Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Democratic debate aside: Senator Obama's bad history

By the way: last night, in eagerly affirming that he would in his first year as president talk personally and directly with the Syrians, talk personally and directly with the Cubans, talk personally and directly with the Iranians, Senator Obama invoked Ronald Reagan. He claimed that, hey, Reagan didn't like the Soviet Union, but he talked with them, so...

But that's a distortion. Yes, Reagan talked with the Soviets; he eventually had several summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev. But: not right away. Not in his first year. In fact, throughout his entire first term, Reagan had no summit meetings, none, with either Leonid Brezhnev or, after he died, Yuri Andropov or, after he died, Konstantin Chernenko. The time wasn't right. And the Democrats during the 1984 election attacked him for it; for example, Walter Mondale at the 1984 Democratic National Convention said: "But the truth is that between us, we have the capacity to destroy the planet. Every president since the bomb went off understood that and talked with the Soviets and negotiated arms control. Why has this administration failed? Why haven't they tried? Why can't they understand the cry of Americans and human beings for sense and sanity in control of these God awful weapons? Why, why?
Why can't we meet in summit conferences with the Soviet Union at least once a year?"

Senator Obama was wrong on the facts in invoking President Reagan in this way. UPDATE: Welcome, readers of The Corner! Come back often. NR and The Corner remain must-reads for any conservative...