Prometheus 6

Mr. Brooks, figuring we're far enough from the actual event to make it safe, is rewriting history.

Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

The distortion concerns a speech Ronald Reagan gave during the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier. An increasing number of left-wing commentators assert that Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a states’ rights speech in Philadelphia to send a signal to white racists that he was on their side. The speech is taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.

The truth is more complicated.

No, it's not. Mr. Brooks' story is more complicated. But it all hinges on believing Republicans are NOT using race-coded language.

So the decision was made to go to Neshoba. Exactly who made the decision is unclear.

Until it is clear, his whole story is unsupported.

The campaign was famously disorganized, and Cannon reported: “The Reagan campaign’s hand had been forced to some degree by local announcement that he would go to the fair.” Reagan’s pollster Richard Wirthlin urged him not to go, but Reagan angrily countered that once the commitment had been made, he couldn’t back out.

Reagan's reaction indicates it was HE who made the commitment.

The Reaganites then had an internal debate over whether to do the Urban League speech and then go to the fair, or to do the fair first. They decided to do the fair first, believing it would send the wrong message to go straight from the Urban League to Philadelphia, Miss.

It would have sent the wrong message. That's why he chose to open his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss, where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier, using race-coded language.

You see, Mr. Brooks, people knew then what Reagan was saying.

The use of the phrase “states’ rights” didn’t spark any reaction in the crowd, but it led the coverage in The Times and The Post the next day....

You don't get to reinterpret his actions over a quarter of a century later.

You can look back on this history in many ways. It’s callous, at least, to use the phrase “states’ rights” in any context in Philadelphia. Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. And it’s obviously true that race played a role in the G.O.P.’s ascent.

You can't even really deny the problem. You just want it softened...you want Reagan's heroic image rescued.

Still, the agitprop version of this week — that Reagan opened his campaign with an appeal to racism — is a distortion, as honest investigators ranging from Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the Reagan administration and is the author of “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” to Kevin Drum, who writes for Washington Monthly, have concluded.

Again...the people at the time...the witnesses to history...said it was an appeal to racism. Hell, I saw it myself...I'm as old as Mr. Brooks and apparently have more faith in my own memory than he does. And Kevin Drum is to damn soft anyway.