Liberal journalists routinely bashed Reagan

The liberal media bashing of President George Bush is similar to that which President Ronald Reagan endured, although you wouldn't determine that from some recent comments.

Let's revisit some of the Reagan comments as columnist Joseph D'Agostino reports:

"Last week, liberal journalists began laying the groundwork for the liberal establishment to hijack the legacy of President Reagan. In the long run, they can be expected to downplay and distort his conservative record while trying to exploit his enduring appeal to advance distinctly un-Reaganlike causes.

"It is worth keeping in mind what the liberal journalistic establishment really thought about Reagan. Here, drawn from Lexis-Nexis and the Media Research Center, are a few samples:

"'To the self-indulgent age of the 1980s and to the characters that gave it special flavor at home -- Oliver L. North and Ronald Reagan, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Arthur Laffer and his curve, the Yuppies and the leveraged buyout dealmaker -- good riddance.' -- Then-Washington Post editor Haynes Johnson, Dec. 29 1989

"'Reagan has become a symbol of what went wrong in the 1980s.' -- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, 'The McLaughlin Group,' Aug. 1, 1992

"'I think the best evidence I can give that we do a lousy job covering politics is to look at the politicians: Ronald Reagan was president of us for eight years -- Ronald Reagan! Reporters should have been writing for the entire eight years of his reign that this man was gone, out of it. ... He should have been covered as a clown.' -- Then-NBC reporter (and current New York Times columnist) Bob Herbert, speaking at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, fall 1992

"'Pretty simplistic. Pretty old-fashioned. ... Nor do I think he really understands the enormous difficulty a lot of people have in just getting through life, because he's lived in this fantasyland for so long.' -- NBC's Tom Brokaw on Reagan's values, Mother Jones, April 1983

"'I was a correspondent in the White House in those days, and my work, which consisted of reporting on President Reagan's success in making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white, and healthy, saddened me.' -- Former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines in 'Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis' (1984)

"'As opposed to a man like Reagan, Nixon is, was, highly regarded as a genuine statesman with a first-class mind." -- NBC's Bryant Gumbel

"'Good morning. The Gipper was an airhead! That's one of the conclusions of a new biography of Ronald Reagan that's drawing a tremendous amount of interest and fire today.' -- NBC's Katie Couric on 'Today' before interviewing Reagan biographer Edmund Morris, who said that Reagan 'was a very bright man,' Sept. 27, 1999

"'What Reagan did was destroy the economy.' -- Sam Donaldson, 'This Week with David Brinkley,' March 28,1993

"'I think he left an uncaring society.' -- UPI's White House correspondent Helen Thomas, CBS' 'Nightwatch,' Dec. 30, 1988

"'It will take 100 years to get the government back into place after Reagan.' -- USA Today White House reporter Sarah McClendon, Feb. 16, 1990

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I found the following column by Stephanie Dornschneider, published June 24 in the Washington Times, interesting and worth sharing.

"Iraqi Schools Seen Improving: U.S. administrators have made great strides in rebuilding the Iraqi educational system, but still face hurdles, many of their own making, a senior coalition official said in Washington yesterday.

"'There is a growing independence of the universities,' said John Agresto, the senior adviser for higher education and scientific research with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

"'Despite the fears of religious and political coercion, I think you find incredible openness and dialogue,' Mr. Agresto added during a discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

"'I think higher education is absolutely going in the right direction,' he said.

"Iraq now has 20 functioning universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges. These are mainly public and overall experienced a 50 percent increase in freshman enrollment last year.

"Policy at the institutions is set by their own presidents, rather than the central government, Mr. Agresto said. 'This is absolutely a major change.'

"He also noted that university students for the first time have access to the Internet.

"However, he said the system had suffered 'incredible damage' and pointed out several areas demanding improvement.

"'Something that immediately struck me was the incredible specialization,' a process that begins early in high schools and denies students a broad education about 'the world in general,' he said.

Furthermore, there is an 'incredible hierarchy of profession,' Mr. Agresto said. Science, medicine and engineering are 'the crown jewels of education' in Iraq, but whole universities lack departments of philosophy, history or political science.

"'Religious departments are absolutely rare,' Mr. Agresto added.

"He criticized the 'narrowness of the method' used to educate in Iraq. Describing the learning process as 'listen, memorize, repeat,' he said Iraqis seldom questioned their teachers.

"Mr. Agresto also said Iraqi students seemed indifferent to their country. 'It is the only country I know that does not have any patriotic songs,' he said.

"As a result, he said, the fact that 'we liberated them, they did not liberate themselves' constitutes 'the heart of our problem.'

"The greatest mistake made in this regard, Mr. Agresto said, was a tendency within the CPA 'to think democracy is easy.' He said this attitude originates in the tremendous success of democracy in the United States, where people forget about 'all the ingredients that make it possible.'"

Gary Rust is chairman of Rust Communications.