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A history of the GOP in three easy sections
BY ADAM REILLY
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MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2004, NEW YORK -- If the crappy cover band stationed outside Madison Square Garden this morning didn’t get Republican delegates good and pumped, the stirring History of Modern Republicanism recounted on three video screens while they waited to enter the building probably did the trick. The first screen, closest to the street, offered highlights of the much-maligned Ford Administration -- which, as it turns out, wasn’t so bad after all. There’s Ford in the Oval Office, pondering how to save the S.S. Mayagüez, an American ship seized shortly after the end of the Vietnam War by Khmer Rouge forces who held its 40 crewmembers hostage. A few frames later, the American flag is hoisted over the Mayagüez after the boat and crew are rescued. Then the Mayagüez cruises into New York harbor, cheered by a cast of thousands as the towers of the World Trade Center linger in the background. Clearly, Ford was decisive. But as shown by the multiple shots of Ford with his wife, Betty--who founded the clinic that bears her name after conquering her addiction to alcoholism and painkillers -- Ford was also compassionate. And those images of Ford with leaders like Anwar Sadat and Leonid Brezhnev? Seems Ford was a statesmanlike as well. There’s a bit more going on in the video history of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, including choice moments like Barbara Bush reading Ira Sleeps Over to an antsy little Asian girl (like mother, like son), or the whole Bush clan hangin’ at Kennebunkport (and looking, it must be said, like a bunch of Eastern Elitists). But the broad contours are the same. The first Gulf War is the big story: After Saddam Hussein, looking menacing in full camouflage, strides across the screen, "41" announces that we’re going to war (decisive). In the aftermath, he confers with world leaders including -- wait for it -- Jacques Chirac (statesmanlike). As for those smiling, grateful Kuwaitis waving American flags…Well, that must mean that the prosecution of Gulf War I was compassionate, too. The big winner, though, is the recently departed Ronald Reagan, who gets a full-fledged hagiography. No surprise there, given the embarrassingly uncritical love-fest that followed his death earlier this year. We start with a clip of the attempted assassination of Reagan by John Hinckley. Then, like some sort of Republican Christ, Reagan comes back to us, giving an A-OK sign from his hospital window, chuckling into the camera, and being welcomed back with a thunderous ovation by the members of Congress. That’s not all: there are long, lingering shots of Ron and Nancy (or "Mommy," as Ronnie liked to call her) gazing into each others’ eyes, panoramic views of rolling, unpopulated fields, even a black and white clip of Allied soldiers storming of the beach at Normandy in World War II. But Reagan, viewers soon realize, had some of the same qualities as Ford and Bush the Elder. As we see Reagan address a cheering crowd in front of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we’re reminded that -- with his hard-line anticommunist stance that contributed to the Soviet Union’s eventual demise -- Reagan was decisive. But those shots of Reagan with Pope John Paul II, with Margaret Thatcher, and most of all with Mikhail Gorbachev -- smiling, shaking hands, patting each other on the back—Reagan was statesmanlike also. As for compassion? Actually, that’s a bit trickier. When Reagan cocks his head and smiles an avuncular smile, or gives a cheery thumbs-up, he looks optimistic, not compassionate. Maybe that’s why he used America’s most vulnerable populations as rhetorical and policy-making piñatas! But never fear: the compassionate criteria for Reagan is satisfied in reverse -- through our knowledge that Alzheimer’s took his life, and the shots of Ronnie and Nancy, fully aware of the horrible fate that awaits, gamely smiling for the cameras. The problem with this cheery History of Modern Republicanism, of course, is that it’s absurdly abridged. Take the Mayagüez. Yeah, the Mayagüez was rescued with its 40 crewmembers unharmed. But the military operation to rescue the ship was an ill-planned disaster, with 50 servicemen wounded and 41 killed. Maybe being decisive isn’t always a good thing. Much the same point can be made about the first Gulf War, which resulted in the Kurds being hung out to dry by "41" and intensified the American military presence in Saudi Arabia -- which, in turn, stoked the nascent radicalism of one Osama Bin Laden. Even Reagan’s decisiveness was a mixed bag: remember that without US support for anti- Soviet Islamic rebels, the Taliban would probably never have come to be. And that’s only scratching the surface of Republican foreign policy. Throw domestic policy into the mix, and it’s obvious the Cliffs Notes history the delegates got this morning was so incomplete that it borders on worthless. Maybe that’s why there was no sound as the footage rolled this morning. The pictures looked nice, and until you actually thought about them, they made you feel warm and fuzzy. This week in New York, that’s what’s really important.
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