A friend who was away asked if there’d been any other stories
last week. It was a good question. Yes, the G-8 met. The U.N.
passed an important resolution. The Pistons won and lost. Ray
Charles died. But none of that quite registered. Even Smarty
Jones’s loss at Belmont, coming as it did hours after news broke of
Ronald Reagan’s death, caused little if any disappointment. For
once in a very long time, the death of a great man was
appropriately observed. A full week of serious mourning,
remembrance, and ritual was more than we as a nation knew we could
still pull off.
Even leading liberals rose to the occasion. Who could have
expected this from Ted Kennedy? “He came to power at a time of
self-fulfilling pessimism, a pervasive belief that public policy
could barely move molehills, let alone mountains. The true
achievement of the ‘Reagan revolution’ was the renewal of America’s
faith in itself.” According to Kennedy, in other words, Reagan
moved mountains.
Of course, the longer the week lasted the more one could sense
the good-behavior crowd chomping at the bit. Now that Reagan is
safely interred, it could be off to the races. First out of the
gate was emeritus historian Lewis Gould, writing in Sunday’s Washington
Post. Last week Bob
Tyrrell observed that Reagan belittlers prefer to think of the
40th president as another Warren Harding. As if on cue, Gould notes
that “tearful millions” foolishly mourned the death of Harding in
1923 — the very same president who would become an object of scorn
and ridicule once second drafts of his history were written. So
watch out, Reagan. The high marks you received this week won’t
last.
One problem here, which a historian worth his credentials should
have noticed. Harding died in office, Reagan 15 years after leaving
it. By now historians are already on the third or fourth drafts of
his presidency, each one more positive and respectful than the
previous.
Gould credits much of the favorable coverage of Reagan last week
to a media “sensitive always to the charge that they are too
liberal.” thereby confirming that indeed they are if they’re always
needing to catch themselves. In scolding the press this way,
meanwhile, Gould only reinforced his own tendentiousness. As it
was, not everyone was on his best behavior.
If there had been an Enemy of the Week last week, I’m told on
good authority it would have been Christopher Hitchens. Sure, there
were others who wrote loathsomely about Reagan’s passing, whether
Maureen Dowd or Jimmy Breslin, but they were merely following in
the trail immediately blazed by Hitchens. A week ago, among other
snide offerings in Slate magazine, Hitchens
treated Reagan with all the respect the president might have
enjoyed in Fallujah. Here’s some of what Hitchens called Reagan: “a
rictus of senile fury”; “a cruel and stupid lizard”; “dumb as a
stump”; “an obvious phony and loon.” And that’s before he got
personal.
If the University of Cincinnati can suspend its basketball coach
for drunken driving, shouldn’t Slate at least provide
Hitchens with a designated writer? He’s been mixing drinking and
writing a bit too long now.
And that was before Margaret Thatcher delivered the most
compelling tribute of them all: affectionate, eloquent, and
fearless. I recommend repeated viewings. We won’t see her like
again either. Most wonderfully, while Hitchens was crawling off to
his favorite sewers, Thatcher joined the final flight to
California.
The burial was marred by one odd moment, when Ron Reagan took an
obvious slap at President Bush in arguing that unlike other
politicians his father never wore his religion on his sleeve or
felt he had a mandate from God. Why none of the press has seized on
these comments must remain a mystery. Perhaps covering the 40th
President one last time left it with a permanent taste for the
higher road.
