Ronald Reagan has seen his fair share of compliments and insults throughout his Presidency. On the popular political magazine Slate's website, I found an article focussing on President Reagans apparent stupidity whilst in office.
The article starts off by showing just how much respect there as for Reagan after his Presidency, with the writer being invited to attend a Ronald Reagan Appreciation ceremony. The writer, Christopher Hitchens, then goes on to say "But nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like", which tells me that although there is a lot of positive compliments towards Reagan, his Presidency wasnt as well made out that it was thought of by many.
Hitchens then goes on to list multiple acts of stupidity by Ronald Reagan. He quotes "Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature.) Ronald Reagan said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you." Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps".
Hitchins main argument in this article is that he believes the majority of the American public had 'Honeymoon-eyes' for Reagan, and celebrated his even though his Presidency had many of flawes, including his stupidity in speeches and the Iran-Contra scandal. Hitchins then goes on to say that Reagan had used President Carters briefing book for his own Presidency, once again painting the picture of Reagan being stupid and unable to think of his own way to run the country. In his opinion, he can't believe that Americans would let someone so 'obviously' stupid run a country. He quotes "The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn't like him all that much. He met his second wife—the one that you remember—because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see. Year in and year out in Washington, I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon".
This article is an obvious piece of Anti-Reagan propaganda, claiming that Reagan is exceedingly over-rated and that people need to re-think their opinion on Reagan by paying attention to his clear faults.
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