Monday - May 30, 2011

if only we had president reagan again.

Now this is very interesting and I thought bmews readers would like to see the opinion of this Brit on this subject.
I can’t add anything to this.  But you might.

Ping pong, high fives and an insidious obsession with PR gimmicks

By IAIN MARTIN

Twenty-nine years ago, another American President addressed a joint meeting of both Houses of Parliament. Unlike Barack Obama, this visitor was not accorded the ultimate parliamentary honour of being asked to speak in the ancient Westminster Hall.

Instead, Ronald Reagan was relegated to the Royal Gallery, because many Labour MPs felt that a Right-wing U.S. leader was not sufficiently worthy.

But after the festival of hype and spin that accompanied Obama’s visit this week, with British politicians fawning in his presence, it is well worth re-reading.
Reagan’s brilliantly incisive and clear-sighted speech from that day, back in the summer of 1982.  And what a sharp contrast to Barack Obama’s vapid sloganeering and windy rhetoric it is.

Reagan correctly diagnosed the ills of his age. He lambasted the Soviet tyranny that still enslaved Eastern Europe, highlighted the dangers posed in the West by the relentless increase in the powers of the state, and reminded his audience of the importance of individual freedom.

While explaining how he would defend Western Europe, he outlined how he would pursue nuclear disarmament — but only from a position of strength. People in countries such as Poland, he also said, would be encouraged to shake off the yoke of communism.

As a former Hollywood star, Reagan has been criticised for elevating public relations above political principle.
Certainly, he used his acting skills. But he was also a deeply serious man, with a passionate and coherent free-market philosophy developed during his time as the boss of the Screen Actors’ Guild and then as a successful governor of California.

The truth is that public relations techniques were simply tools he had mastered to get across his message.
How different politics are today, where public relations seem to be both the medium and the message. Forget the Special Relationship. Obama’s visit to Britain was one extended photo-opportunity designed to win him votes in next year’s presidential election.

Compare Reagan’s principled vision to the vacuous soundbites of Obama, who may be Harvard-educated but whose shallowness makes him seem merely to be a classier, transatlantic version of Tony Blair.
Not that you would know it from the sycophantic reaction of Britain’s political establishment, who greeted Obama’s Westminster speech as if it was the Gettysburg Address.

But then we live in an age when image is seen as much more preferable to the more difficult responsibility of dealing with reality. Obama, the consummate PR man, is the personification of this insidious trend.

Of course it was a major achievement for him to become America’s first black President. But his record in the White House has been, at best, patchy. It is impossible to discern any clear thread running through his presidency other than an obsession with winning re-election.

LOTS MORE HERE

Sure do MISS this man.

Posted by peiper     on 05/30/2011 at 10:13 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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