Ronald ReaganA Graphic Biography

Remarks from the Fray:

During their tenures, Republican leaders are always derided as stupid, incompetent, or possibly evil by self-appointed liberal guardians of the republic. Then, after they are out of office for a few decades, they are pointed back to by these same guardians as the kind of conservatives the current crop should be more like, instead of being stupid, incompetent, or possibly evil.

So, in his lifetime, Goldwater was a nutjob who should have been more like Nixon in his willingness to compromise with liberals.. Then Reagan should have been like Goldwater, and now Bush should be more like Reagan.

I wonder who they will advise to look back to Bush for guidance?

--The True Conservative

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Over the years I've made no bones about my opposition to the Reagan philosophy of government in general and to his performance as a president in specific. As one other poster has remarked, we could have and should have done better. In that vein, one could argue that a comic book would be an appropriate vehicle for presenting his history. It is quite hard for me to take seriously a man who spent his early political career hiding in bushes and ratting about who went to which Hollywood party.

That said, while I was relieved when the Reagan years finally came to an end, and while I further often regarded his life as a comic book of sorts, I could not bring myself to take any pleasure or amusement in his passing. There are few people in this earthly existence for whom Alzheimers would be a fitting end. My sympathies went out to his family, who mourned the passing of a man, who at the end, no longer even recognized his mourners. No one I know deserves to die in that manner. And no one should have to go through the anguish of a family watching helplessly as it happens to one of their own.

In the final analysis, I imagine I will view Ronald Reagan as the kindly, overly conservative for my liking, but amicable old man who lived next door, who just should not have been elected president.

--superposition

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In one day, Slate has provided retrospectives on two distinct personalities of the 1980s – Diana, Princess of Wales, and Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United Sates. There is a sort of eerie similarity between the Dutch and Diana, despite dying nearly a decade apart. Tragic aspects unite their deaths – she, a young mother struck down in her prime, and he, an old lion slowly disintegrating into senile dotage.

But what really links them are the halcyon days of their public primes. It is not simply that they shared the 1980s in this regard. Both of them revitalized the institutions that they represented; institutions that, in both cases, were in danger of disappearing in a tide of popular sentiment ranging from cynicism to ennui.

--TheBell

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