More Vacation; Gulliver goes to Mt. Rushmore
I have another two weeks vacation. I know there are some projects to do around the house, but I'm trying to keep all that to a minimum this year. Our 13-year old says he wants to go with me on the scariest rides at Wonderland, to see the scared look on my face.
I want to spend at least one day at U. of T. I have business to do to prepare for the course I'll be teaching, and I'll pay another visit to the Robarts library, that splendid temple of higher learning. When I renewed my alumni card and went in to the stacks a few weeks ago, it was my first time "deep inside" for many years. In the 80s I had exclusive use of one of the carrels for years. It's just a great place to study, and everything I looked for, I found. One minor example: because of Ann Coulter's new outrageous book, I wanted to look at the old Willam F. Buckley book (with L. Brent Bozell) praising Joe McCarthy. I did some reading on "McCarthyism" in my teaching days, and I thought it would be worthwhile to go through Buckley's and Bozell's arguments and see whether they really make a case that Truman (of all people) had failed to protect the U.S. against genuine security threats, in such a way that it was essential for McCarthy (of all people) to resort to irregular, sometimes reckless or dangerous measures, in order to save the country. The book was in Robarts. It was bad enough that it was published in the 50s; then it was re-issued in the 70s. Anyway, I don't think I'll take the time to go through it.
My brother is now related by marriage to the guy (Bob Blackburn) who was Chief Librarian at U. of T., and presided over the building of Robarts as the crowning achievement of his career. Bob received an honourary doctorate from U of T in 2002, and I was graciously invited to attend both the ceremony and the lunch before hand. There were several references to the fact that the building of the library was controversial at the time: it's a huge grey structure, that didn't fit into the surrounding "old Toronto" streetscape, and was commonly described as "Fort Book," or simply as phenomenally ugly. (Apparently there were concerns about cost as the building approached completion, so some final "beautifying" features were scrapped). The plan was for this research library to be closed to undergraduates--they could get the books they needed at the undergraduate library. Of course that was elitist and unacceptable, and undergraduates were allowed in. It's still generally a quiet place to work. What a wonderful asset it is.
And since I've brought up Ann Coulter: in one of her more ridiculous recent columns she argues that the five people who deserve credit for preserving freedom in the 20th century are: Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon,Whittaker Chambers, Ronald Reagan.
The only part of this that can be taken seriously is what I would call the "Mount Rushmore" question: if there were any more room on the famous mountain (which I gather there is not), who deserves to be up there?
The present list, for those who don't know, is: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt. Obviously one would add Roosevelt Minor, as Mencken sometimes called him. (of course in this case, the "Minor" was major). I think without much controversy one would add Truman: ended World War II, re-built both Germany and Japan, fought communism with a variety of weapons in several countries, and established the Truman Doctrine which every president followed for the duration of the Cold War.
I think that there should only be one more up there to this date, and it should probably be Reagan. But maybe more time is needed to be sure. His supporters want to say, first and most important, he ended the Cold War. His critics say Gorbachev deserves more credit for that.
Reagan escalated the design, manufacture and deployment of every possible high-tech defence system, including the more or less pie-in-the-sky "Star Wars." In every case (intermediate range missiles in Europe, cruise missile testing in Canada, new bombers), the intellectuals called him names and said he would get us all killed. It seems clear that for Gorbachev and other rational Soviet leaders, there was a technology race underway that the poor old Commies simply could not win. Reagan deserves credit for bringing that point home to them, while successfully maintaining the Truman Doctrine all over the world.
Reagan also showed enormous flexibility in all his summit meetings with Gorbachev, more or less at the same time he was escalating. (Some say the escalation came mostly in his first term, the peacemaking mostly in his second, as if he simply jerked from one strategy to another).
