The Case for Engagement

I think I agree with Brendan Nyhan's take on the Brooks/Krugman spat over Ronald Reagan and race:

But can't both of them be right? The Philadelphia, MS anecdote has been exaggerated and oversimplified, but it remains true that Reagan exploited the issue of race in various ugly ways during his political career. Was that so hard?

I think this is part of the reason it would be better to allow columnists to argue with one another directly. It might make it harder for antagonists to metaphorically talk past one another were they not required to, um, talk past one another in terms of the formal construction of their columns.

Comments

If that was Brooks point, sure. It wasn't. Brooks' point was to pretend Republicans don't campaign on race. So no they both can't be right.

Posted by Rob | November 12, 2007 10:30 AM

One of the problems Brooks faces here is that he can't make the argument that Reagan exploited racial animosities for many years but he wasn't at heart a racist. So he ignores a whole body of evidence and focuses solely on the specifics of the Philadelphia, Mississippi, incident, which seem complicated, even murky. Krugman, quite rightly, restores that body of evidence to the debate, and takes that evidence to its logical conclusion: if you advocate the ideas and policies that Reagan did -- and for as long and as consistently as he did -- then on some fundamental level you're a racist. Brooks can't wrap his head around that notion, and no wonder: who wants to confront the possibility that his/her hero may have harbored some bad policies, a racist worldview?

Many things David Brooks may be, but a Southern white evangelical male he ain't. I was raised in that world during the Age of Ronnie, and much of what Reagan said and did fit that special code the GOP knows so well. But you may have to be born into that world, that long and agonized history, to know just how pervasive and profound that code is.

Obama, beware!

Posted by BryklynLibrul | November 12, 2007 10:39 AM

It's already an insular enough punditry world. If the NYT op-ed columnists begin explicitly having conversations amongst themselves, it seems to me this would get even worse. It's already bad enough that a once-independent voice who I won't mention (rhymes with Hat McTaisius) now routinely writes in tension with his (or her) co-bloggers (i.e., Fleggin Picardal). It would be insufferable to have the NYT folks provide duelling opinions in response to each other...I'll take glancing indirectness.

Posted by Peter | November 12, 2007 10:40 AM

Vintage Nyhan.

I would expect nothing less from the reigning king of pox-on-both-your-houses, both-sides-do-it, muddle-in-the-middleism.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | November 12, 2007 10:45 AM

nyhan's post is just plain stupid.
it's the typical attempt at the "reasonable" response: a plague on both their houses.
the true facts? oh, those are inconvenient, so let's forget about those.
no, brooks is not right.
what is incorrect or exaggerated about krugman's argument?
he recounts historical fact.
reagan did exactly what he said he did.
reagan said exactly what he said he said.
reagan did and said these things in a venue that was infamous for exactly what krugman said it was infamous for.
what is incorrect or exaggerated or a "slur" about krugmans' arguments?
it doesn't matter one bit whether reagan and his aides planned it out 5 months or 5 days or 5 hours before he did and said what he did and said.
he saw a situation that he could exploit, he exploited that situation and what he said and did dovetailed perfectly with his entire history as a politician. he routinely exploited racial issues and fears for his political gain. it was a foundation of his appeal.
what is so difficult to understand about that?
sure, it doesn't fit into the benign, grandfatherly, revisionist image that too many want to construct for reagan, but reality is reality.

Posted by frankie d | November 12, 2007 10:46 AM

You know, you really should never comment on race issues Matt. You are clueless.

Let's be clear here.

If Brooks was responding to Krugman, Herbert or me, he said we concocted a HEINOUS conspiracy theory that Reagan went to Philadelphia MS to send a dogwhistle to White Southerners who support "states rights."

Brooks sais that while Reaga MAY have been callous, no way was Reagan playing a Southern Strategy.

Krugman responded by saying in essence, "are you fucking kidding me?" Do you know who Reagan was? In deed, you must have been fucking kidding us with your FIRST post in which you agreed with Brooks. Did you forget that? I did not.

Only a blithering idiot like Brendan Nyhan could concoct this construct. It is to your great discredit that you agree with THAT too.

Nyhan is a proven idiot. He has an excuse.

You have demonstrated a great deal of intelligence. What's your excuse on this?

