[Mb-civic] Trigger-Happy Bush Is No Reagan

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cannon22aug22.story

COMMENTARY

Trigger-Happy Bush Is No Reagan
 By Lou Cannon

 August 22, 2004

 Ronald Reagan will be honored at the Republican National Convention as an
enduring leader of his party. This is appropriate, for Reagan transformed a
divided GOP into a united conservative party that worships free enterprise,
unrestrained tax cuts, military preparedness and the world leadership of the
United States of America.

 Indeed, without Reagan, it is unlikely Republicans would be running the
country today. He lifted the spirits of Americans at a time of national
disillusionment when politics was still suffering from the lingering virus
of Watergate. In 1976, he inspired conservatives by challenging President
Ford for the Republican nomination. After a narrow loss, he swept aside a
Republican field in 1980 and then defeated President Carter. In 1984 Reagan
was reelected in a momentous landslide, winning 49 states. His vice
president, George H.W. Bush, won in 1988 in an election widely seen as
expressing the desire of voters for a third Reagan term.

 Reagan remained a hero to his party after he left office and a sympathetic
figure to nearly all Americans after he developed Alzheimer's disease, which
eventually led to his death on June 5. His ideas continue to have impact.
Then-Rep. Newt Gingrich's vaunted "contract with America," the platform on
which Republicans gained control of the House in 1994, was basically a
compendium of proposals plucked from a Reagan State of the Union speech.

 President George W. Bush and his apostles welcome comparisons of his
forceful presidency to Reagan's, even more so than to the presidency of his
father. According to Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security
advisor, Bush resembles Reagan in his devotion to freedom and in a
foresighted ability to see around the bend in the road of history. Reagan
built up U.S. military forces, called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and
challenged the legitimacy of the Soviet system. He foresaw a democratic
Russia, much as Bush now envisions flourishing Arab democracies in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region.

 We learned in school that an analogy is a comparison in which essential
similarities outweigh essential differences. The Reagan-Bush analogy falls
short by this test. Reagan did indeed cut taxes ‹ usefully, in a severe
recession ‹ but he also twice raised them in the name of "tax reform" after
the economy improved. On foreign policy Reagan believed from the outset that
the massive military buildup he advocated would bring the Soviets to the
bargaining table. In June 1980, before he was nominated, Reagan told the
Washington Post that the Soviets would be unable economically to compete
with the United States in an intensified arms race and would negotiate
instead.

 Reagan believed strongly in the Western alliance and NATO ‹ and he abhorred
the idea of preemptive war. Indeed, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev, who also worried about an accidental nuclear conflict, leaped
ahead of their foreign ministers during a summit at Reykjavik, Iceland, in
1986 in proposing abolition of nuclear weapons. This meeting, initially seen
as a failure, led to treaties reducing the nuclear arsenals of both sides
and contributed to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union.

 Militarily, Reagan was more cautious than either President Bush. Even his
controversial covert aid to the Nicaraguan Contras was undertaken as an
alternative to the direct U.S. military intervention suggested by his first
secretary of State, Alexander Haig. Reagan did send U.S. troops into Lebanon
as part of an international military force. After 241 U.S. servicemen,
mostly Marines, were killed on Oct. 23, 1983, by a suicide bomber who drove
a truck into their headquarters, Reagan soon began the process of
withdrawal.

 Reagan called this disaster "the saddest day of my presidency, perhaps the
saddest day of my life," and he was determined that it not be repeated.
According to George Shultz, who replaced Haig as secretary of State in 1982,
Reagan rejected a proposal near the end of his presidency to send U.S.
troops to Panama to topple strongman Manuel Noriega. Reagan said this would
cost the lives of U.S. troops and innocent Panamanians, as it subsequently
did when the first President Bush carried out the operation.

 Reagan deserves the iconic status that Republicans will accord him when
they convene in Madison Square Garden. But the record suggests he would have
been far more reluctant than the current president and his cheerleaders to
lead the nation into war.


Lou Cannon is the author of five books on Ronald Reagan, including "Governor
Reagan: His Rise to Power" (PublicAffairs, 2003).




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