There are still a few people attempting to fight against the now-prevailing wisdom that Reagan ended the Cold War through his policies, claiming that he just had the good luck to be president when it happened. Now, of course one can never know for sure what the causes were, but I find it interesting that some people are determined to continue to attempt to prove that it wasn’t Reagan’s doing. I wonder why they have such a powerful emotional investment in that?

They should consider something–if there were a good case to be made for their position, then it should have persuaded many of those on the fence, and perhaps even some who originally thought that it was Reagan’s doing, to change their opinion, but I don’t see that happening.

From James Lileks, to Bill Whittle, Matt Welch, Roger Simon and others, many people this past week have confessed that they thought Reagan was a dunce at the time, but they’ve seen the light now. This kind of commentary has abounded in comments sections as well. But I haven’t seen a single post or comment anywhere to the effect that someone thought Reagan was great at the time, but now they realize he was an idiot who had nothing to do with defeating the Soviet Union.

I wonder why that is?

[Update a few minutes later]

And yes, I do realize that I’ve just motivated them to start leaving me spurious comments with unverifiable claims about how brilliant they thought that Reagan was at the time, but that now they’re older and wiser.

I point this out preemptively to make their claims all the more ridiculous, since none have appeared spontaneously heretofore.

The day after his interment is the seventeenth anniversary of Reagan’s famous challenge to Gorbachev. It happened on June 12, 1987.

The day after his interment is the seventeenth anniversary of Reagan’s famous challenge to Gorbachev. It happened on June 12, 1987.

The day after his interment is the seventeenth anniversary of Reagan’s famous challenge to Gorbachev. It happened on June 12, 1987.

From James Taranto today:

We didn’t have time to see the casket, but we did see the people lining up for the viewing–the backdrop for Couric’s makeshift outdoor set. Reagan, of course, was more responsible than anyone else for the end of communism, a system among whose lesser horrors were that it forced people to spend much of their lives in queues for such necessities as food and toilet paper. Somehow then it seems a fitting tribute that thousands of free men and women would voluntarily wait in line to pay their last respects.

I’m watching the ceremony as the casket is being taken down the Capitol steps, and the cannons firing on the mall, and just thinking about how embarrassing it would be if they screwed up and put real loads in them, and took out a few government buildings.

Somehow, considering who it was in honor of, it would have been fitting, especially if they were pointing south toward HHS. If I ever get a state funeral, that would be one of my requests. They’d need a little more range, but I might have them target a certain building over on E Street, too.

Andrew Sullivan has a nice collection of foolish quotes about Reagan from the eighties. This one in particular caught my eye:

“Are we rushing headlong into the next step of those 40 years of progressions by which we do something then they do something, by which we pretend that we’re going to build this and it will somehow strengthen our deterrent then they do it, and low and behold, the next thing we know is, the President of the United States is addressing the nation saying,

Krogers and the Perkins restaurant chain are taking down their idiotic “Please Come In And Rob The Disarmed Victims In Our Establishment” signs in Ohio.

In a letter announcing the removal of the signs, Marc Teaberry, the executive vice president of Perkins Family Restaurants, noted that the restaurant chain has “numerous locations in Pennsylvania, which has always had a concealed weapon law, and have never had any problems.” Teaberry added that the company, in posting the signs, had received “bad advice” from its attorneys.

That’s putting it mildly.

Ohioans For Concealed Carry said it also has received reports that Kroger stores in the Cincinnati Division (which includes greater Dayton) had begun removing their “no guns allowed” signs.

“It is not yet known if this action is in any way related to the assault and robbery of a 70-year old Kroger customer outside a posted store on May 23,” Ohioans For Concealed Carry said in a press release.

Yes, they are.

We are very happy that the coup failed because we have now really destroyed the communist empire, the Soviet state, and of course, as
Ronald Reagan said, it was indeed an evil empire and we are glad that it
is gone from the earth.

– Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin Foreign Minister, speaking to ABC’s Sam Donaldson, after the communist hard-liners coup attempt failed in 1991.

I don’t know if people have speculated about this previously, but as an alternate history, what if Reagan had beaten Ford for the nomination in 1976? Would he have beaten Carter then, or did we have to live with him for four years to realize what a lousy president he was?

It’s not clear to what extent Ford lost because of general backlash over Watergate, or because of the Nixon pardon, or because of the debate gaffe, in which he said that Poland wasn’t under the thumb of the Soviets. Reagan would have likely suffered only from the first factor. If he did lose to Carter, would he have gotten the nomination again in 1980 and beaten him then (I suppose the answer to that depends partially on how close the race was in ’76)?

And if he’d won, would the Cold War have ended that much sooner as well? Would we have avoided the stagflation, the sky-high interest rates? Would we have avoided the Iran hostage crisis, which was arguably our first of many acts of irresolution toward Islamic aggression, which ultimately led to September 11?

One more thought–one wonders how much different things might have gone if he hadn’t been shot. That was what gave him the political momentum to get much of his agenda passed in his first term. Ironically, while Reagan didn’t fire a single shot to win the Cold War, perhaps John Hinckley’s single shot was responsible…