PUBLIC NUISANCES: A Great Gentleman/Reagan on the Rock
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. A Great Gentleman WASHINGTON HE OLD COWBOY IS GONE. The oldest man ever to be elected president lived on to be the oldest ex-president, and we...
...The Old Cowboy held his own and told his aides he wanted more of these egghead soirees...
...Now friends and erstwhile critics alike are acknowledging that he achieved all this through noble character and intellect...
...Some earlier presidents have established it too...
...The day ended with dinner at a local hotel...
...He talked about Hollywood and politics...
...Bill's treatment of the Ten Commandments as a buffet makes some churchgoers uneasy...
...It all began on July 26, 1988, when I had President Reagan as my guest at a small dinner party in my home...
...Recognizing that one could not simply start dynamiting new sites on a crowded mountaintop, we suggested that the amount of disturbed rock be kept to "an absolute minimum...
...He would through the years steadily coax his party and his nation toward those convictions, but those are only the marks of a great statesman, not of a political genius...
...As I say, the press was mightily impressed by our energies on Ronald Reagan's behalf...
...They remain ignorant of growth economics...
...The Rushmore proposal is an old one, one that I had a hand in creating and that the Washington Times transformed into a national cause...
...Even in today's eulogies the eulogists sniff that he left the economy with a huge deficit...
...Columnist James Reston catalogued the imperfections: "Reagan's easy optimism, his amiable incompetence, his tolerance of dubs and sleaze, his cronyism, his preoccupation with stars, his indifference to facts and convenient forgetfulness...
...The President accepted the bibelot graciously, and the evening continued with lively conversation...
...Through his two terms he had had me over to the White House regularly...
...Over the years other members of the Committee for Monumental Progress have grown dissatisfied with forcing President Reagan to share "stone time" with Washington, Jefferson, TR, and Lincoln...
...Even Bill Clinton has expressed a desire to eulogize in the hallowed precincts of the National Cathedral, though his selfless offer has been declined...
...At any rate, caught in the spirit of bereavement and of patriotism, Americans of all political persuasions are competing to come up with suitable ways to memorialize the Old Cowboy...
...The committee was named the Committee for Monumental Progress (CMP) and the idea spread nationwide after major national news organs went berserk over the press release...
...Doffing our hats to Soviet economic advances, we proposed that the monumental nose, chin, and ear be created in cement supplied by the Soviet Union, whose engineers were then "justly acclaimed as world leaders in this field...
...Standing at my door in the pouring rain with security helicopters overhead, a couple hundred security men in and around the house, and his personal bartender at work in the kitchen, he said, "Bob, I'm sorry for all of this...
...The President expressed his insight that the Russian people had a yearning for religion...
...The oldest man ever to be elected president lived on to be the oldest ex-president, and we who were his friends and allies have lived on to hear him praised in the media's eulogies for his achievements and ¡¡even for his intelligence...
...The conservative movement's first president was also the first supply-side president...
...He corrected me when I remarked that while convalescing from his gunshot wound he lifted weights and put an inch of muscle on his chest: "An inch and a half, Bob...
...Before the Reagan presidency three supposedly gifted pols "rushed wildly at things...
...He insisted he was on course and when I suggested he call in some conservative writers to exchange ideas he gave me the task of gathering them...
...Some at the table thought him na?ve, but he thought he had worked things out with the Soviets...
...I did mybest to keep him in touch with writers and ideas and he always enjoyed the discussions, especially on economics...
...That prompted me to establish a public-spirited committee in support of the project and to put out a press release...
...Such lunkheaded enthusiasms were just the sort of thing liberal journalists expected from conservatives...
...In reciprocation of his hospitality to me I promised an evening with some clever libertarian-conservative writers, and up the road he came on July 26 with 300 or so of his favorite security men...
...I like to think that what captured the liberal media's fascination was our committee's expressed concern for the environment and our demonstration of respect for the Soviet Union with an eye to renewed detente...
...Though he entered the White House an accomplished writer (the recently published Reagan: A Life in Letters makes that clear), a fairly erudite reader of history, philosophy, and economics, as well as a companion to such luminaries as Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley, his liberal antagonists through all eight years of his enormously successful presidency remained adamant: Ronald Reagan was a dolt...
...If the Soviets could not afford the cement, our committee would pick up the tab...
...My most memorable salon with him came in July of 1988 when he dined at my home with a dozen writers...
...PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR...
...That night he told us of the religious impulse he thought he had espied in Russia and in Mikhail Gorbachev...
...Do not despair George W! From when I first broke bread with him as a college student working on his tentative 1968 presidential campaign, to my last melancholy goodbye in his California offices in the 1990s, he grew to be the American conservative movement's first president and one of the 20th century's two greatest presidents...
...President Reagan liked writers...
