It is interesting that two of its more prominent writers have now taken to task the idiocy put forth by Brooks. It is of course of a piece with the sloppiness of far too much of his writing - and thinking.
There are no apologies that can cover up when one appeals on the basis of hatred and discrimination, whether that be racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Islam . . . hatred and discrimination are what they are.
I chose to write about this for two reasons. First and foremost everyone should read, and pass on widely, Bob Herbert's magnificent column. I think he should be nominated for the Pultizer for this particular offering.
It also connects with my recent thinking and writing, including my diary of yesterday where I conclude No more scapegoats. I had not seen anyone else write about this column, I felt moved by it, so I wrote this.
Peace.