Presswatch / Kicking Around Reagan
Barnes, Fred
KICKING AROUND REAGAN b y F r e d Barnes Brace yourself. This is going to run counter to a habit of thinking that conservatives have understandably developed over the past two decades, namely...
...He seeks responsibility, and he promises differences...
...But there is a difference of degree: if one does not much believe in government, one isn't very much inclined to try to make it work...
...He seems satisfied, following the departure of Richard Allen and Lyo Nofziger, with a White House staff that Lee Lescaze of the Washington Post described as sporting "distinctly non-conservative coloring...
...the two are incompatible...
...Example: "You have just begun Hugh Kenner teaches vamous things at the Johns Hopkins University...
...habits give the appearance of " a disengaged p r e s i d e n c y . " The evidence for it was " h i s a p p a r e n t unfamiliarity with some issues before him, his reliance on aides and campaign-style cue cards in dealing with c o n g r e s s i o n a l power brokers and foreign leaders...
...Nietzsche, Madison, Hamdton...
...As he did in the campaign, he shows a talent for choosing his ground and turning situations to his advantage...
...But--and this is~i the part that may be hard to swallow-the press has been reasonably fair in its reporting on Ronald Reagan...
...1) is best illustrated by the logician Kurt GSdel's 1931 proof of the incompleteness of all logically consistent systems, where the mechanism of the proof depends on making the system refer to itself...
...Another is his legislative success Journalists have been grumbling in print for years about Presidents who couldn't "get along" with Congress...
...In spite of [his] shortcomings, Reagan deserves credit for demonstrating conclusively that he has a sense of humor, a sense of theater and sense of self," Shields wrote...
...In the New Yorker, hardly a pro-Reagan s h e e t , she wrote l a s t month an anatysis of Reagan and his Administration that was breathtaking in its acuity and fairness: In the midst of all this [turmoil] sits a serene President...
...Were it not for this, Reagan might have been confronted with a far more critical press during the campaign...
...They have helped him to transcend entrenched institutions like the Congress and the Washington press corps to appeal directly to the people...
...One is Reagan's personality...
...And some of that kindly feeling has endured with Reagan in the White House...
...Reagan is not simply reading Variety...
...Why not in silicon...
...Here someone will generally assert that computers can only do what they are told...
...He did it without the full partisan control of Congress that they enjoyed and in the face of stubborn.claims t h a t he had no mandate from the voters for any such course...
...Good luck...
...Example: s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s . There's the rub...
...He did it by being a man of conviction, courage and steadfastness--the very qualities he showed so clearly in the aftermath of the attempt on his life...
...Kendall, Cicero...
...Now that might be dismissed on the ground that they are conservatives, Reagan partisans...
...Reagan to a standard normally reserved for office-seekers alone, not their wives...
...From a slightly different perspective came the verdict on Reagan pronounced last December by liberal columnist Mark Shields...
...But the situation was different with Mrs...
...but observe that it wouldn't appear 2 times if it weren't saying it appears 2 times...
...That doesn't fit too comfortably with the view of Reagan as a P r e s i d e n t of great ideological intensity...
...Carl T. Rowan, the columnist and television commentator, was t o u g h e r still on Reagan...
...Reagan the dummy . . . . The members of his staff are Mr...
...Carter...
...Now comes a President who is able to turn Congress into a lap dog, for a while at least...
...grammed machines," say Hofstadter flatly...
...reading the sentence you have just finished reading...
...en route to a well-deserved Pulitzer...
...But he gave Reagan c r e d i t for g r e a t accomplishments...
...ZIP.__ THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 25 December that Reagan is misunderstood if judged by his five hours a week of official meetings...
...Reagan--What...
...By my count, there are four c a n a r d s with _real resilience: (1) Reagan the Great Communicator...
...Outside his allotted five hours, Mr...
...Before we go on we had better document our numbered propositions...
...There's no denying that Reagan is good on television...
