My point, Victor, was not that you were mistaken about the Gipper–I agree with your every assertion about the record–but that your discussion was, well (here I take a deep breath) incomplete.

Was Reagan a saint? An exemplar of ideological purity? Certainly not. He was a working politician who made lots of mistakes and loads of compromises. That’s your argument, and I grant it, completely and utterly and with a smile on my face.

Even granting your argument, however, I’d still insist that Reagan established a standard that remains valid and useful, even today: Not some mythical standard of purity, but the very real standard of coherence. Reagan communicated his principles and agenda so clearly, and with such fundamental honesty, that everybody knew the difference between a measure that advanced his agenda (tax cuts, huge new defense expenditures) and measures that were forced upon him (tax increases, “voluntary” quotas on Japanese cars).

This is more of an achievement than it might sound. Everbody understood what Reaganomics was. But Bushonomics? The very idea is ridiculous. Why? Because in seven years in office George W. Bush has failed to advance a coherent economic agenda. He’s been good on tax cuts. But on spending? If we listen to Mike Gerson, Bush went ahead with huge increases in domestic spending because he really believed in some large portion of them–”compassionate conservatism” and all that. Listen to other accounts, though, and he was simply putting up with Denny Hastert and the GOP majority in the House and Senate. Which was it? Were the huge increases in domestic spending part of Bush’s program? Or instead a long and sorry series of measures he felt he had no choice but to accept? You can examine the Bush record in detail, read the transcripts of his press conferences, study all his speeches–and you’ll still come away scratching your head.

The Reagan standard that remains valid and relevant, to repeat, isn’t one of purity but of coherence. As I tried to argue lateish yesterday, Romney fails the standard–who on earth can put together his history in Massachusetts with his plenitude of positions as a candidate and come up with anything that approaches coherence–whereas Fred Thompson meets it.

There. I wasn’t disagreeing with you, Victor–not exactly. I was suggesting that your argument, while entirely valid as far as it went, didn’t go, to suit yours truly, quite far enough.