Saturday, June 12, 2004
Best of the Web Today - June 11, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Yesterday found us in the nation's capital for a brief visit. NBC's "Today" show had long ago booked us to discuss "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House" (which you can buy from the
OpinionJournal bookstore), and as it turned out Katie Couric was on location in Washington covering the funeral of Ronald Reagan, so we were summoned there for the interview.
We didn't have time to see the casket, but we did see the people lining up for the viewing--the backdrop for Couric's makeshift outdoor set. Reagan, of course, was more responsible than anyone else for the end of communism, a system among whose lesser horrors were that it forced people to spend much of their lives in queues for such necessities as food and toilet paper. Somehow then it seems a fitting tribute that thousands of free men and women would voluntarily wait in line to pay their last respects.
Before flying back to New York yesterday afternoon we stopped by the Heritage Foundation, where we worked years ago. Heritage was holding an open house in Reagan's honor. It also has a nicely done online tribute, ReagansHeritage.org.
What touched us most, though, was that our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, had gone out of its way to honor Reagan. At the front desk were three monochromatic bowls of jellybeans--one each red, white and blue. When we got to our room, the bed had been turned down, and in place of the standard chocolate were a small package of jellybeans and a card with the famous quote: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
This proves better than anything else we've seen that Reagan has transcended the partisan divisions of his own era. Can you imagine a hotel putting a quote from Bill Clinton or George W. Bush on its guests' beds? Of course not; it would annoy half of them and be a terrible business decision. But Reagan-haters these days are practically extinct.
By JAMES TARANTO
Washington Remembers Reagan
Yesterday found us in the nation's capital for a brief visit. NBC's "Today" show had long ago booked us to discuss "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House" (which you can buy from the
OpinionJournal bookstore), and as it turned out Katie Couric was on location in Washington covering the funeral of Ronald Reagan, so we were summoned there for the interview.
We didn't have time to see the casket, but we did see the people lining up for the viewing--the backdrop for Couric's makeshift outdoor set. Reagan, of course, was more responsible than anyone else for the end of communism, a system among whose lesser horrors were that it forced people to spend much of their lives in queues for such necessities as food and toilet paper. Somehow then it seems a fitting tribute that thousands of free men and women would voluntarily wait in line to pay their last respects.
Before flying back to New York yesterday afternoon we stopped by the Heritage Foundation, where we worked years ago. Heritage was holding an open house in Reagan's honor. It also has a nicely done online tribute, ReagansHeritage.org.
What touched us most, though, was that our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, had gone out of its way to honor Reagan. At the front desk were three monochromatic bowls of jellybeans--one each red, white and blue. When we got to our room, the bed had been turned down, and in place of the standard chocolate were a small package of jellybeans and a card with the famous quote: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
This proves better than anything else we've seen that Reagan has transcended the partisan divisions of his own era. Can you imagine a hotel putting a quote from Bill Clinton or George W. Bush on its guests' beds? Of course not; it would annoy half of them and be a terrible business decision. But Reagan-haters these days are practically extinct.
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