...REFLECTIONS IN A SILICON EYE by Hugh Kenner Douglas R. Hofstadter (b...
...Minds exist in brains and may come to exist in pro"The Mind's I, Basic Books, $15.50...
...The Drew piece, which was reflective of the general drift of thinking about the President among political journalists, suggested that the old practice of misperceiving Reagan-and often underestimating him--has come to an a b r u p t halt...
...Broder and Shields are not alone...
...2) Reagan as the Conventtona/ Pol...
...We doubt t h a t he will be able to accomplish his goals, and indeed worry that he may be ground down into C a r t e r like impotence, unless he comes to grips with what any competent executive would quickly recognize as critical problems of management structure...
...Q--Meese Q--Take your choice...
...Q--What about unemployment...
...Or a school library filled with liberal books...
...moreover, that once attained in practice it will deserve to be called Intelligence, not simply a knack for folloWing instructions rapidly...
...What peeked through G3del, Escher, Bach and dominates the new book* Hofstadter has co-edited with philosopher Daniel Dennett is a set of propositions we may paraphrase as follows: (1) Systems, such as the trick sentences above, may refer to (discuss,--contemplate ?--) themselves...
...Blumenthal, awestruck by new political t e c h n i q u e s , d o e s n ' t mention that Carter, Ford, and Nixon hired similar flocks of political marketeers, all to no avail...
...Newsweek gave this notion respectability, noting !ast September that Reagan's work...
...Calhoun, Bagehot, Sumner...
...But there is a dollop of truth in the perception of Reagan as a political regular, a Republican first and a conservative second...
...This characterization, long brewing, broke into the open after Reagan barred the Internal Re~,enue Service from denying tax exemptions to segregated private schools...
...Making more effective use of media and market r e s e a r c h than any previous President, he has brought into the White House the most sophisticated team of pollsters, media masters and tacticians ever to work there...
...The column that appears under his byline as "Metamagical Themas," an adroit rearrangement of its predecessor's letters, tends llke its author to be preoccupied with self-referentiality, a catchall theme that can seem infuriatingly cute until you begin to glimpse its ramifications...
...and mishaps "may" hedges against are technical not philosophical...
...Reagan is deft at delivering a set speech, the well-rehearsed and carefully worded address that bristles with populist phrases and riveting stories...
...2), the self-referentiality of manmade systems, is demonstrated by numerous computer programs which consult themselves and then modify themselves on finding reason to 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982...
...William Raspberry, the respected columnist for the Washington Post, said the decision was "racist in effect...
...He is confident enough in his views and secure enough within himself not to worry...
...The Economist, the British newsmagazine, explained last The Wisdom of Conservatism Edited by Peter Witonski _9 With a Preface by Senator John East A Unique Work Here in four handsome softcover volumes are what the greatest minds have to say on law, the state, sociahsm, republicanism, aristocracy, democracy, revolution, capitahsm, religion--and much more Thls impresswe anthology contains over 600,000 words--2,398 pages...
...Like Presidents before him, Reagan has continued to run against the government he heads...
...In less than a year, in this very important respect, Ronald Reagan has redefined the presidency in the words of President Kennedy as 'the vital center of action in our whole scheme of government.' " The most remarkable aspect of the Broder and Shields critiques was that Reagan was taken seriously as an ideological force, not just as an actor who happens to have transmuted his Hollywood talents into political skills...
...T h a t suspicion l i n g e r e d in some unexpected places...
...Yet there is no hint from them that they consider themselves the ventriloquists and Mr...
...For a large though special public he continues to be gratifyingly visible...
...Q--What about the unemployment situ ation Q--What do you have against Mr...
...his mailbag, abulge with offerings from the most playful (=creative) mathematicians in several countries, was what earned many a Gardner column citation in austere bibliographies...
...Nor is he at his b e s t in impromptu encounters with reporters, such as this one in January as he boarded his helicopter for Camp David: Quesnon--What about Meese...
