Turns out it was all just hot air...
POSTED BY: Hero
UPDATED: Saturday, April 19, 2008 03:13
VIEWED: 4311
PAGE 5 of 7
Quote:Not tryin' to cause anyone a heart attack here, but I agree with Hero on this- there is much to respect concerning Reagan...and it took GW to make that clear to me...
Originally posted by Hero:
Its ok to disagree with the man's politics without hating the man. I hated Clinton's politics, but as a fella, he wasn't the worst and I admire what he accomplished on a professional level. Sure, I'd not trust him in a room with my little sister or loan money to the man, but aside from that he was just as good and bad as anybody else.
More towards the middle Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
I agree with Hero on this- there is much to respect concerning Reagan...and it took GW to make that clear to me...
It was a moving speech. I'm glad to see you give President Bush some due credit.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040611-2.html
Quote:
Now, death has done all that death can do. And as Ronald Wilson Reagan goes his way, we are left with the joyful hope he shared. In his last years, he saw through a glass darkly. Now he sees his Savior face to face.
And we look to that fine day when we will see him again, all weariness gone, clear of mind, strong and sure, and smiling again, and the sorrow of his parting gone forever.
May God bless Ronald Reagan, and the country he loved.
When I took the name Hero, Ronald Reagan was the man I was thinking of...
H
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Quote:Err..no, I meant it took a President as bad as Bush to make me realize just how good a President & a man Reagan was....
Originally posted by Hero:
It was a moving speech. I'm glad to see you give President Bush some due credit.
The speech (eulogy) was fine, but GW had it written for him.
Clarifying Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
The speech (eulogy) was fine, but GW had it written for him.
So the only good singers are the ones who write their own music. Not a big figure skating fan (cause you know...its all done by a choreographer). Your mom's a terrible cook cause she uses a recipe she got from you grandmother.
From what I understand about Bush is that for big speeches like this he puts his ideas onto paper, gives it to the speechwriter, who polishes it into a speech, then back to the President for revision. Thats how he did his address to Congress after 9/11 which I still say is his best speech.
Reagan's speech writer worked closely with Reagan to get a feel for 'how he sounds' so that he could write for him. He was much more inner circle then we've seen since then. His book was really interesting.
H
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Quote:In crayon...
Originally posted by Hero:
From what I understand about Bush is that for big speeches like this he puts his ideas onto paper,
Quote:Who basically, er, WRITES it...
gives it to the speechwriter
Har har Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:Quote:In crayon...
Originally posted by Hero:
From what I understand about Bush is that for big speeches like this he puts his ideas onto paper,Quote:Who basically, er, WRITES it...
gives it to the speechwriter
Har har Chrisisall
If you read Bush's speech at the Reagan funeral, you'll notice that not ONCE does W ever utter the word " I " in reference to himself. In contrast, compare Clinton's speech at Coretta Scott King's funeral, or ANY big speech that Clinton's ever given. You'll find his speech littered with " I " this and " I " that, as if folks had come to hear how Mrs King's death affected Clinton, instead of him offering words of praise for the dearly departed civil rights leader. It truly is amazing.
eg - quote from Clinton's eulogy for Rosa Parks
" "I remember as if it were yesterday, that fateful day 50 years ago. I was a 9-year-old southern white boy who rode on a segregated bus every single day of my life."
"
There is only one, small problem with his story. Where he was raised and lived until he was in first grade, Hope, Ark., doesn't have public transportation – and never has. Well perhaps it was in Hot Springs that he remembers vividly riding the bus every day of that life. The problem there is that Hot Springs only got public transportation 26 years ago.
OOOPS!
It is not those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it is the Islamo-Fascists. - Dennis Prager
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Rap
"He most certainly was. Understand , I'm not comparing him to William F. Buckley Jr , or Stephen Hawking , but Reagan was wiser and smarter than most."
Not smart enough to write the speeches you liked so much, or smart enough to create the policies. He was, at most, the face of a background group. Even then he was suffering from early Alzheimer's and it took a phalanx of 'handlers' and a 'hearing aid' to make him look at least normal.
