Ronald Reagan

Self-impressed liberal New York Times columnist Paul "I have been right about everything" Krugman was featured in the October 23 issue of Rolling Stone, devoting over 4,000 words "In Defense of Obama." Yes, despite all current dangers foreign, domestic, and coming in from overseas, Obama's presidency is soaring and things would be even better if not for "scorched-earth" Republican obstructionism.

When President Barack Obama stepped off of Marine One today in New York City on Tuesday for a series of meetings at the United Nations, he chose to salute the two U.S. Marines saluting him at the bottom of the helicopter with a coffee cup in hand in what many have seen as an unprofessional gesture. By the time Tuesday night came and the evening newscasts of the major broadcast networks aired, two…

On Tuesday night’s All Things Considered, NPR anchor Robert Siegel awarded a seven-and-a-half minute interview to The New Republic and its editor, Franklin Foer. The magazine is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a new book called “Insurrections of the Mind.” Siegel found time to ask about a Hendrik Hertzberg book review trashing Ronald Reagan as a “child monarch,” which he described as a “…

If reform-conservative pundit Reihan Salam gets his way, Mitt Romney will join Ronald Reagan on the list of Republican governors of coastal states who were elected president of the United States on their third try. In a Friday column for Slate, Salam wrote that he’s “delighted” about “speculation” that Romney “is at least considering another presidential run.” Salam argued that if Romney does…

Ever notice that you seldom see Ann Compton, longtime White House correspondent for ABC News, appear on this site? What she said yesterday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" helps explain why. After covering seven presidents and every presidential campaign since the Bicentennial in 1976, Compton is retiring and Stephanopoulos paid tribute yesterday with a nostalgic look back at her…

It’s widely known that when Hillary Clinton was in high school, she was a big fan of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. But would Hillary, if elected POTUS, take after the 20th century’s uber-conservative, Ronald Reagan, at least in terms of a hawkish foreign policy? Elias Isquith made that case in a Saturday article in Salon. Isquith scrutinized the ideas Hillary expressed in her…

A great many movement conservatives weren’t fans of Richard Nixon’s presidency, to the point that some of them, including William F. Buckley Jr., William Rusher, and M. Stanton Evans, backed a 1972 primary challenge to Nixon by Rep. John Ashbrook of Ohio. But has Nixon, despite his ideological squishiness, greatly influenced today’s Republican party? New Yorker blogger Jeff Shesol says he has…

Conservatives seeking a potential president who’s like Ronald Reagan might be interested to know that Andrew O’Hehir of Salon thinks he’s found such a person. True, they might then be surprised to learn that he's talking about Hillary Clinton. O’Hehir, who’s well to the left of Hillary on economic issues, doesn’t intend the Clinton-Reagan comparison as a compliment to either. He believes that…

Liberals typically accuse conservatives of being fuddy-duddies, squares, and so on, but Daily Kos writer Hunter has a somewhat different take: he thinks most righties are “Reagan hipsters.” The caveat is that he doesn’t mean it as praise. Apropos of the Republican National Committee selling throwback "Reagan Bush ’84" T-shirts on its website, Hunter asserted Monday that for today’s right-…

It never fails. When the regime of center-right political leader with executive authority begins to implode, the focus is on how and why that person is failing — as it should be. When it becomes clear that a leftist mayor, governor, or president is entering the failure zone, it's because the job is impossible, or the city, state, or nation has become "ungovernable." We're entering the excuses…

Amazingly, Chris Matthews concluded Thursday’s Hardball by playing clips of how President Ronald Reagan reacted the Soviet shootdown of a Korean Air Lines 747 passenger jet in 1983 – even conceding, after a clip of Reagan charging the Soviets with terrorism and a “flagrant lie,” that “he was speaking for the American people.” Matthews – probably inadvertently – illustrated how Reagan, unlike…

On Monday evening's NBC Nightly News, host Brian Williams used a perhaps revealing verb to describe a belief held by former Soviet foreign minister and Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze, who died on Monday at 86. It would be good to look back and learn how Shevardnadze came to say what he said a decade ago before getting to how Williams framed it. As reported in Doug Martin's obituary at…

As you probably know, the 1980s were boom years for conservatives. Among the most prominent right-wingers back then: Ronald Reagan, Tom Clancy, Casey Kasem… OK, Kasem, who died on June 15, actually was a staunch liberal, a supporter in that decade of Jesse Jackson and later of Dennis Kucinich. But during the ‘80s, wrote Scott Timberg in a Sunday piece for Salon, “we had a political and…

In a brief Thursday post on the Atlantic’s website, "reform conservative" pundit David Frum cited Eric Cantor’s primary loss to Dave Brat as further evidence that “Republican leaders” need to emerge to confront the “the destructive leadership of fanatics (and the cynics who make their living by duping fanatics)." He cited Tony Blair as a model, someone " who revived his party by standing up…