Reagan's saddle a poor fit for Bush

[AmyStrange]

Reagan's saddle a poor fit for Bush
By H.D.S. Greenway | June 11, 2004

FROM: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/11/reagans_saddle_a_poor_fit_for_bush/
OH, HOW the campaign to reelect George W. Bush would like to ride the memory of Ronald Reagan to another four years of power. Republicans look to Reagan as Democrats look to Franklin Roosevelt: presidents who transformed the political landscape as no others in their century.

Bush has never hidden the fact that Reagan is the model for his presidency, not his own father with all that "kinder, gentler" stuff. According to the president's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, Bush's policies "stand on the shoulders of Ronald Reagan." But in a week in which the nation has been awash in Reagan nostalgia, Bush's ride on Reagan's shoulders points more to the contrast between them than the similarities.

They do have some things in common: straight talking, a few clear goals, and a bit of a Western swagger that got them both called cowboys. Both Reagan and Bush were underestimated by detractors who lived to regret it.

Reagan could have called himself a neoconservative, having abandoned the Democratic Party and the New Deal. There can be no doubt that today's neoconservatives, who have had so much influence on George W. Bush, see in Reagan's determination to defeat rather than to accommodate communism a model for their own version of transforming the world starting with the Middle East. Reagan's "evil empire" was the progenitor for Bush's "axis of evil." Even now, when so much has gone awry, the civilian hawks in the Pentagon take courage from Reagan's having been proved right when so many said his muscular foreign policy was wrong.

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[Lefty48197]

1. and the horse he rode in on either

.