Duncan Currie: The Way We Weren’t
[Duncan Currie is deputy managing editor of National Review Online.]
Back in the first season of Mad Men, while pitching a new ad campaign to the suits from Eastman Kodak, creative whiz Don Draper describes nostalgia as “a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.” Will Rogers put it less artfully: “Things ain’t what they used to be and probably never was.”
That nugget of wisdom should be kept in mind amid our latest bout of self-indulgent handwringing over America’s “toxic”/“poisonous”/“hateful” political climate. No question, the present environment is drenched in buffoonish conspiracy-mongering and reckless demagoguery, with bilious commentary emanating from both right and left. But in yearning for the good old days of temperate rhetoric and social comity, we are imagining a past that never existed.
It certainly didn’t exist under George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, the two polarizing Baby Boomers who inspired all manner of kooky accusations and nasty vitriol. While the 41st president is now hailed by many as the “good Bush” — the mild-mannered patrician who defied the anti-tax crowd, signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, bolstered clean-air regulations, and pressured Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians — he was once demonized over Willie Horton and Iran-Contra. Likewise, the mythical Ronald Reagan bears little resemblance to the actual Reagan, who during his presidency was smeared as a racially insensitive, moronic Social Darwinist who wanted to shred the safety net, risk nuclear war with the Soviets, and bankroll “death squads” in Central America. As Reagan biographer Steve Hayward noted last week, “the ‘tone’ of public discourse in the 1980s was just as bad as today.” On the loopier fringes of our politics, the Gipper and Bush 41 were — are — charged with using the CIA and the Contras to spread crack cocaine among inner-city blacks....
Read entire article at National Review
Back in the first season of Mad Men, while pitching a new ad campaign to the suits from Eastman Kodak, creative whiz Don Draper describes nostalgia as “a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.” Will Rogers put it less artfully: “Things ain’t what they used to be and probably never was.”
That nugget of wisdom should be kept in mind amid our latest bout of self-indulgent handwringing over America’s “toxic”/“poisonous”/“hateful” political climate. No question, the present environment is drenched in buffoonish conspiracy-mongering and reckless demagoguery, with bilious commentary emanating from both right and left. But in yearning for the good old days of temperate rhetoric and social comity, we are imagining a past that never existed.
It certainly didn’t exist under George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, the two polarizing Baby Boomers who inspired all manner of kooky accusations and nasty vitriol. While the 41st president is now hailed by many as the “good Bush” — the mild-mannered patrician who defied the anti-tax crowd, signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, bolstered clean-air regulations, and pressured Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians — he was once demonized over Willie Horton and Iran-Contra. Likewise, the mythical Ronald Reagan bears little resemblance to the actual Reagan, who during his presidency was smeared as a racially insensitive, moronic Social Darwinist who wanted to shred the safety net, risk nuclear war with the Soviets, and bankroll “death squads” in Central America. As Reagan biographer Steve Hayward noted last week, “the ‘tone’ of public discourse in the 1980s was just as bad as today.” On the loopier fringes of our politics, the Gipper and Bush 41 were — are — charged with using the CIA and the Contras to spread crack cocaine among inner-city blacks....