I'm here at the Wall Street Journal "D" Conference, where I finally got the
Internet connection in my room working after an hour of fiddling (problem
turned out to be -- no joke -- a loose cable, but not a loose ethernet
cable; rather, a loose connection from the mini-hub to the wall-jack--
sheesh!). So I'll have to post notes on Bill Gates' talk tomorrow.
But first, a note on the passing of Ronald Reagan. This conference began
with a moment of silence in memory of the 40th president. (It is,
after all, a Wall Street Journal event.) I'm sorry for his relatives and
friends that he's dead; I had a relative who suffered from Alzheimer's,and
I know how painful that is.
But can we stop with the canonization, please? Maybe too many Americans
are now too young to remember, or maybe Reagan looks good by comparison
with the current occupant of the White House, or maybe the passage of time
just makes us all forgetful.
But Reagan -- however "nice" a man he was -- was no saint, and in fact
in most ways he was a terrible president. I know, de mortui nil nisi
bonum and all that, but there is a great whitewashing going on in the
media, and I can't stand it.
I was a senior in college when Reagan was elected -- in a very close
election which he'd probably have lost had it not been for the
participation of a third party candidate (John Anderson) -- and that moment
was like the start of a dark age. As a fiery young writer of editorials
for my college paper I'd railed against Carter for his compromises with
conservatism, and proudly chose to cast my first vote for an American
president not for Carter against Reagan but for Barry Commoner.
It was a stubborn gesture, and in retrospect a dumb one. Too much
was at stake to throw my vote away just so I could feel consistent.
(Naderites, take heed.) America would have been a lot better off if Ronald
Reagan had never been president. This was true while he was alive, and it
is no less true now that he is gone.
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