LAST CALL: A Touch of Evil
Carney, Timothy P.
LAST CALL TIMOTHY P. CARNEY A Touch of Evil In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride¡ªthe temptation of blithely declaring...
...Post peacenik Colman McCarthy called it "a return to a 1981 outburst that the Soviets are liars and cheats...
...Rep...
...Reagan's critics couldn't understand why he would needlessly antagonize the Soviets, because they didn't see victory as an option...
...Speaker, the only thing the President didn't tell us last night was that the evil empire was about to launch the death star against the United States...
...And the Speaker, Tip O'Neill, nowadays touted as Reagan's good bipartisan buddy, had his own theological axe to grind...
...Both preachments lower [Reagan's] thinking to the level ofAyatollah Khomeini...
...1/4 Timothy P Carney is a reporter for the Evans-Novak Political Report...
...That the state-controlled Russian press disdained the speech should not surprise...
...He's got ice water for blood...
...He's cold...
...Ed Markey summarized Reagan's position thus: "The force of evil is the Soviet Union and they are Darth Vader...
...But a chorus of angry voices arose in the U.S...
...Tom Downey said, "Mr...
...Back in D.C., Washington Post doyenne Mary McGrory called the performance "a marvelous parody of a revivalist minister, flaying those laggards who refuse to join his crusade against the nuclear freeze and the 'evilempire' of the Soviet Union...
...The evil," he retorted, "is in the White House at the present time, and that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse...
...as well...
...We are Luke Skywalker and we are the force of good...
...LAST CALL TIMOTHY P. CARNEY A Touch of Evil In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride¡ªthe temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil...
...Evil Empire," while flashing two discreet thumbs up...
...But the president's words¡ªhis calling evil by its name¡ªhad a different impact behind the Iron Curtain than in Manhattan...
...Tom Wicker called the presumption that the Evil Empire was, well, evil, a "dangerous doctrine" that could do real damage to the balance of powers...
...In the New York Times, columnist Anthony Lewis called it "primitive" and wondered "What must the leaders of Western Europe think of such a speech...
...He's mean...
...The only hope for world order, they said, was peaceful coexistence...
...In a commemorative column in Time, Joe Klein, no conservative, relays the story of his visit to Moscow in 1987...
...In Congress, the halls reverberated with Democratic mockery...
...A news story quoted former Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg as saying, "Something like the speech to the evangelicals is not presidential?' Sister publication Newsweek joined the pile on, predicting that the speech would hobble the president's re-election chances...
...A chunky young Russian whispered to him, "Ronald Reagan...
...From the House floor, Rep...
...Historian Henry Steele Commager, already long in the tooth, declared that this was "the worst presidential speech in history, and I've read them all...
Vol. 37 • July 2004 • No. 6
