I WAS RECENTLY ASKED about President Bush’s chances of a political resurgence. Might Mr. Bush be able to recover as strongly as President Reagan did from a slump in his second term in the 1980s? My response was, Reagan recovery? What Reagan recovery? Though he continued his ultimately successful fight to win the Cold War, Reagan achieved nothing new–practically nothing–after the Iran-contra scandal broke in 1986. His presidency was crippled. The Republicans had lost the Senate. His nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 was defeated, partly because of feeble White House support. His veto of a transportation bill was overridden.
The question was innocent enough, but it reflected a broader pattern of misrepresentation of Ronald Reagan’s record in the White House that has become not only widespread but widely accepted. Reagan was, I believe, one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century, but many of the things that both liberals and conservatives now credit to his presidency simply never were. And there’s a political purpose behind this Reagan revisionism. He is cited mostly to criticize Bush and congressional Republicans for falling short of some mythical Reagan standard.
