Hooray for Hollywood

The Great Delegator

Adrian Wooldridge in The Times Book Review: On the afternoon before the opening of the Group of 7 summit meeting in 1983, James Baker, the White House chief of staff, dropped in on Ronald Reagan to deliver a briefing book. The United States was the host of the conference, the only one held on American soil during the Reagan presidency; the administration had pre-emptively billed the meeting as a triumph; and Baker, worried about his boss's lack of preparation and aware that "Reaganomics" wasn't universally popular, had taken a lot of trouble compiling the briefings, which were both concise and comprehensive. On returning the next morning, Baker was furious to discover that the book lay exactly where he had left it - and confronted his boss with his failure to do his prep. Reagan's unflustered reply: "Well, Jim, 'The Sound of Music' was on last night."

Hmm, since the VCR was invented in the 70s, you'd think the leader of the free world would've had access to one. Oh well; at least he had good taste.

I'm not among those who wanna chisel Reagan onto Mount Rushmore--I remember the 80s, and essentially all he did was walk tall in a way the country wanted, and probably needed, after Jimmy Carter's self-effacing four years. Along the way he institutionalized huge budget deficits with a tax policy borrowed from the back of a napkin, tried to close the departments of Education and Environment, added 'welfare queen' to the national lexicon, cut and run out of Lebanon, gutted federal regulations in every field....

Aside from his policies, Reagan, like Carter, was a decent man. Unlike Carter, the people around Reagan weren't. His force of personality though was so great that the fellow conservatives he brought into power for the most part kept a lid on their worst impulses while he was around.

But after eight years Reagan rode off back into the California sunset, leaving his conservatives behind. And the longer they stayed in or near power, the more their most venal attributes came to the forefront.

And now under G.W. Bush, the inmates are running the institution; without someone who they really respect at the head of the table, they do whatever they want.

Until they're indicted, or thrown out of office.

Screen grab of Christopher Plummer's Captain Von Trapp and his kids from The Sound of Music, found on various websites.