Posted by Armando | November 12, 2007 10:55 AM

Davis and frankie do Nyhan right. Ronald Reagan was a passionate supporter of the "right" to discriminate. He campaigned against fair housing laws when he ran for governor. He tried to give tax breaks to segregationist academies and Bob Jones University. He thought that Martin Luthor King was a communist. David Brooks wants to obscure that record. I don't read either Krugman or Brooks (I guess I'm just a "plague on both your houses" kind of guy), but Brooks is full of it on this one, as he so often is.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | November 12, 2007 10:56 AM

Re: One of the problems Brooks faces here is that he can't make the argument that Reagan exploited racial animosities for many years but he wasn't at heart a racist.

I think you can make that argument, at least in principle. It's entirely possible that Reagan (and other GOPers) didn't have any personal animosity toward Blacks; they were just cynical power-mongers who used race symbols to gain votes. That doesn't paint them in a very good light of course; in fact in some ways they look worse than a simple racist does, since the latter is at least not dishonest or hypocritical.

Posted by JonF | November 12, 2007 10:57 AM

Kudos to Armando for successfully catching the "essence" of Krugman's comments -- because that's what I heard in my head when I was reading it.

Posted by El Cid | November 12, 2007 10:58 AM

Let me add, to accept Nyhan, B rooks and apparently your argument on the Philadelphia speech, we have to believe that yes, Reagan used race baiting throughout his political career, both before during ad after the 1980 campaign, but that the speech at the site where 3 civil rights workers were murdered, a speech where he invoked the segregationist code phrase of "states rights," had NOTHING to do with this well documented aspect of Reagan's political record.

My fucking gawd, how can you even entertain this nonsense? Then again, you thought Bill Bennett's statement about terminating the pregnancies of all African Americans to reduce the crime rate (as a "thought experiment" of course) was just fine.

Clueless on race.

Posted by Armando | November 12, 2007 11:01 AM

What Davis X. Machina and Armando said (really, which part of the Reagan-goes-to-Philadelphia-MS story has been "exaggerated and oversimplified" in a way that gets any of the main characters wrong?).

Matt, you're smarter than Brendan Nyhan (or at least far, far less of a centrist Broderite snot). If you want to argue that you *aren't*, go ahead, but it's not a flattering argument for you to make about youself.

Posted by Chris | November 12, 2007 11:05 AM

Ditto Armando. Also ditto those who say this is typical Nyhan.

Posted by Steve | November 12, 2007 11:10 AM

Oh, and Matt? David Brooks is a duplicitous conservative douchebag (yes, denying obvious racist appeals for political gains does, in my book, make someone a douchebag, though there are many ways to qualify. This just happens to be Brooks' definition du jour).

Why would you go out of your way to agree with someone like that, especially when they're lying for political advantage?

Posted by Chris | November 12, 2007 11:10 AM

From Robert Graves:

He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid,
So in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.

For "comic rabbits' read 'Spinsanity'.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | November 12, 2007 11:20 AM

No, both of them can't be right and, as Armando and others eloquently demonstrate, Brooks, as usual, is wrong (or, more likely, full of hacktacular truthiness). I tend to think that Matt would agree with more reflection. That is a major problem with this blog IMO--Matt makes so many posts (does any other prominent liberal blogger post so often?), that some of them are necessarily made without sufficient information or reflection. And while this may be patronizing, I think Matt's youth comes into play here (I admit I would not have liked to hear that at Matt's age). I'll assume that Matt has a good grasp of the relevant historical facts. But wthout having lived through the civil rights era and Reagan's political rise (I'm 54 and I did), it may be difficult to comprehend the historical context of his actions.

Oh, and a good general rule of thumb--before agreeing with a Broderist buffoon like Nyhan, always take a second, and third, look before hitting execute.

Posted by Marlowe | November 12, 2007 11:26 AM

JonF,
"I think you can make that argument, at least in principle. It's entirely possible that Reagan (and other GOPers) didn't have any personal animosity toward Blacks; they were just cynical power-mongers who used race symbols to gain votes."

No, you can't make that argument. Racism is as racism does. There is no such thing as a pure heart hiding behind a career of race-baiting.

"Personal animosity" has nothing to do with it. Do you think racists, or anti-Semites, or religious bigots are burning with hatred for the objects of their prejudices? That's seldom true. More usually they simply look down on them, or even have benevolent feelings for them -- they want to "protect" them, or "perfect" them, or "save" them. They want them to be in their "proper places."