...Carter was faulted for being an illegitimate liberal, a failure at both policymaking and managing the government, and an introvert with a low Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...
...Even on as questionable a proposal as the sale of AWACS r a d a r planes to Saudi Arabia, this President wins...
...Example: "The number 2 appears in this sentence 2 times...
...The Perfect Gift Do you know a college student who could benefit from exposure to the greatest conservatwe~wn"ters...
...Not surprisingly, she didn't measure up...
...Example (grossly oversimplified): The DNA code whereby you and I are something more than discoursing dolls ~s a set of rules for making replicas of itself...
...Machmvelh...
...Or a ded,cated conservative who loves to expand h~s or her mental horizons...
...But Raspberry stuck by his label for the tax-exemption policy...
...Some of his TV s p e e c h e s , like the one l a s t September pleading for new budget cuts, scarcely touched o f f a blip in public opinion, though...
...How can this president denounce ' a n y semblance of r a c i s m ' w h i l e h i s aides perpetrate policies and rulings that are the most racist of any federal administration since that o f Woodrow Wilson...
...Ronald Reagan has suffered little of this flagellation: Since he got to the White House, indeed from the time he d e f e a t e d Jimmy C a r t e r , Reagan has been treated with remarkable gentleness...
...With Carter's exile to Plains, it's easy m forget the intense animosity that the Washington press corps felt toward him...
...Reporters are no more immune than anyone else to his amiability, and i t ' s no fun drawing and quartering a nice fellow...
...opinion of r e p o r t e r s ' motives...
...4) Reagan as Figurehead...
...Q--Unemployment...
...He can switch and d o e s n ' t mind switching...
...The ever-supportive Wall Street J gurnal editorialized on Reagan's f i r s t a n n i v e r s a r y in office on his "failure to take h01d of the enterprise he heads...
...Gardner, no mathematician at all and puckishly proud of it, delighted in card tricks, magic squares, the Oz books, and the conceptual regularities he could smoke out of such boyish pleasures...
...But note the adjoining premise that you are a system...
...Reagan--We'll take that one from Meese Q--Meese...
...Reagan's creatures, not he t h e i r s . " And that says it quite well...
...There are reasons for this...
...Unable to lay a glove on the President, or at least unable to get in a good punch, the press has gone after Mrs...
...For the pnce of a good dress shirt you can make a gift that wdl be used and cherished for a hfetlme The I n s t i t u t e for Western Values The publisher of The Wisdom of Conservatism is a non-profit corporahon whose mission zs reminding the modern reader of the hght cast on modern problems by the wisdom of our greatest thinkers Thus these books are made &rectly avadable to the public at a remarkably low pnce to ensure a wide readership The Institute for Western Values 4413 Braddock Road Alexandria, Vlrgima 22312 Please send me _ _ sets of the deluxe shpcase e&tion of The Wisdom of Conservatlsm at $24 95 per set...
...This assertion is in Hofstadter's judgment a copout...
...Edwin Meese III has been savaged, Richard V. Allen pilloried, supplyside economics ridiculed, budget cuts sensationalized, tax reduction misconstrued, tough talk on El Salvador derided, relaxation of regulations d e n i g r a t e d , r e t r e a t from affirmative action assailed, and Nancy Reagan debunked...
...Reagan--The older generation knows that as an expression for falsehood...
...Consider that any neuron in your brain can only do what an adjacent neuron has told it to...
...Q--What is whole cloth...
...Q--Meese...
...The President, groused cons e r v a t i v e columnist M. Stanton Evans, "is close to being captured by moderate Republicans who opposed his presidential aspirations...
...Reagan--That is an entire invention that has never been heard of and there is not one shred of truth in it...
...Coleridge, Kirk...
...Instead, for this election, the conservative candidate toward whom many reporters felt ideological revulsion got fair coverage--fairer in f a c t than t h a t given to Carter...
...We are made of "trillions of self-referential molecules...
...Hobbes...
