source: New York Times
ABROAD AT HOME; THE REAL REAGAN
For all his years in the spotlight, Ronald Reagan is a puzzle to most of us. What goes on under that genial surface? We got a rare insight at his press conference last week when the President spoke about Martin Luther King Jr. It was a moment of chilling self-revelation.
Dr. King's meaning to this country - the reason both Houses of Congress have voted to make his birthday a national holiday - is not hard to grasp. The Wall Street Journal said Dr. King shared with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill the ability ''to rouse a people from a state of despair that posed a serious threat to their societies.'' The editorial went on:
''Black U.S. citizens were not 'free' in the same sense that white U.S. citizens were free. The subject doesn't require elaboration. Everyone now knows it was true, and the reason they know it was true is that Martin Luther King made America see it.''
Opposing the King holiday was Jesse Helms, the nastiest man in the United States Senate, an embarrassment even to his conservative colleagues. As an argument, Senator Helms offered the product of what it would be kind to call J. Edgar Hoover's senile dementia: the charges that Dr. King was pro-Communist. And Senator Helms demanded access to files of this garbage, sealed by court order until the year 2027. That was the situation at the time of the press conference. ''Mr. President,'' a reporter asked, ''Senator Helms has been saying on the Senate floor that Martin Luther King Jr. . . . was a Communist sympathizer. Do you agree?''
''We'll know in about 35 years, won't we?'' That was Mr. Reagan's unforgettable answer: a nudge and a wink when dignity was necessary - and easy. He went on to say that he did not ''fault Senator Helms's sincerity.'' He had nothing to say about what Dr. King accomplished.
It could have been James Watt talking, so grotesquely inappropriate was Mr. Reagan's flippant tone. What we saw in that moment, putting it most generously, was a man utterly insensitive to the issues Dr. King raised and to the human feelings involved. We saw, under the geniality, a void.
The incident also went far to define Mr. Reagan's political instincts. His main concern in answering was political. And it was not to hold the conservative high ground, to help Republican leaders like Bob Dole and Howard Baker who had fought for the King holiday. His heart lay with Jesse Helms and the radical right. None of this is really surprising, given the views that Mr. Reagan has spread on the record in the past. But hardly anyone knows the record. It is one of the most amazing aspects of his political genius that he became President with very little public awareness of his expressed beliefs. A book to be published next month sheds much light on the Reagan record. It is ''On Reagan: The Man and His Presidency,'' by Ronnie Dugger. Mr. Dugger got one important source that the Reagan people had tried to suppress: transcripts of many of the punchy five-minute radio broadcasts that Mr. Reagan gave five days a week from 1975 to 1979. And Mr. Dugger goes back earlier. On the day of Dr. King's funeral in 1968, Mr. Reagan said that his death was ''a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they'd break.'' In short, Mr. Reagan used the occasion to associate Dr. King's death with his campaign to arouse Americans to the evil of racism by civil disobedience. The theme of Communist conspiracy has also been a Reagan constant. In a 1978 radio broadcast he said that ''known members of terrorist organizations and even Communist Party members cannot only become civil servants in government but can rise to the most sensitive government positions.'' In another broadcast he spoke of people opposed to nuclear power. It was a ''fact,'' he said, ''that behind the scenes they are being manipulated by forces sympathetic to the Soviet Union.'' On the radio in 1978 he quoted some gutter journalism to denigrate Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean Ambassador killed by a bomb in Washington. He said Mr. Letelier had ''systematically taken advantage of the human rights impulses of liberal members of Congress'' to get legislation passed limiting aid to governments that brutalize their people. He criticized what he called a ''hard-line human rights campaign.'' Or there is Mr. Reagan on poverty. In another 1978 broadcast he mocked government help for the poor, playing out an imaginary scene between one Smedley and his boss. Smedley asked for a pay cut so he could get an apartment in fancy housing for the poor. ''Smedley,'' asked his boss, ''will you invite me over for tennis and a swim?'' No one who reads Mr. Dugger's illuminating book will be surprised again at the insensitivity of Ronald Reagan.