Posted by SqueakyRat | November 12, 2007 11:27 AM

I think to some degree it belittles the political career of Ronald Reagan and the other New Rightist brigades to reduce them down to mere exploitation of conservative whites' racial sentiments. That was only a tiny portion of the lunacy with which they attacked this country.

Posted by El Cid | November 12, 2007 11:29 AM

David Brooks wants to obscure that record.

Word...Lee Atawter freakin' apologized, practically on his deathbed, for using racial politics to put Republicans, including Reagan, in office. He admitted that Republicans used racial code words. And now Brooks tries to pretend that it was all a misunderstanding, that the very fucking obvious meaning of Reagan's appearance in MI was some kind of urban myth? Pull the other one, jerkweed.

No, Nyhan, they can't both be right when one of them is demonstrably wrong. The best you could say is that Brooks isn't lying, because he's simply an idiot. I don't buy it, though.

Posted by Gregory | November 12, 2007 11:39 AM

While neither Brooks nor Krugman is either "right" OR "wrong" here, IMHO, another factor that has to be taken into account is the extraordinary mythologizing virtually ALL of the American Right has engaged in over virtually everything to do with Ronald Reagan's Presidency.

The overblown retroactive apotheosis of Saint Ronnie the Bold is such a fundamental part of contemporary "conservative" history that any assault on The Great Communicator's memory (i.e. connecting Reagan's BS image with reality) HAS to met with immediate and vigorous rejoinders by righties, or (as in the case of Brooks) their enablers/apologists.

Posted by Jay C | November 12, 2007 11:40 AM

As the commenters above all say: Wrong. The important question isn't why exactly Reanagn launched his campaign in Philadelphia, it's how much his success was fueld by racism. Krugman says the answer is, a lot. Brooks, per usual, implies-without-quite-saying tha the answer is, hardly at all. So no, on the issue that's actually in dispute, they can't both be right.

Not also that Nyhan provides zero additional evidence that Brooks is right even on the trivial question of the Philadelphia speech.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | November 12, 2007 11:42 AM

What spat?

Brooks attempted to defend Reagan's appeal to a Southern constituency in Philadelphia by a sleight of hand and "there is nothing to see here?"

Krugman exposed the obvious obfuscation by innocently recounting the public record of Reagan's rascist ways.

Game over.

Posted by sy | November 12, 2007 11:51 AM

"The Philadelphia, MS anecdote has been exaggerated and oversimplified."

Really? By whom? What is the nature of the exaggeration? What additional complexity is warranted?

Nyhan says that there is a "tale of Ronald Reagan appealing to racism during a campaign visit to Philadelphia, MS." This is false. No one claims that Reagan explicitly "appealed to racism" when he visited Philadelphia. He didn't have to.

Philadelphia (pop. 7300) is known for one thing only: the murders of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. For that, it's infamous. At the time of Reagan's speech, the killers were free in the community. They might even have been at the rally.

Reagan didn't mention the murdered civil rights workers or their killers. He didn't mention the civil rights movement at all. He only mentioned "states' rights," and said that he would "restore" the powers rightly belonging to "state and local governments." Note the peculiar mention of "local governments." The killers included the sheriff and deputy sheriff of Neshoba County.

It was a clever move: go to the place of an infamous crime and never mention it. Instead, mildly say that you are in favor of a certain ideology, which just happens to be that of the criminals. There is no possibility that presidential campaign workers in 1980 were unaware of the 1964 murders or the 1967 trial. So there is no credibility for anyone to claim that Reagan and his staff didn't know precisely what they were doing.

But the whole point of dog whistle politics is deniability. So why is it surprising that the apologists are still denying?

Posted by Bloix | November 12, 2007 11:51 AM

Reagan's appearance in MI

MI=Michigan; MS=Mississippi.

Posted by rea | November 12, 2007 12:09 PM

Wow, I think the following excerpt -- which I just ran across by Googling about the Neshoba County Fair -- from a historian at Emory makes Krugman's recall seem fairly tame by comparison. (By the way, to locals, politicians visit not "Philadelphia" so much as the famous and historic Neshoba County Fair.) I have no idea about the specific arguments, just that it certainly seemed Un-Brooksian.

