海角大神

In announcing his candidacy for president,聽聽鈥淚 believe in applying Reagan鈥檚 approach to foreign policy to the Iran issue.鈥�

Huh?聽 In late 1986, we learned that the Reagan administration had sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to Nicaraguan anticommunist rebels called the Contras. At one point, the national security adviser secretly brought the Iranians聽聽to mark the anticipated 鈥渙pening.鈥� The Iran-Contra affair was a fiasco that humiliated the United States and led to talk that the House

That scenario is surely not what Senator Paul hand in mind. He was in medical school during Iran-Contra, so he was probably not paying much attention to anything but macular detachments. Still, one might hope that he or somebody on his staff would know a little about an important chapter of recent American history.

The point here is not to fault Paul in particular but to raise a larger point. Especially since his 2004 passing, President Reagan has become iconic.聽, a 35 percent plurality of Americans said that he was the best president since the Second World War. Accordingly, politicians routinely cite Reagan to justify what they want to do. Trouble is, many of these invocations of the Gipper are historically wrong.聽

For instance, Gov. John Kasich (R) of Ohio declined to criticize Paul,聽,聽鈥淚 believe in Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment, which is don't attack a fellow Republican.鈥� There are a couple of problems with that statement. First, credit for the 鈥渃ommandment鈥澛�, who chaired the California GOP in the 1960s. Second, Reagan did not abide by it. In 1976, he challenged President Ford for the party鈥檚 nomination, and came within one Brylcreemed hair of toppling him.

In his 2012 presidential campaign, Texas Gov. Rick Perry cast himself as the race鈥檚 true Reaganite. He聽: 鈥淲e鈥檙e dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don鈥檛 even pay any income tax.鈥澛� Apparently, he did not realize that many of them were off the tax rolls because of President Reagan鈥檚 1986 tax reform bill. Reagan regarded that measure as one of his great accomplishments, : 鈥淔amilies will get a long overdue tax break, and millions of poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether. It's no exaggeration when I call tax reform simultaneously the best jobs creation bill, the best antipoverty legislation, and the best profamily legislation the U.S. Congress has ever produced.鈥�

Indeed, many aspects of the Reagan record are more ambiguous than today鈥檚 politicians let on. It is true that he championed tax cuts, but he also signed several tax hikes, including a 1982 measure that was the largest peacetime tax increase up to that time. ( of 鈥渢rying to score a touchdown for liberalism, for the liberal welfare state, for big government, for the Internal Revenue Service, for multinational corporations, and for the various forces that consistently voted against the president.鈥� As president, he took a pro-life stand, but as governor of California, he signed a law that relaxed restrictions on abortion.

It鈥檚 not just Republicans who distort Reagan history. Chris Matthews wrote a silly book claiming that Reagan and House Speaker Tip O鈥橬eill had a friendly relationship. Nonsense.

O鈥橬eill repeatedly attacked Reagan at a very personal level. 鈥淭he evil is in the White House at the present time,鈥� .聽 鈥淎nd that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood.鈥�

Politicians do have a lot to learn from Ronald Reagan, but the lessons are more complicated than today鈥檚 political rhetoric would suggest.

Jack Pitney writes his Looking for Trouble blog exclusively for the Monitor.