...Afterwards the story of Reagan's face appearing on Mount Rushmore began popping up in the news after the Washington Times' John Elvin ran our drawing in his newspaper column...
...Vic Gold, an old friend of mine, suggested we make the evening memorable by giving our guest a drawing of Mount Rushmore with his face on it...
...We suggested affixing to Mount Rushmore "a concrete nose and chin, and possibly a simulacrum of Reagan's left ear...
...On MSNBC historian Doris Kearns Goodwin notes that Reagan established an intense connection with the American people thanks to television...
...As with Franklin Roosevelt, President Reagan changed national policy in both spheres, bringing an end to the Cold War and, at home, a prosperity that still endures...
...Then came the gesture to further detente with the soon-to-be-expired Soviet Union...
...Moreover, he was an avid reader, with newspapers and political intellectual reviews often on his reading table...
...All these details I quote from our historic press release...
...We met in the cabinet room with editors from Commentary, National Review, and Policy Review...
...The Old Cowboy was a great gentleman...
...Midst the eulogies we often ignore how often he was so alone in his perceptions even from other conservatives and how often in his isolation he was the only one who was right...
...Well, maybe it was...
...Still, that is not the stuff of political genius...
...Now with the publication of Reagan, In His Own Hand and Reagan: A Life in Letters we know that the President was a competent writer, both of letters and radio scripts...
...In death the estimates have softened, but not completely...
...Some have suggested Mount Everest...
...Yes, he was eloquent...
...That was a political task worth undertaking...
...Relying on my "special relationship" with the president, who was now in retirement and had time on his hands, we envisaged commissioning a sculptor to make a mold of Reagan's head, which could then be enlarged using "advanced holographic techniques...
...What marked him as a political genius was the gift of timing...
...To be sure he could work a crowd...
...Governor Reagan was as at ease with awkward students as he was with adults...
...During his presidency he would call some of us from time to time to comment on our columns and to get ideas from outside the White House...
...He did not need to look into our eyes and act like an adolescent to leave a mark...
...An interest of his, rarely acknowledged by his critics, was writing and reading...
...Once, during one of the occasional periods when he was being accused of losing touch with his conservative base, he called me at my Indiana office...
...Do not rush wildly at things," the Renaissance statesman, historian, and philosopher Guicciardini advised in the 16th century while chronicling King Ferdinand V of Aragon's political genius, ""do not precipitate them, wait for them to mature in their own season...
...He had a gift that only the great politicians have...
...The Reagan administration left office with a vigorous economy growing so robustly that the deficit was a shrinking percentage of GNP that in time would vanish...
...When first we met in 1968 his political advisers were testing the waters for a presidential run, and I was asked to gather some pretty girls from the Indiana University campus to greet him at the Indianapolis airport...
...He did it with warmth, not the trashy personal exuberance of present-day politics...
...The California Governor was surrounded by aides and Republican dignitaries with whom he was at ease, but he came over to our table too...
...Professor Goodwin overlooked policy and ignored character...
...Leaving office after years of economic growth and with American security ensured, the 40th president of the United States was still abominated by his insensate critics...
...Possibly the demurral was made on moral grounds...
...He had convictions and the courage to stand alone on behalf of those convictions...
...This column originally appeared in the New York Sum) Reagan on the Rock WASHINGTON R' EAGANITES OF LONG MEMORY, recalling all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that the liberal ntelligentsia displayed while the 40th presi dent of the United States restored the economy and made ready the embalming of communism, are by now agreeably surprised by the nation's spontaneous reverence for the deceased president...
...Most frequently heard are suggestions to place Ronald Reagan's handsome face on the ten dollar bill or on Mount Rushmore...
...She mentioned Harding, who I assume did it without television...
...Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter all attempted grand things and all came to ruin...
...He gave the story another boost the following spring, whereupon a Village Voice columnist speculated on the proposition at scholarly length...
...Drawing from the principles and policies of a conservative movement that had been gestating since World War II, President Reagan relied on his instinctive political timing to revive the economy, pressure the Soviets around the world, and, with a massive military build-up, bankrupt them...
...He was also a political genius...
...A Great Gentleman WASHINGTON HE OLD COWBOY IS GONE...
...The concrete appendages would then be attached by a metal frame and "thewhole thing suspended next to Abraham Lincoln in such a manner that the mountain's indigenous moss might double as Reagan's hair...
...A great president changes national policy either in the domestic sphere or in the foreign policy sphere...
...They now suggest we give him his own mountain...
...There you have it, Ronald Reagan, the Warren G. Harding of his day...
...That last item would have amused him...
...Even in 1968 he radiated something special, a touch of class...
...He wanted to express his gratitude to us...
...When professional Washington fundraisers started raising money for the project, the press grew in confidence that this was a serious undertaking...
Vol. 37 • July 2004 • No. 6
