LA Times Op-Ed: Palin and Reagan

[Turborama]

For anyone who's getting concerned about "if Reagan could do it..."

Palin and Reagan

The former Alaska governor uses him to simplify issues and to skip serious thinking.

Op-Ed

By Craig Fehrman

=snip=

... Which brings us to Palin's most egregious analogy: that she and Ronald Reagan are alike. As she has upped her number of candidate-like appearances, Palin has also upped her Reagan references. In September, she headlined the Iowa Republican Party's Ronald Reagan Dinner. (A sample line: "The Obama administration foreign policy is a far cry from Ronald Reagan days.") Last month, at another high-profile Republican event, this one in Florida and behind closed doors, Palin reportedly defended her presidential chances by pointing out that Reagan's critics claimed he, too, was unelectable, until he won the presidency.

Indeed. In 1976, an Esquire profile of Reagan appeared with the following headline: "Would you buy a used car from this man? Of course you would. That's the problem." But Palin's trajectory and Reagan's don't match. Reagan used his status as an entertainer to become a politician; Palin is using her status as a politician to become an entertainer.

Reagan also spent time reading, thinking and testing his political philosophy. In addition to hosting "General Electric Theater," Reagan toured the company's plants, developing and delivering an ultimately anti-government manifesto that came to be known as "The Speech." When Esquire asked Reagan about his conversion from FDR Democrat to Goldwater Republican, he responded not by dropping names but by describing a process: "It wasn't any case of some mentor coming in and talking me out of it. I did it in my own speeches."

Reagan couldn't escape charges of unseriousness. But the truth is, he worked on his content, in addition to his image.

On this count, Palin falls disastrously short...

Full article: http://articles.latimes.com/print/2010/nov/15/opinion/la-oe-fehrman-20101115

Also, for some more perspective, he served 2 terms as governor and had a long history in politics before that. http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/09/03/wasilla-in-debt/">Mayor Sarah Palin managed to run into debt and badly http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/an-wasillan-on.html">mismanaged what is essentially a village in the boondocks of Alaska before being a half term governor/unreality TV 'personality'.

[tabasco]

1. Reagan was barely awake when he was president.

He was a puppet of the super-rich war profiteers and did a good job reading his lines.