ABROAD AT HOME; THE REAL REAGAN
For all his years in the spotlight, Ronald Reagan is a puzzle to most of us. What goes on under that genial surface? We got a rare insight at his press conference last week when the President spoke about Martin Luther King Jr. It was a moment of chilling self-revelation.
Dr. King's meaning to this country - the reason both Houses of Congress have voted to make his birthday a national holiday - is not hard to grasp. The Wall Street Journal said Dr. King shared with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill the ability ''to rouse a people from a state of despair that posed a serious threat to their societies.'' The editorial went on:
''Black U.S. citizens were not 'free' in the same sense that white U.S. citizens were free. The subject doesn't require elaboration. Everyone now knows it was true, and the reason they know it was true is that Martin Luther King made America see it.''
Opposing the King holiday was Jesse Helms, the nastiest man in the United States Senate, an embarrassment even to his conservative colleagues. As an argument, Senator Helms offered the product of what it would be kind to call J. Edgar Hoover's senile dementia: the charges that Dr. King was pro-Communist. And Senator Helms demanded access to files of this garbage, sealed by court order until the year 2027. That was the situation at the time of the press conference. ''Mr. President,'' a reporter asked, ''Senator Helms has been saying on the Senate floor that Martin Luther King Jr. . . . was a Communist sympathizer. Do you agree?''
''We'll know in about 35 years, won't we?'' That was Mr. Reagan's unforgettable answer: a nudge and a wink when dignity was necessary - and easy. He went on to say that he did not ''fault Senator Helms's sincerity.'' He had nothing to say about what Dr. King accomplished.
It could have been James Watt talking, so grotesquely inappropriate was Mr. Reagan's flippant tone. What we saw in that moment, putting it most generously, was a man utterly insensitive to the issues Dr. King raised and to the human feelings involved. We saw, under the geniality, a void.
The incident also went far to define Mr. Reagan's political instincts. His main concern in answering was political. And it was not to hold the conservative high ground, to help Republican leaders like Bob Dole and Howard Baker who had fought for the King holiday. His heart lay with Jesse Helms and the radical right. None of this is really surprising, given the views that Mr. Reagan has spread on the record in the past. But hardly anyone knows the record. It is one of the most amazing aspects of his political genius that he became President with very little public awareness of his expressed beliefs. A book to be published next month sheds much light on the Reagan record. It is ''On Reagan: The Man and His Presidency,'' by Ronnie Dugger. Mr. Dugger got one important source that the Reagan people had tried to suppress: transcripts of many of the punchy five-minute radio broadcasts that Mr. Reagan gave five days a week from 1975 to 1979. And Mr. Dugger goes back earlier. On the day of Dr. King's funeral in 1968, Mr. Reagan said that his death was ''a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they'd break.'' In short, Mr. Reagan used the occasion to associate Dr. King's death with his campaign to arouse Americans to the evil of racism by civil disobedience. The theme of Communist conspiracy has also been a Reagan constant. In a 1978 radio broadcast he said that ''known members of terrorist organizations and even Communist Party members cannot only become civil servants in government but can rise to the most sensitive government positions.'' In another broadcast he spoke of people opposed to nuclear power. It was a ''fact,'' he said, ''that behind the scenes they are being manipulated by forces sympathetic to the Soviet Union.'' On the radio in 1978 he quoted some gutter journalism to denigrate Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean Ambassador killed by a bomb in Washington. He said Mr. Letelier had ''systematically taken advantage of the human rights impulses of liberal members of Congress'' to get legislation passed limiting aid to governments that brutalize their people. He criticized what he called a ''hard-line human rights campaign.'' Or there is Mr. Reagan on poverty. In another 1978 broadcast he mocked government help for the poor, playing out an imaginary scene between one Smedley and his boss. Smedley asked for a pay cut so he could get an apartment in fancy housing for the poor. ''Smedley,'' asked his boss, ''will you invite me over for tennis and a swim?'' No one who reads Mr. Dugger's illuminating book will be surprised again at the insensitivity of Ronald Reagan.