Racial harmony day was rather fascinated by something President Obama said the other day. You remember that he walked out of budget talks, with some sharp words. According to Rep. Eric Cantor, he said, “Ronald Reagan wouldn’t sit here like this,” negotiating with you congressmen. The president’s implication was: Reagan was too big, too much a lion, for that. At least that is a possible interpretation. Obama has spoken complimentary words about Reagan before. And, of course, he was a bitter, condemnatory opponent of Reagan’s, as all the Left was. I have a piece on Reagan in the current National Review.
And I say,The passage of time is a remarkable animal.” Are we all Reaganites now, or at least respecters of Reagan? It wasn’t - - - Let me relate something else I say in that NR piece. Throughout the 1980s, the Nobel peace committee handed out prizes to people who despised and worked against Reagan. Unilateral disarmers and the like. (Remember Alva Myrdal?) Committee members outright told the 1987 winner, Oscar Arias, that they were giving him the prize so that he would have an additional, and potent, weapon against Reagan. Arias told the historian Robert Kagan, “Reagan was responsible for my prize.” Okay, jump forward to 2009: The committee is giving Barack Obama the Nobel. And the chairman, in his presentation speech, quotes Reagan, holding him up as a president who embodied universal values. (Obama does the same, in the committee’s mind.)
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