The Week

After parting company with high-powered and high-priced lawyer Robert Bennett by mutual consent, Dan Rostenkowski has hired Dan Webb, a Chicago attorney, who will present a “vigorous and compelling defense.” It is speculated that Mr. Webb will charge only ten sheets of first-class stamps per hour, about seven sheets less than Mr. Bennett.

Because even the most innocent remark can turn into a double entendre in President Clinton’s mouth, his speech at the D-Day commemoration was awaited with some trepidation. In the event it was a success: a fitting and modest tribute to those who had fought for freedom on the Normandy beaches. But Mr. Clinton’s supporters were nervous enough to take precautions against one particular disaster, namely unflattering comparisons with President Reagan’s eloquent Normandy speeches of a decade ago. Softening the memory of Mr. Clinton’s draft-dodging (and blurring some vital distinctions in the process), the New York Times reminded us that Mr. Reagan had also been a “noncombatant.” In The New Republic, the usually genial Michael Kinsley had a fit of, ahem, meanspiritedness. Mr. Reagan, he sniffed, had been “ostensibly” barred from combat because of poor eyesight; but “like so much of the Reagan myth, this matter has never been nailed down.” Unfortunately for Mr. Kinsley and the Times, Edmund Morris, Mr. Reagan’s official biographer, proceeded to nail it down good and hard. In a letter to the Washington Post, where Mr. Kinsley’s column had also appeared, he wrote: “Documents preserved at the National Archives’ Personnel Record Center at St. Louis show that Mr. Reagan applied for a commission in the U.S. Army Enlisted Corps on Feb. 27, 1935, when he was still a radio announcer in Des Moines. He was accepted for training as a cavalry officer, and after completing nine courses (at an average grade of 90.6 per cent) was made a second lieutenant on June 18, 1937. Reserve-officer status made him an early prospect for draft into the Regular Army in the summer of 1941. By then he was a rising star at Warner Brothers, and the studio pleaded vehemently for deferments. His only personal request, as a married man and father, was to be excused active duty ‘until war is actually declared, at which time I will be more than glad to serve my country.’ On Nov. 13, 1941, Lt. Reagan was subjected to physical examination at Fort MacArthur, Calif., and declared ‘permanently incapacitated for Active Duty due to compound myopic astigmatism—bilateral, severe—distant vision 6/200 both eyes without glasses.’ This meant that should he pop his scleral contact lenses in battle, a hostile body clearly visible to normal-sighted soldiers at 200 feet would have to approach to 6 feet before Mr. Reagan focused on it. Not surprisingly, he was denied an AD posting, and ordered to ‘limited service’ in San Francisco on April 14, 1942. I will not detail Mr. Reagan’s subsequent rise to the adjutancy of the 18th USAAF Base at Culver City, except to say it was as honorable, and dreary, as that of any other young soldier compelled to stay stateside after Pearl Harbor. They also served who only stood and waited, and typed and cooked and catalogued and filmed without imagining that any of their children would consider such conduct craven half a century later.” Dismissed.

Featured Tags

William F. Buckley Jr.

After parting company with high-powered and high-priced lawyer Robert Bennett by mutual consent, Dan Rostenkowski has hired Dan Webb, a Chicago attorney, who will present a “vigorous and compelling defense.” It is speculated that Mr. Webb will charge only ten sheets of first-class stamps per hour, about seven sheets less than Mr. Bennett.

Because even the most innocent remark can turn into a double entendre in President Clinton’s mouth, his speech at the D-Day commemoration was awaited with some trepidation. In the event it was a success: a fitting and modest tribute to those who had fought for freedom on the Normandy beaches. But Mr. Clinton’s supporters were nervous enough to take precautions against one particular disaster, namely unflattering comparisons with President Reagan’s eloquent Normandy speeches of a decade ago. Softening the memory of Mr. Clinton’s draft-dodging (and blurring some vital distinctions in the process), the New York Times reminded us that Mr. Reagan had also been a “noncombatant.” In The New Republic, the usually genial Michael Kinsley had a fit of, ahem, meanspiritedness. Mr. Reagan, he sniffed, had been “ostensibly” barred from combat because of poor eyesight; but “like so much of the Reagan myth, this matter has never been nailed down.” Unfortunately for Mr. Kinsley and the Times, Edmund Morris, Mr. Reagan’s official biographer, proceeded to nail it down good and hard. In a letter to the Washington Post, where Mr. Kinsley’s column had also appeared, he wrote: “Documents preserved at the National Archives’ Personnel Record Center at St. Louis show that Mr. Reagan applied for a commission in the U.S. Army Enlisted Corps on Feb. 27, 1935, when he was still a radio announcer in Des Moines. He was accepted for training as a cavalry officer, and after completing nine courses (at an average grade of 90.6 per cent) was made a second lieutenant on June 18, 1937. Reserve-officer status made him an early prospect for draft into the Regular Army in the summer of 1941. By then he was a rising star at Warner Brothers, and the studio pleaded vehemently for deferments. His only personal request, as a married man and father, was to be excused active duty ‘until war is actually declared, at which time I will be more than glad to serve my country.’ On Nov. 13, 1941, Lt. Reagan was subjected to physical examination at Fort MacArthur, Calif., and declared ‘permanently incapacitated for Active Duty due to compound myopic astigmatism—bilateral, severe—distant vision 6/200 both eyes without glasses.’ This meant that should he pop his scleral contact lenses in battle, a hostile body clearly visible to normal-sighted soldiers at 200 feet would have to approach to 6 feet before Mr. Reagan focused on it. Not surprisingly, he was denied an AD posting, and ordered to ‘limited service’ in San Francisco on April 14, 1942. I will not detail Mr. Reagan’s subsequent rise to the adjutancy of the 18th USAAF Base at Culver City, except to say it was as honorable, and dreary, as that of any other young soldier compelled to stay stateside after Pearl Harbor. They also served who only stood and waited, and typed and cooked and catalogued and filmed without imagining that any of their children would consider such conduct craven half a century later.” Dismissed.