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Kerry on Reagan
* In November 2002, U.S. News & World Report carried this Kerry assessment of Reaganâs presidency: "You roll out the president one time a day. One exposure to all of you [the media]. No big in-depth inquiries. Put him in his brown jacket and his blue jeans, put him on a ranch, let him cock his head, give you a smile, and it looks like Americaâs OK."He repeated the same sentiments in an interview with Vogue last year, this time drawing a parallel to Bush: ââThey have managed him the same way they managed Ronald Reagan," Kerry contended. ââThey send him out to the press for one event a day. They put him in a brown jacket and jeans and get him to move some hay or drive a truck, and all of a sudden, heâs the Marlboro Man." * Thatâs not the only time Kerry has offered unflattering Bush-Reagan comparisons. In an interview last September with the Manchester Union-Leader, Kerry said, "Weâve seen governors come to Washington, . . . and they donât have the experience in foreign policy, and they get in trouble pretty fast. Look at Ronald Reagan. Look at Jimmy Carter and, now, obviously, George Bush." * In 1992 Kerry said, "Ronald Reagan certainly was never in combat. I mean, many of his movies depicted him there. And he may have believed he was, but he never was. And the fact is that he sent Americans off to die." * After his first major political battle in the Senate over Reaganâs support for the Nicaraguan contras in 1985, Kerry said "I think it was a silly and rather immature approach," of Reaganâs dismissal of a "peace offer" from Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega * Last year Kerry said to the Democratic National Committee: "Iâm proud that I stood against Ronald Reagan, not with him, when his intelligence agencies were abusing the Constitution of the United States and when he was running an illegal war in Central America." In fact, Kerry has spoken at great length about the Reagan administrationâs "abuse of the Constitution" and "totalitarian" inclinations: "They were willing to literally put the Constitution at risk because they believed there was somehow a higher order of things, that the ends do in fact justify the means. Thatâs the most Marxist, totalitarian doctrine Iâve ever heard of in my life. . . . Youâve done the very thing that James Madison and others feared when they were struggling to put the Constitution together, which was to create an unaccountable system with runaway power . . . running off against the will of the American people." Posted by: Super Hose 2004-06-08 |
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