"Hawke" wrote in message
...

snip

I've observed George Will for 20 years and have read plenty of his columns
too so I know where he stands, and you're right, he has been critical of
Bush at times. But come on, how in god's name could one not be? Believe
me,
he doesn't want to be critical of Bush but with Bush mucking things up so
badly even Will has to say something if he wants to stay credible. How
could
one not criticize Bush's Iraq policies?

You're projecting your own thoughts onto a man you don't understand. Will is
independent-minded as hell, an iconoclast, and is always ready to call
things as he sees them. He wouldn't defend a president just because he's a
Republican.




As to Reagan's intelligence it's not a matter of what "leftists" say.
You
can discount them all you want. The fact is that like George W. nobody
ever
went around bragging about how smart and well educated Ronald Reagan
was.
Except for his mindless followers who did see him as a diety. Oh, by
the
way, Will is one of the Kool Aid drinkers when it comes to Reagan.

I don't know what you mean by that expression. He knew and advised
Reagan,
and, as I said, Will thinks Reagan was underestimated. The jury is out as
far as I'm concerned.

Kool Aid drinkers? Jim Jones? Jonestown? They are mindless followers who
drink poisoned Kool Aid if their leader tells them to. So Will, an avid
conservative, who once worked for Reagan, and is a true believer, thinks
he
was underestimated. I'm so surprised he came to that judgment! Like I
said,
I saw Reagan for years and years and he did not have a reputation for his
intellectual capacity. He was known for his looks, his speaking ability,
and
his ability to lead right wing folks. Nobody said he was bright. This
underestimation thing is just another ploy to make him seem better than he
was in this dept. too. He had some definite political strengths but his
brain power was not one of them.

I recognized the Jonestown reference but I couldn't believe you were
applying it to George Will. As I said, you don't know the man. And in your
20 years of reading his writings you apparently missed his position on
government involvement and aid to single mothers (he favors both), or his
earlier positions on gun control (he favored it). His conservatism comes
from a different source than that of Dubya or the blue-collar workers who
consider themselves "conservatives." He was one of that small handful of
people now referenced in political history as the "intellectual
conservatives" who popped up after Barry Goldwater lost the election. Will
was in England, at Oxford University, when he turned his opinion away from
liberalism and toward conservatism. It isn't your grandfather's kind of
conservatism.


Like you, most of Reagan's detractors have been leftish and I question
how
informed they really are. Your estimate of George Will, if it's equal in
quality to your estimate of Reagan, is not something I'd put stock in. As
I
said, I knew George Will. He was my professor and academic advisor; he
got
me my opportunity to study international politics at the University of
Lausanne. I have high regard for the clarity of his vision and his
judgment,
even though I often disagree with his politics.

Here is where your analysis goes wrong. Tell me of some right wing or
conservative detractors of Reagan. You can't do it. There aren't any.
Reagan
has assumed a mantle of divinity among republicans. That leaves only
"leftists", your word, to bring up his weaknesses.

Hawke, that's the *point*. Opinions on Reagan are divided along
liberal/conservative lines. Thus, I don't trust them, because I never trust
political opinions of people who take sharply ideological political
positions. I wouldn't put my faith in either side. I'll put some faith in
people I know to be honestly critical, but even then, I want to see more for
myself.

As I said, Reagan has always been an enigma to me, and maybe he always will
be. But I'm not interested in the opinions of people who didn't know him
personally. We've heard enough of those.

I hate to tell you this,
but people who don't see Reagan as a god aren't all leftists. But you
could
ask Ron Reagan, his son about him if you want to know the truth about him.
Would you believe him if he said his dad was cold, distant, aloof, and
didn't know that much about a lot of things? The problem is that there is
this group that adores Reagan so much that they make him a god and accuse
anyone finding his weaknesses as biased against him, which makes drawing a
true picture difficult. Just trust me on this, Reagan was a good
politician
but not all that smart. That's a true picture not a biased one. If it was
the other way around I would have no problem saying that either.

I'll put that in the same place that I put all other opinions about Reagan
that come from people who didn't know him, or who are sharply ideological.
As for his coldness, aloofness, or the things he didn't know about, I don't
consider any of them relevant. I want to know what thinking went on when the
man established political opinions and made decisions.

One of his biographers, I forget which, said that Reagan projected a simple
pattern of thought to casual observers but that he was dogged and intense,
extremely focused on a few big issues, and read incessently from the
political canon, including the Greeks and the Enlightenment thinkers. My
impression of *their* impression (hardly anything I'd hang my hat on, but a
working hypothesis) is that he was one of those semi-bright people who could
penetrate an idea as well as the whip-crackers; it just took him a bit
longer.

Those people have always interested me. John Kennedy was another one: IQ of
119, as measured on a test when he entered Choate. Hardly a genius, but
relentless and insightful. They impress me more than some people who have
much higher native IQs. Most people with IQs in the sub-120 range are
limited in how *deeply* they penetrate relationships, as well as how
quickly. These presidents appear to be of another kind.


Will is different from Reagan but also similar. Both were true believers
in
conservative ideology but Will is very smart, and well educated. That sets
him apart from Reagan and it's not hard to see that Will is the smart one
of
the two. By the way, Reagan was the good looking one. I give Will his due
where it's warranted. My problem with him is his predictability. He's like
clockwork. You can always count him to have a very conservative opinion on
everything.

Nonsense. See my references above.

I'm going to trim this because I'm not up for getting into another one of
these arguments with you. FWIW, you look at things very differently from me.
Maybe it's our backgrounds. My work experience has taught me not to trust
other peoples' judgments, especially on judgmental issues. There are few
people whose opinions matter much to me on anything as complex as politics.
At best, they provide me with a list of things that might be worth checking
into.

I just watched you go 'way off base with a minor character, who you know
only through a collection of opinion columns, while I knew the man
personally, and had almost daily contact with him for a couple of years. So
I've just seen how you fill in the blanks with your assumptions and
projections. g You're a quick study and you have a very analytical mind,
Hawke, but you try to do too much with inadequate material. It's good for
college bull sessions but I've spent most of my career writing for
publication. If I speculated, I got my butt handed to me by one or more of
my 100,000 subscribers. So I learned not to speculate.

Believe me, you're a mile off base about George Will. And I won't argue your
positions on Reagan. I will, however, form my own opinions about him.

--
Ed Huntress