From "Did David Brooks Tell the Full Story About Reagan's Neshoba County Fair Visit?"
By Joseph Crespino

Mr. Crespino is the author of In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, 2007). He teaches American history at Emory University.

In his November 9, 2007, column in the New York Times, David Brooks discussed Ronald Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 and his use of the term “states’ rights.” Brooks absolved Reagan of racism, but he ignored the broader significance of Reagan’s Neshoba County appearance.

A full account of the incident has to consider how the national GOP was trying to strengthen its southern state parties and win support from southern white Democrats. Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican national committee. Well before the Republicans had nominated Reagan, the national committee was polling state leaders to line up venues where the Republican nominee might speak. Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called the “George Wallace inclined voters.”

This Republican leader knew that the segregationist Alabama governor was the symbol of southern white resentment against the civil rights struggle. Richard Nixon had angled to win these voters in 1968 and 1972. Mississippi Republicans knew that a successful Republican candidate in 1980 would have to continue the effort.

On July 31st, just days before Reagan went to Neshoba County, the New York Times reported that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed Reagan. In its newspaper, the Klan said that the Republican platform “reads as if it were written by a Klansman.” Reagan rejected the endorsement, but only after a Carter cabinet official brought it up in a campaign speech. The dubious connection did not stop Reagan from using segregationist language in Neshoba County.

It was clear from other episodes in that campaign that Reagan was content to let southern Republicans link him to segregationist politics in the South’s recent past. Reagan’s states rights line was prepared beforehand and reporters covering the event could not recall him using the term before the Neshoba County appearance. John Bell Williams, an arch-segregationist former governor who had crossed party lines in 1964 to endorse Barry Goldwater, joined Reagan on stage at another campaign stop in Mississippi. Reagan’s campaign chair in the state, Trent Lott, praised Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist Dixiecrat candidate in 1948, at a Reagan rally, saying that if Thurmond had been elected president “we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

Brooks’s defense of Reagan seemed to be a response to his fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman, who in his book, The Conscience of a Liberal, mentions the Neshoba County visit several times. Krugman’s account of modern conservatism is not without problems. He reduces the success of modern conservatism to the fact that “southern whites started voting Republican.” Such a formulation singles out white southerners alone as providing the racist element in conservative politics. It ignores the complex intersection of racial issues with cultural and religious concerns to which liberals have not always been sufficiently sensitive. And it obscures the fact that Democrats continued to win elections in the South after the 1960s by appealing to populist economic issues — a history that Democrats today should recall before they start “whistling past Dixie.”

Brook’s column, however, is a good example of conservatives’ discomfort with their racial history. Reagan is to modern conservatism what Franklin Roosevelt was to liberalism, so it’s not surprising that Brooks would feel the need to defend him. But Brooks’s throwaway remark that “it’s obviously true that race played a role in the GOP ascent” understates what actually happened.

Throughout his career, Reagan benefited from subtly divisive appeals to whites who resented efforts in the 1960s and 70s to reverse historic patterns of racial discrimination. He did it in 1966 when he campaigned for the California governorship by denouncing open housing and civil rights laws. He did it in 1976 when he tried to beat out Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination by attacking welfare in subtly racist terms. And he did it in Neshoba County in 1980.

Reagan knew that southern Republicans were making racial appeals to win over conservative southern Democrats, and he was a willing participant. Despite what Brooks claims, it’s no slur to hold Reagan accountable for the choice that he made. Neither is it mere partisanship to try to think seriously about the complex ways that white racism has shaped modern conservative politics.

http://hnn.us/articles/44535.html

By the way, does anyone else know if that report of the Klan endorsement in the NYT was true or bunk?

And is the writer arguing that Trent Lott actually said the same remarks about Strom Thurmond many years before at a Reagan rally?

Posted by El Cid | November 12, 2007 12:15 PM

Most of of the posters have said the obvious: Krugman was right, as usual, and Brooks was wrong. Why belabor it? Everybody who was of age during Reagan's rise and reign knows the truth. Brooks likes to assume the pose of reasonable tweediness, but his job is to serve the right-wing cause, like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, etc. They may play different positions, but they're all on the same team.

