Ronald Reagan: Fox News celebrates a right-wing Colossus

There’s a tremendous series running on Fox News at the moment – The Rise, Fall and Future of Conservatism. I’ve seen half of the six episodes to date, and it’s a joy to hear so many intelligent conservatives and right-wingers talking without the usual “aren’t they scary!” liberal subtext.

Here in Europe, (and no doubt in New York and Washington) you’ll remember how astonished we all were back in 1980 when the American people placed their trust in a dumb, old, washed-up B-movie actor. How typically stupid of the Yanks to be duped into electing an outmoded Mickey Mouse cowboy cold warrior! And, of course, with this maniac’s finger on the nuclear button, we were all pretty much doomed.

Of course, Ronnie proved all those sneering Old World sophisticates wrong by turning out to be one of the greatest American Presidents in history, up there with his great Republican forbear, Abraham Lincoln. Of course, leftists the world over did what leftists always do when faced by an inconvenient truth – they went on embellishing the original lie: even as communism crumbled under the weight of its own life-hating stupidity and Reagan’s “voodoo” economics turned America back into a rich, dynamic, proud country, Ronnie remained a dim-witted stooge of big business, over-promoted by a powerful cartel of multi-millionaires who wanted to stamp on the faces of the poor while spreading the reach of the American Empire across the globe.  

On the contrary - Reagan’s accession to the top job was belated: at least twice before he became President his superb oratorical skills - his ability to present his own heartfelt right-wing views powerfully and compellingly in support of Republican presidential candidates - had left large swathes of the Republican Party wondering why in tarnation they hadn’t simply gone for this guy. He was terrific! Unlike the candidates they’d actually picked (Barry Goldwater in ’64 and Gerald Ford in ’76) Reagan was superbly articulate; he effortlessly connected with voters and the policies he espoused resonated with everything they believed in.

In 1964, Reagan delivered the same pro-Goldwater speech – it was entitled “A Time for Choosing”, but came to be known simply as The Speech – many times in the run-up tot election. You can see it here – there isn’t a word I’d disagree with: from the Fox series, it’s clear it had a galvanizing effect on many right-wing intellectuals at the time.

Unfortunately, when a Republican next became president, it was Richard Nixon, who proceeded – just as Edward Heath did in the UK – to stab the right wing of his party in the back by pursuing policies Leonid Brezhnev could have endorsed: wage and price freezes, huge increases in government spending, the creation of numerous, expensive, busybody government agencies, and détente with communist tyrannies in Russia and China. 

In 1976 Reagan ran against the incumbent Republican President, dull, stupid, unimaginative, centrist Gerald Ford (the man Lyndon Johnson memorably claimed was too dumb to fart and chew gum at the same time). Ronnie lost, but his speech at the GOP convention conceding defeat and pledging support for the hapless victor was superb: you can almost hear the thought going through the minds of the enraptured delegates –Oh God, what have we done!

Well, Reagan finally got his shot at the Presidency in 1980, against arch-creep Jimmy Carter (still alive, and still a creep), and he creamed the little jerk. And thank God he did! For a right-winger such as myself, he rapidly became as much of a hero as his stupendous transatlantic soul-mate, Maragaret Thatcher. When he described the Soviet Union as “The Evil Empire” how the liberal elites here and in the States scoffed – but he was right. When he fired all those striking air-traffic controllers, the liberal media called him mad – but he was right. In 1987, in a speech in Berlin he called on Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”: when the imprisoned population of East Berlin tore it down with their own hands two years later, did anyone seriously believe it would have happened without Ronnie? (Well, yes, many liberal media types did – but it was just another fresh lie for them to peddle). 

There isn’t a single book about Ronald Reagan in our local library or bookshops - but any number dedicated to that socialist wrecker, Barack Obama. Here, of course, the Right has become an irrelevance as far as our ruling media and political elites are concerned, and Lady Thatcher simply an embarrassment. Interestingly, in the States, the Right has come storming back after a few years in the wilderness: listening to all the likely candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, not one of them isn’t eager to align themselves with The Gipper’s legacy. 

Repudiate Reagan? You can almost hear a ghostly echo: “Go ahead! Make my day!”