The Gipper

Sunday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan. I trust the Superbowl tribute ("Ronald Reagan. Inspired freedom. Changed the World.") is not the last we'll hear about the Gipper this year - apparently it is now required of every Republican commentator or candidate to slip a reference to Ronald Reagan in every public utterance.



So it's appropriate that I offer my own recollections of our 40th president. I'll start with this one: remember how he chose to deliver his first speech as the Republican nominee in 1980 at the Neshoba County fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi in August 1980. Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered in 1964 while trying to register blacks to vote? Remember how he chose that moment - in that place, to that audience - to emphasize his support for states rights? Here's the transcript:

I believe in state's rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.

Gosh that was a touching sentiment. What could be more true and right than to devolve power back to the states and local communities in the Deep South whose "states rights" had been trampled on ever since Brown v. Board of Education forced them to desegregate their schools and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forced them to serve blacks at their lunch counters.

David Brooks wrote a scathing attack on the liberal partisan conspiracy mongers who dared suggest that perhaps mentioning "states rights" to a crowd of former Dixiecrats at the Neshoba County fair was code for "if I have to choose between whites and blacks, I'm with you." He notes that the tone of the speech was friendly, relaxed and full of humor (funny guys can't be racists you know). He notes that the states rights line came in the context not of race but of education (and we know that education was not a significant states rights issue in the south; and he forgot to mention that the discussion of education was in the context of lazy welfare recipients, and we know that there's no racial code attached to that). He argues that Reagan couldn't have meant what liberals thought he meant because after Philadelphia he gave a speech to the Urban League (because of course politicians can't try to get votes from blacks while simultaneously sending not-so-subtle signals of support to white racists). And he accuses people who question the use of the term "states rights" in the county where the most famous murders of the civil rights era occurred as believing in a "master conspiracy" - a conspiracy that must have involved not only Reagan but also his campaign director and, um, the Mississippi Republican party, and, um, well I guess it wouldn't have to go beyond that, but that's pretty massive right there I think you'll agree.

So anyway, the Gipper - the Great Communicator, communicating to the white voters of Mississippi exactly where he stood on the question of race.

Postscript: Reagan carried then-heavily-Democratic Mississippi, 49.4% to 48.1% over Carter. Just got himself over the top!