Posted by Henderstock | November 12, 2007 12:27 PM

El Cid,

thanks for the article.
very informative.
my question is this: how does david brooks keep his job?
his columns are always full of distortions and half-truths. his work is pure republican propaganda. i'd imagine that the times could find a conservative voice with integrity, if they really want someone to fill that role in their columnists' line-up. isn't there such a creature in this country?

Posted by frankie d | November 12, 2007 12:35 PM

Matt, just ask yourself: given the list Krugman gives us, how could we possibly believe in an innocent explanation of the Philadelphia speech? And forget about the dodge that he was just a politician responding to opportunities where they arose: if he had been non-racist, he would have refused to respond--refused to say what he said in Mississippi.
Yes, Reagan was full of bonhomie and great stories. It's true, just as it's true that whites from the north routinely marveled at the hospitality of southern whites. But at least until recently, the hospitality was not for everyone.

Posted by Jim M | November 12, 2007 12:43 PM

frankie d: I assume that when you ask how right wing flacks like Brooks keep their jobs, it's a rhetorical question. In context, though, you must remember that Brooks is on the nicer side of the spectrum of crazy.

Posted by El Cid | November 12, 2007 12:49 PM

MI=Michigan; MS=Mississippi

I stand corrected; thanks.

Posted by Gregory | November 12, 2007 12:58 PM

my question is this: how does david brooks keep his job?
his columns are always full of distortions and half-truths. his work is pure republican propaganda.

You just answered your own question.

Posted by Gregory | November 12, 2007 1:00 PM

LOL!
yes, my question was essentially rhetorical...
and i think gregory is very much on target!
i still keep thinking, however, that it is the NEW YORK TIMES!!
and if they keep a hack like brooks around, is there any hope at all for old media?

Posted by frankie d | November 12, 2007 1:12 PM

This is why I quit reading Spinsanity. Nyhan is the web's foremost practitioner of High Broderism: both sides must always be equally at fault. There's just nothing subtle about talking about "states' rights" in Philadelphia MS, especially when put in the context of the lengthy GOP history of race-baiting, otherwise known as the famous "Southern strategy." Krugman is right, and Brooks, as usual is a dishonest hack giving aid and comfort to a vicious GOP agenda. Shame on you for buying in to this.

Posted by beckya57 | November 12, 2007 1:33 PM

Let me ask, honestly:
If a politician of that time opposed forced school busing, which was done for the sake of remedying past discrimination, was that politician a racist?
As someone who knows many people who grew up at that time in cities which were forced to integrate their schools via busing, I don't think it's fair to characterize people against busing as racists. There were many parents, white and black, who did not want their kids bused an hour away to a distant school (often to get beat up), when they previously attended the school around the corner. Even the NAACP in some of those cities eventually acknowledged busing had often failed.
I'm using busing as one example, but there are many. To say that opposition to forced busing, or any other opposition to anti-discrimination policies, automatically means a person is a racist is to see things too simplistically. And many people became Republicans because it was the Democrats who endorsed those policies. It wasn't just about race, it was about sending your child to the school close to home, among many other things.

Posted by but wait | November 12, 2007 1:40 PM

Using the graves of three murdered civil rights workers as a backdrop talk about 'states rights' is racist. It is that simple.

Posted by Freedom Summer Veteran | November 12, 2007 3:12 PM

Honestly, but wait? Are you sure you even responded to the right post?

We're not talking about busing, we're talking about letting state and local officials get away with murder to promote racism -- and we're talking about *federal* officials nodding and winking at it decades later. And we're talking about members of the traditional media lying about it to whitewash the history of their heroes.

And I think there are a lot of people who opposed busing who would also, if you asked them, oppose letting crooked cops shoot people for supporting civil rights, and they wouldn't be happy to see you slur them by saying that opposition to busing is so close to letting racist cops get away with murder.

Posted by Chris | November 12, 2007 3:13 PM

Would it be fair to say that it is false that GOP strategy was to appeal specifically to Southern racism, because they calibrated their message in such a way that it would attract less self-aware northern and western racists as well? Moreover, over time their message was diversified over various different phobias? (Today is Wednesday, so we harrangue the fags, tomorrow, illegal aliens, Friday, defending virginity and fighting sex ed., UN, Islamofascists, criminals, Hollywood depravators of youth, abortion, welfare receipients, o my, a week is not long enough).

