ed4tide4u2 ---
The fallacy here is the assumption that every president takes office in a political vacuum, unencumbered by the past and with perfect freedom to plow his own furrow.
This is seldom if ever the case.
Ike came in at a time when voters were ready to upchuck at the Truman administration. After two decades of Democrat rule people found themselves mired in a bloody Korean War which Truman was unable to win and bound not to quit. Voters were scared witless at the specter of international communism; the economy was in a mess as we tried to change from war to peacetime production; and people were just generally weary and longing for a little normalcy.
This was a vastly different electorate from today's, or even that of the 1960s. There were no dope-smoking, fly-infested hippies running wild and the Democrat Party still harbored many honest, old-fashioned souls who admitted they had come a cropper. Even the media was ready to give the New Deal a rest. Ike was swept into office in a landslide.
There are some similarities between Ike's and Reagan's entrances. Ron was elected after a perfectly disastrous Jimmy Carter administration during which both the domestic economy, foreign relations and the U.S. image went down the toilet.
But both the electorate and the Democrats were vastly changed. During Ike's second run for the presidency the worst Democrats dared say was to compare him to "Mr. Clean," the bald-headed symbol of a popular kitchen cleanser, and to charge that he played too much golf. This last was true. He did play a lot of golf.
When Reagan appeared on the scene Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and Ron's opposition was more nearly akin to the nasty little specimens who populate the capital today. What did they charge him with? Let me count the ways: 1. He was too old, possibly senile and half deaf. 2. He fell asleep at meetings. 3. He was an agent of the White Power conspiracy which wanted to return slavery. 4. He would grind the faces of the poor and would abolish both food stamps and unions (and how they cackled when he did smash the Flight Controller's Union). 5. He was a cowboy who would get us into a thermonuclear war with Russia (does this sound familiar?).
There was lots more, but I don't want to fill the whole post with nonsense. Just a reminder of events which might become obscured in the eulogies of Reagan's funeral.
Although Ron won a decisive victory over Carter, he did not become universally popular until he was shot in the attempted assassination. But even as he lay in the hospital between life and death, the vastly-different media of the day was grabbing cabinet members on-camera and demanding, "Who's running the country?"
In assessing the conservatism of Ike and Ron don't forget:
1. Ike was dealing with an opposition party which still retained some mote of honesty and self-respect. Reagan was dealing with Democrats who dogged him at every step, even declaring his budgets "dead on arrival" in Congress. (Here insert a plug for the Iran-Contra hearings which Dems fondly hoped would result in Reagan's impeachment --- and which were foiled by their own incompetence.)
2. Ike combated Soviet Russian communism tooth and nail but he did not end it. Reagan did. (Here let's give a plug to Richard Nixon who started the avalanche by driving a capitalistic wedge between the Soviet Union and Red China.)
3. Ike's image, as commander of ETO armies and liberator of Western Europe, was impervious to any attack by the media. Reagan was fair game for any shot, but he handled himself so well most volleys bounced off.
4. Both were harassed by ultra-conservatives in their own parties. Ike had to contend with Joe McCarthy and he quietly squashed the outspoken Wisconsin senator. Reagan was hounded by the far-right in his own party who demanded he abolish this or that costly government ornament, completely ignoring the realities of Congress.
[This message has been edited by Pachydermatous (edited 06-24-2004).]