...As early as C a r t e r ' s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, his more perceptive aides saw a rift widening between Carter and the press_9 It never narrowed...
...Sometimes it goes too far even for its own party, and is forced to pull back...
...He " e i t h e r wants racism and shameful discrimination revived in America, or he is p i t i a b l y naive about what goes on around h i m , " Rowan wrote...
...So it does...
...The President is criticized for this amiable indifference, but it may be our hope for the next t h r e e years of his Presidency...
...The t e r r i b l e reality is that his administration enc o u r a g e s , s u b s i d i z e s and defends racism...
...Sad to say, there is a downside to the fairness in the coverage of Reagan...
...and Burke This collection is the key to understanding our heritage...
...Meese > Why are you trying to ride him out...
...Reagan with a vengeance, criticizing her for haughtiness, a lack of social conscience, and lavish personal spending...
...The Reagan Administration has been ideological across the board: on economic and foreign policy, on the environment, and on regulations governingthe Central Intelligence Agency...
...The criticism was considerably harsher than Rosalynn Carter experienced, even after the 1979 episode when she repeatedly interrupted her husband and provided her own answers to reporters' questions...
...He does not seek to impress with his long hours in the office or by leaking hSw many biographies of junior-varsity British generals he has read in one week . . . Reagan does not deny responsibility for his economic program...
...This means that Artificial Intelligence, since the 1960s the White Whale of innumerable research grants, is feasible in theory...
...He is applying in the White House the same techniques he employed in getting there...
...It was hedged...
...He is his administration's best salesman and spends much of his time lobbying...
...Smiles and warmth between Reagan and reporters do not constitute fair coverage, however...
...I n his f i r s t 12 months in office, Ronald Reagan s t e e r e d through Congress an economic program reversing 50 years of previous history and the handiwork of two historically giant predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson," Broder wrote in January...
...enclosed ts $ Please send me _ _ sets of the regular edmon at $19 95 per set enclosed is $. Enclosed Is my tax deductlble contnbutlon of $ to the Insntute to be used m distributing The Wisdom oJ Conservattsm [V,r~ln~a res,dems please add 4 sa~es ta~ NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE...
...Reagan--What...
...It h a s n ' t . Being seen as an even-tempered man with s u b t l e political a b i l i t i e s puts Reagan in a h i g h e r category than Jimmy C a r t e r or Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson...
...3) Reagan as Racist...
...The selections are extensive and in context--this ts not a mere collection of quotattons The Greatest Thinkers The 93 authors include Aristotle...
...Scientific American has just finished phasing him in as successor to Martin Gardner, whose "Mathematical Games" was for twenty years the main reason many people bought the magazine...
...He does not transmit the angry combativeness o~, say, a James Watt (whom Reagan is said to admire) or the humorless dogmatism of his sister across the sea, Margaret T h a t c h e r . . . Reagan's persona serves him well: he is the ideological combatant with a pleasing, Johnny Carson style...
...What does is the balanced treatment Reagan has received in cold-blooded assessments of his Presidency_9 David S. Broder of the Washington Post, the nation' s most respected political correspondent, criticized Reagan for sometimes projecting "moral meanness" during his first year in office...
...For a crisply playful approach see Raymond Smullyan's I~hat is the Name of this Book ? 1978, ch...
...Can this be the same guy ballyhooed by political w r i t e r Sidney Blumenthal in the New York Times Magazine last September as the country's Communicator in Chief...
...2b) Inference: A sufficiently intricate manmade system can resemble you and me...
...It smacks of a backhanded effort to attack Reagan himself, and'I am told this is precisely the way he interprets the rough treatment of his wife...
...Oh, Yeah...
...B~ the 1980 election, the rift had become a chasm...
...It does not display much interest in the tedious business of governing--of maintaining the morale of the federal establishment and making the whole thing go...
...That sentence makes no sense at all until you permit it to be about itself...