Now Guliani is the best standard bearer as a guy who can bash anybody and anything, from ferrets to Islamofascists, who also comes with a stellar record on racial matters (if very Northern in style).

It just so happens that this strategy had more profound impact in the South than elsewhere.

Posted by piotr | November 12, 2007 3:20 PM

By the way, does anyone else know if that report of the Klan endorsement in the NYT was true or bunk?

I certainly remember hearing about the endorsement - and the Regan campaign's repudiation of it - at the time. After he was elected it was somehow considered bad form to bring that sort of thing up.

Posted by just sayin | November 12, 2007 3:26 PM

Look, Brooks is simply wrong. Krugman's argument is one simple enough for Nyhan to understand. It was an aberration or a case of misspeaking. This how Reagan campaigned. Moreover, it makes absolutely perfect sense that Reagan would take time out from visits to the Urban League to tell his racist southern supporters that they should pay no attention to that. This is very simple. Brooks is simply lying here, and he has to know it. To think there is some middle ground, or worse to start speculating about whether Reagan was himself a racist is ridiculous. (And, in point of fact, if he wasn't a racist, isn't this still worse? Coarsening American discourse, sowing strife and encouraging violence between the races for something he didn't even believe, but just to get power?)

IAC, the traditional lee atwater smoking gun is unambiguous:

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'

Atwater was talking about Reagan, not Nixon and not Bush I.

And, of course, the form this code is taking this time is faux opposition to continuing the current system of illegal immigration.

Posted by Jay Ackroyd | November 12, 2007 3:33 PM

I'm old enough to remember Reagan kicking off his campaign there in 1980. Krugman is right, and there ain't no middle ground. There is no way you could have taken what he did as other than a play for the white vote. 1980 wasn't like today. The Democrats weren't totally dead yet in the South then so the GOP had much to gain by sending the white folks a message -- especially with Reagan running against a southern president. Also, despite what I read somewhere, it wasn't a forgone conclusion when Reagan kicked off his campaign that he was going to win the election.

Posted by phil from new york | November 12, 2007 4:05 PM

Piotr, I had a little trouble trying to follow your post, but you appear to be saying that Giuliani has "stellar record on racial matters". Where are you from? It can't be the NYC area. Rudy's record on race is somewhat similar to Reagan's (and was directed at NYC's Reagan Democrats in Queens and SI), although the codewords were different. Rudy's truculent defense of the police (during his campaign and while in office) without regard to the facts, the smearing of police victims, and his preening refusal to meet with many black leaders was pretty much the NYC equivalent to backing states' rights in Philadelphia, MS. Clearly, much of his campaign in 1993 centered on the charge (in not very subtle code) that incumbent David Dinkins (who was a pretty ineffectual mayor in truth) was gving the city away to "them". And this is not just of historical interest. One inherent (if not loudly voiced) element of Rudy's current campaign is to let the Rethug trogs know that he may nominally favor abortion and gay righs, but he sure put "them" in their place in New York.

Posted by Marlowe | November 12, 2007 4:09 PM

this retrospective centerist love for Reagan because he's in certain respects not as bad as the current administration is just dreadful; a systematic rollback of Reagan worship is overdue.....

Posted by nick | November 12, 2007 4:30 PM

But can't both of them be right?

No. Unless you insist on a "both sides are equally right/wrong" narrative, which, unfortunately, Brendan is irrationally attached to.

Posted by Tyro | November 12, 2007 4:48 PM

IIRC, the beauty part is that in 1984, George Will complained about the Democrats NOT condemning Neshoba County over something or other. At that point, I realized that the Republican chief strategy was to have their cake and eat it too.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 12, 2007 7:01 PM

Alan Vanneman wrote:

"He [Reagan] thought that Martin Luthor King was a communist."

What this has to do with whether Reagan courted the racist vote is anyone's guess, but it should be noted that in October of 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the FBI to tap the phone lines of MLK Jr. to investigate his alleged ties to the American Communist Party. Does this mean that RFK was a racist, or that he was courting the racist vote?

Then Alan wrote:

"I don't read either Krugman or Brooks (I guess I'm just a "plague on both your houses" kind of guy), but Brooks is full of it on this one, as he so often is."

If you don't read Brooks, then how do you know that he is "full of it" as often as you claim he is?

Posted by torourke | November 12, 2007 8:53 PM