BTW, what is it about you that you can only admire severely brain-damaged people like Reagan and GW Bush ?
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Rap
"He most certainly was. Understand , I'm not comparing him to William F. Buckley Jr , or Stephen Hawking , but Reagan was wiser and smarter than most."
Not smart enough to write the speeches you liked so much, or smart enough to create the policies. He was, at most, the face of a background group. Even then he was suffering from early Alzheimer's and it took a phalanx of 'handlers' and a 'hearing aid' to make him look at least normal.
BTW, what is it about you that you can only admire severely brain-damaged people like Reagan and GW Bush ?
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
The myth that Reagan needed 'handlers' or that he didn't write his own speeches , at least have a hand in writing them, has been debunked time and time again. Case in point, thee 1987 speech at the Brandenberg Gate. While Reagan did suffer from Alzheimer's in his latter years, there's nothing to indicate he suffered until his 2nd term. And as for W, there's nothing to indicate that he's is in any way impaired. You not liking his politics is not proof that he's 'brain damaged' , so sorry.
It is not those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it is the Islamo-Fascists. - Dennis Prager
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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SPEECH WRITING
And as I looked out at them I thought of the most unsung hero of all. His name was Bentley Elliott. He went by Ben. He ran Ronald Reagan's speechwriting department from 1982 through 1986. He hired most of the speechwriters. He shaped and refined Ronald Reagan's speeches, directing themes and approach. He was a great writer. Ronald Reagan said a lot of famous things, and he said them in part because Ben Elliott got them past the bureaucracy, past the powerful so-called pragmatists, so Reagan could consider them, rewrite them, underscore them. But Ben is the one who got the draft to him.
EARLY ALZHEIMER'S
There is ample precedent for papering over presidents' medical shortcomings. Stanford Medical School professor Herbert Abrams and others have argued that Ronald Reagan was incapacitated from the day he was shot in March of 1981 through the succeeding seven years of his presidency. In their 1988 book, "Landslide," Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus report that one White House staffer considered Reagan's condition so bad in 1987 that he suggested invoking the transfer-of-power provisions of the 25th Amendment.
The hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease include the inability to retain and recall autobiographical details, such as the marriage of a child or the death of a relative. Another is the inability to remember a source of information. One of the first indicators that Ronald Reagan was experiencing cognitive changes came as early as the 1980 presidential campaign, when he told the story of a heroic pilot whose plane had gone down in flames, reciting it as though it was a true story when in fact it had been a part of a movie he had seen.
I may have told you why I think Reagan had Alzheimer's while he was president. During his presidency they took him on a tour of the concentration camps. He said to the press and his staff, "I know I 've been here before." What I knew is he never left Culver City (when the concentration camps were liberated). But Ronnie then recited shot by shot what he had seen on film (5 May 1985). He was in a state of shock and he never recovered. Can you imagine how embarrassed how the press was and his staff? They couldn't tell the public, listen, your sitting president is hallucinating.
When I saw it on the news, I said, poor guy, he's lost it. Two people told me they interviewed him when he was President and they had the feeling he had early Alzheimer's. One was a woman named Ann Sperber. She was doing a book on Bogey and she went to interview Reagan.
She said, Mr. President, do you remember when you and Bogey worked together? He said, we used to play golf all the time. He couldn't remember the fact that in 1939, he was in a film called "Dark Victory" with Bette Davis and Bogart. And he kept being very evasive.
Later Edmund Morris, doing the official biography, said that when he asked him about the war year from '42 to '46, he was very evasive. He said, did I ever tell you about the time when John Wayne and I played golf? He just couldn't remember but he had to ad lib to cover up — this is while he was President.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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I don't see all that much wrong with covering for a presidents health issues, so long as the veep is steadfast and policy is executed along the same focus efficiently - and that did happen under Reagan.
I might not have agreed with those policies mind you, but they did carry them in the direction Reagan intended them to be carried, it would not be the first time an administration has covered for the failing health of a president, either.
Might not have liked the guy too much, but I will say that even on his worst day, Ronnie was more than a mental match for what we got now.
And that's a damn sad thing, innit ?
-F
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