Bill Clinton On Ronald Reagan
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Billary, HistoryE.J. Dionne reminds us what the former President said before he spent some time in the Oval Office…
Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan’s “rhetoric in defense of freedom” and his role in “advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back.”“The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing,” Clinton declared.
Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included “a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure,” but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond “the brain-dead politics in both parties,” as he so often put it.
Hmm, sounds familiar. I’ll give Bill the last word…
“Our new choice plainly rejects the old categories and false alternatives they impose,” Bill Clinton added in that 1991 address, in which he offered a long list of new ideas. “Is what I just said to you liberal or conservative? The truth is, it is both, and it is different. It rejects the Republicans’ attacks and the Democrats’ previous unwillingness to consider new alternatives.”
Well said…and apparently long forgotten…
This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 and is filed under Billary, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Apparently, Bill’s suffering from both amnesia (as outlined above in your post) while simultaneously enjoying the occasional epiphany, too.
Poor Bill. Must be tough trying to keep up with all the utterances of convenience over such a long period of time.