On the domestic front, of course his defenders will say he established the force of tax-cutting as the main unifying agenda item for Republicans, and something to which Democrats have to respond. He also gave social conservatives a home in one of the two mainstream parties, without dooming that party to loser status. Here we come to the mystery of Reagan. As Governor of California, he was not particularly right-wing. He negotiated budgets with Democrats, and was not much of a tax-cutter. The Proposition 13 tax-cutting movement in California was led by obscure, previously low-profile politicians, and by private citizens. Reagan was among the "pro's" who more or less watched, stupified, while property taxes were frozen. Of course he learned from the experience, which not everyone would do.
[Update August 26: this mis-states things slightly. Reagan was first elected Governor in 1967, and he inherited a huge deficit. In his first months in office, he joined with leading Democrats to push through the biggest tax increase in California history. In 1973, however, he put Proposition 1 on the ballot to limit taxes and spending. The measure was defeated. Partly thanks to Reagan's tax increases, California ran up huge surpluses in the years leading up to Proposition 13 in 1978. Propositions similar to 13 had been tried before, but 13 succeeded partly because it seemed that the state had more money than it knew what to do with.]
On social issues, it's been repeated a million times that Reagan as Governor signed a pro-choice bill into law. He and Nancy were never church-goers. If anything they believed in a California suburbs-style combination of New Age, Druid, vaguely Eastern and Christian mysticism. Ronnie himself seems to have believed firmly that the end of the world was coming soon, and it was important to him that this was predicted not only in the book of Revelations, but in many other sources as well.
Update August 4: "Druid" is probably going too far. Don Regan's book about life with the Reagans emphasized Nancy's reliance on astrology, but apparently the Governor and then President consulted the stars for many years as well. See articles on Reagan's Christian faith: here and
here.
Some people seem to think any apocalyptic belief is Manichean and pessimistic: if we're all going down soon, it's best to go down with guns blazing against evil. For some critics, this helps to explain why Reagan and the Bushes have been war-mongers. Lance Morrow has captured the fact that Reagan's belief that the Apocalypse was probably approaching did not prevent him from trying to stop nuclear war; it's not clear whether Reagan saw himself as altering God's prophecies, or what. For an overview of pessimistic vs. optimistic visions of the apocalypse in the U.S., with an indication of Reagan's sources, see here.
Reagan's decisions contributed directly to the savings and loan scandal--I believe the most costly scandal to U.S. taxpayers in history. Weren't the Republicans supposed to be fiscal conservatives? Yes, but unfortunately they don't care enough about public policy to pay attention.
Finally, there is Iran-Contra, about which I've forgotten more than I remember. When it comes to War Powers, I side with presidents of all stripes against Congress. Maybe that's the main issue, and maybe Reagan and his people were correct.
Update: an overview of Reagan from the Washington Monthly.
Update: Eleanor Clift likes to say that there are very few presidents that Republicans actually dare to praise at their conventions. Reagan is one; Truman--a Democrat, and in some ways a liberal Democrat--is another. There will probably be a sentence at these conventions about Gerald Ford "healing the wounds" by pardoning practically everybody: Vietnam draft dodgers and deserters (who received a final pardon from Carter), Nixon, and "Tokyo Rose" (a U.S. citizen imprisoned for 30 years for reading scripts written by others--mainly by an American officer who was a prisoner of war). Update August 5: Oops. She served just over 6 years of a 10 year sentence. (After she was released, her husband was not allowed to join her in the U.S., and she feared that if she left, she would not be allowed back). This web site suggests the woman in question had opportunities to avoid helping the Japanese, so she was in fact guilty of treason. Another site emphasizes that she was taking directions from an Australian officer and an American one; the former was cleared of treason, the latter was promoted. The POWs were convinced that were undermining, not supporting, official Japanese messages, and this second site suggests Iva Toguri (the woman in question) should have received a medal.
Nixon? Not to be mentioned under any circumstances. Eisenhower? Either a joke, or forgotten. (I have great respect for him myself, but I'm in the minority). Hoover? No. Calvin Coolidge? Mainly of historical interest, and there may be some question as to whether he was asleep at the switch while the crash of '29 approached. Lincoln? OK, now we're getting somewhere.
Update August 26: the Presidents that Reagan himself tended to praise were Truman and FDR.
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