My dear friend and colleague Peter Robinson did not quite read what I wrote; after explaining why Reagan was a great president, I qualified his pragmatism by using adverbs like “reluctantly” and qualifiers like “faced with congressional and popular opposition, he relented ..”.

I don’t think anything I wrote about immigration, tax increases, Supreme Court appointments, Lebanon, Iran-Contra,or advocacy for global nuclear disarmament” was either factually incorrect, or cited gratuitously to denigrate Reagan, but rather to show that a visionary once in office, and often in a minority in a tripartite system of government had to, well, govern and that meant a lot of both compromises and mistakes–which is exactly not what were hearing from the candidates who bash each with allegations of contemporary various sins with the club of Reagan purity.

I can certainly would agree that none of the present cohort has either Reagan’s conservative vision or his rhetorical skills, but unfortunately that distinction is not made, much less is the quite different landscape of 1980. Instead in ahistorical fashion, Reagan has become a sort of divine barometer that is unfair both to Reagan the man and the candidates themselves.

So there is a sort of Orwellian group-think going on where a candidate starts in on a ranting exaggerated indictment such as-” [my opponent] has raised taxes, shown himself to be naive on foreign policy, appointed less than genuine conservative judges, and supported the biggest amnesty bill in history-and what we need to do is to go back and follow Ronald Reagan.”

Contrast this with the relative silence about the remarkable, indeed historic ongoing turn-around in Iraq, and the brilliant Sherman-like role of David Petraeus, and the credit due George Bush for finding the right general and not bailing on Iraq when in many in his party were suggesting just that.