...One of the reassuring things about President Reagan is that he is not a prisoner of his campaign rhetoric or even of his early decisions on foreign or economic policy," Reston wrote last December...
...But there are limits, and the press is erratic in recognizing them...
...But the canards about Reagan persist, partly because there is a degree of truth to each of them...
...What's a s e l f ? What's consciousness...
...He is the first elected president since 1963 who has not been threatened by the ghost of John Kennedy and who could gracefully and graciously p r e s i d e over a White House ceremony to the memory of Robert Kennedy...
...When the flap over tax breaks for s e g r e g a t e d schools e r u p t e d in J a n u a r y , Newsweek claimed the controversy " f e d the lingering suspicion that Reagan is out of touch with his own policymaking apparatus...
...9 . . Reagan is acknowledged to have a better sense than anyone around him of 2 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 how to couch an issue in simple terms that will appeal to the public, and a sure sense of how an audience will react-capacities he demonstrated during his campaign for the Presidency...
...The most critical piece was a Newsweek cover story last December which, while scrupulously accurate in all details, held Mrs...
...The amiability and the serenity are part of Reagan's public appeal...
...Need it only be instantiated in cells...
...He knows how to use what Carl P. Leubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News called his "impressive persuasive powers...
...It has claimed a victim, Nancy Reagan...
...The amiability that he demonstrated then made the hard things he was saying go down more easily...
...Is "consciousness" perhaps just lots of smarts...
...Hofstadter, an accredited scientist with a Ph.D...
...Ronald Reagan is governing America by a new strategic doctrine--the permanent campaign," he wrote Ominously...
...He may seem vague on policy at times, he often seems to play a passive role, and he may not concern himself with details, but he has set a clear course for his Administration...
...James Reston of the New York Times has condescendingly propag a t e d this one, as have some conservative polemicists disturbed by l a p s e s in Reagan's ideology...
...This is going to run counter to a habit of thinking that conservatives have understandably developed over the past two decades, namely that the national press corps is brimming with liberal r e p o r t e r s who unfailingly provide brutal and unfair coverage of conservative politicians...
...lb) Example: We are systems and we are self-conscious...
...Q--What is whole cloth anyway...
...His aides operate freely in his name and often forget even that they are doing that...
...Try to cajole Reagan into delaying the individual income tax cuts he enacted or into lopping off a sizeable chunk of the i n c r e a s e in d e f e n s e spending...
...And there is a final reason: Ronald Reagan i s n ' t Jimmy Carter...
...Its inclination is not to engage in problem-solving--problem, solving is boring--but to take a doctrinal position and slam away...
...I f Reagan has a political ideology, Reston hasn't been notified of it yet...
...2) Manmade systems can refer to themselves...
...But ideologues tend to have a combative nature, and anyone who doesn't realize that Reagan is combative doesn't understand him yet...
...But what about Elizabeth Drew...
...True, there are many who tilt to the Left and are eager to excoriate conservatives...
...And he is awful at press conferences, which is why he has so few and those are in the afternoon, not prime time...
...It's hard to belittle success, even if the man producing it is a conservative...
...la) gives no apparent trouble, since if you're not self-conscious you're not reading this but occupying space in a home for the dim...
...Blumenthal put a faintly sinister cast on Reagan's speechifying...
...Rowland Evans and Robert Novak have made the same point repeatedly in their columns...
...Management problems are one thing, but "disengaged...
...After a telephone call from the President, Raspberry wrote t h a t he "had not called him a r a c i s t , for the simple i , reason that I don't think he is one...
...1945) emerged from academe into visibility three years ago, when his G~del, Escher, Bach became a campus bestseller (at $18.50...
...in solid state physics and an associate professorship (computer science) at Indiana University, has been quietly moving "Mathematical Games" to a different turf altogether...
...whether this is true in the strict sense logicians accord the word "system" may be another question entirely...
...Reporters then had her husband to kick around...
Vol. 15 • March 1982 • No. 3
