I agree with the 61% of us who voted “yes” in the online CNN poll: the amount of media coverage of Ronald Reagan’s death was “too much”. Insufferably too much.
Of course, everyone knew this would turn into a campaign contribution by the major television networks to Bush’s re-election, and true to form, the slew of misstatements and exaggerations flowed interminably, 24×7.
They claimed that Reagan was the most popular President in modern times (he wasn’t, Clinton was more popular); that he was fiscally conservative (he wasn’t; Reagan almost tripled the deficit while Clinton reduced it); that he restored the economy to health (inflation was reduced during the Reagan presidency, but that was as a result of then Fed chairman Paul Volker’s iron-fisted control of the money supply; unemployment didn’t decline until the Clinton years) and that he was a mighty warrior (what about the pullout from Lebanon following the terrorist assassination of 241 Marines in Beirut?)
Remember all the GOP screaming about the so-called politically partisan memorial service for Senator Paul Wellstone, the Democratic Senator from Minnesota?
Again, the Republicans proved their hypocrisy by excluding ANY prominent Democrat from a speaking role at Reagan’s publicly supported state funeral – an event which, with the awarding of a day off to Federal government employees, cost the taxpayers $66 million for Washington, DC salaries alone (one estimate was as high as $545 million for the whole country, including Post Office employees).
November 2 can’t come soon enough.