http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20110221/OPINION02/702219917
Published February 21, 2011 in the Rutland Herald
Reagan was ‘acting president’
Tim Cook’s view of Ronald Reagan as a humble, “just folks” guy who stood up for average Americans is exactly the image the Republican Party wanted him to vote for. If Cook ever sees Paul Krassner’s video outtakes of Reagan waiting to throw the first pitch in a Washington Senators game, he’ll be disabused: “What you see,” said Krassner, “is an old duffer who suddenly becomes presidential.” As the late Hartland resident and retired national muckraker George Seldes said, Reagan was “the acting president.”
It was Reagan who persuaded us that government is bad for us. As a result, all we did was shake our heads over Abu Ghraib, New Orleans, Medicare Part D, Iraq, Afghanistan, the yellowcake forgeries, the transfer of wealth to America’s richest, the Wall Street bailout and the subprime mortgage swindle. Forty years ago, we would have demanded that there be investigations, trials, jail sentences. But the genial actor recruited to entertain us did his job well: in the S & L scandal of the early ’80s, 1,800 went to jail. Nobody yet has gone from Wall Street’s meltdown, and we Americans today say nothing.
He pretended to be against taxes, but raised them seven times in eight years. He pretended to be in favor of balanced budgets, but tripled the deficit. He pretended to understand the working poor, but always believed people chose to be homeless. In short, he never deviated from his script. The reason he was given two hours of memorial accolades in Congress recently is that his memory is still a useful tool to continue to dupe a lot of people like Mr. Cook into voting against their own interests.
CHUCK GREGORY
Springfield
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