Thursday, May 3, 1084
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Daily Nebraskan
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Truth, lies and Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan's Reader sDijjest men
tality the folksy optimism that may
get specifics mixed up, but knows its
own mind is unshakable. It's a way
of thinking that comes very much from
the 1920s when Reagan grew up, seen
through a dim green haze as a time
when keeping cool with Coolidge was
the only sane thing to do.
The Reader's Digest philosophy
Reagan has often quoted the magazine
has little to do with reality. One of
Reagan's own personal glimpses and
true life anecdotes could have come
( I Eric
i Peterson
. r i 1
9
China another example
of inconsistent U.S. policy
President Reagan has returned from
his trip to China and it could reasona
bly be asked what he accomplished.
Of course, such a trip is good if for no
other reason than the simple fact that
it means we recognize the existence of
the People's Republic of China, some
thing we tried to ignore for more than
20 years.
At the same time it is ludicrous
when we see the president get up and
toast Chinese hosts and tell us that the
Chinese are no threat to the United
States.
He's right about that but at the same .
time he expects us to believe that the
tiny nation of Nicaragua is a threat to
America.
What kind of insanity is this? China,
! a nation of 800 million people and the
proud owner of one of the largest
armies in the world, is not a threat to
us but the Nicaraguans, a nation of a
few million people are? You figure it
out.
It is just another example of the
convoluted logic that has guided Rea
gan's foreign policy since he took office
three years ago.
The hypocrisy and inconsistency of
Reagan's foreign policy is bad enough
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by itself but the president has to com
. pound this by getting up and extolling
the virtues of America and capitalism
right in front of his Chinese hosts.
Not only is this stupid, it's extremely
bad taste. What do you think the reac
tion in this country would be if Kon
stantine Chernenko came to Omaha
and got up before the Chamber of
Commerce and denounced the Ameri
can system and praised the virtues of
communism? The good citizens of
Omaha would be falling all over them
selves getting in line to denounce this
outrageous act.
Apparently Reagan doesn't realize,
or worse yet, doesn't care about the
crudeness of his actions.
In the final analysis, there can be
little doubt that Reagan's trip is an
election year gimmick, ultimately design
ed to steal the voters' attention away
from the Democrats for a few days.
Of course, there's nothing wrong
with this. It's a common political ploy.
But let's not be duped into thinking
that Reagan is a great statesman.
Grenada, Lebanon and Central Amer
ica prove that he's not.
Jeff Goodwin
from the pages of a Reader's Digest
article against gun control In an inter
view with Sports Afield, Reagan said
he was radio sportscasting in Des
-Moines, Iowa, when he saw a man rob-
bing a nurse with a gun. Reagan pointed
" his unloaded pistol out the window
and told him, "Drop it and get going,"
which the would-be robber apparently
did.
Reagan's is a world in which that
pistol you have lying around can come
in handy in scaring off the bad guys.'
It's not a world in which you could get
everybody killed with your show of
bravado. The trouble with Reagan's
true life stories, his stories that come
in so handy in a speech to assert his
own compassion or point out the hor
rible abuses of welfare fraud, is the
same as the trouble with his rose
colored view of American society. You
don't know whether they're true, but
suspect they probably arent.
Mike Royko, the refreshingly cynical
and blunt Chicago columnist, writes of
numerous errors of fact the President
has made, and says that "when the
person starts talking about things that
happen in some kind of dream world, I
have to wonder if he's hitting all the
cylinders."
Royko says Reagan claims to have
been shocked and moved when. he
entered the recently-liberated Nazi
death camps to photograph the evi
dence of the Holocaust; the trouble is
Reagan spent the war making propa
ganda movies in Hollywood. Royko
notes that a case Reagan cited to show
how legal technicalities hamper police,
where a California judge ruled that
searching a baby's diaper violated that
baby's rights, never actually happened.
"Reporters who covered his campaign
in 1980 were amazed at how easily he
would find an anecdote, a story with a
moral, a tearful tale, to fit whatever his
message to an audicr.ee was that day,"
Royko writes. "And how often these
anecdotes were nothing but fiction."
Reagan's breezy ignorance of what's
really going on has deeper consequen
ces than making him an unreliable
autobiographer. It makes him a dan
gerously unaware president. Unlike,
say, Richard Nixon, a' manipulative
and dishonest man who had some
grasp of effective tactics, Ronald Rea
gan wakes and moves in a cloud of
hazy right-wing ideology that keeps
him from seeing anything but evil in
the Soviet Union.
As columnist Anthony Lewis notes,
"He can preside over a disatrous pol
icy, look at the resulting wreckage and
smile happily. It is spooky. But it is also
something else: a crucial part of his
political magic."
That's why Reagan has been so suc
cessful in passing his legislative pro
gram, in getting elected in the first
place. The people that Gallup and Har
ris contact don't care if Reagan gets his
welfare mothers switched around, or if
he finds the deficits which he caused
unacceptably large. Irresponsibility is
forgiven because of Regan's fixed opti
mism. In this aspect Reagan is actually
quite a bit like Franklin Roosevelt.
Both used their native optimism to
considerable political advantage. Frank
lin Roosevelt was no more an intellec
tual than Ronald Reagan is, and his
ignorance of economics was probably
just about equal to Regan's. Their tal
ent is political, in forming coalitions
and in finding the images which public
policies need in order to be convincing.
The difference between Roosevelt
and Reagan lies in the direction their
simplistic philosophies take them.
Through the labor organizing and govern
ment involvement of the Depression
era, America became a more progres
sive and cooperative society, while Rea
gan heavily favors the rich and tradi
tional. Roosevelt's social vision simply
came closer to what America needed
than Reagan's does.
Reagan is not only simple, but simply
wrong. His conception of America stand
ing tall again at least works when
America is standing on little Grenada;
but America can't safely continue to
deal with the Soviet Union as if it were
the evil empire of 1950s propaganda
films and contemporary Reagan
speeches.
Should the CIA be involved in potentially dangerous covert
ctivities?
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rrililiTa rosnscnent
"I dsn't think so he
i& czzls 3 it doesn't do much
. firths credibility cf the
U.O."
Dale Harvey
senior
animal science
"No, I juct don't see
that they Ve est any bus-
Elil Caldwell
East Carnpus
"No, I think we need a
basic policy statement
cn Central America. It
should be open and
lr;r;zft with Congress,
and net be a behind the
scenes operatic:." . .
Mark Sandeen
senior -animal
science
"Net really the wry
they're doina it. I e.ink
whexthey're dcirshsaU
be made public, and net
so ranch a covert operation."
Joel artor8Dx"y t::lr:zn
Anne I 'core
word prccesr.ir.2 special
ist' j?. Jtlw kttit mnJL -d um m vvw4
ians
"No, I dsn't thinh we
should be involved in
that at all. At Izzzt I
shea! J scy they shouldn't
be involved in it."
