Truth is Complicated -- For Republicans

David Brooks of the NYTimes wrote a column last week in praise of Reagan that has reverberated through the Times and elsewhere. The latest foray is an op-ed piece in today's Times by Reagan author Lou Cannon.

The original piece by Paul Krugman on the Jena 6 in September mentioned the racial tone of "southern white exceptionalism," in Politics in Black and White:

But the reality is that things haven’t changed nearly as much as people think. Racial tension, especially in the South, has never gone away, and has never stopped being important. And race remains one of the defining factors in modern American politics.

* * * *

Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the G.O.P.’s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.

Thus Ronald Reagan, who began his political career by campaigning against California’s Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered. In 2000, Mr. Bush made a pilgrimage to Bob Jones University, famed at the time for its ban on interracial dating.

Brooks response was curious, in that it takes up an issue that is hardly topical for the GOP. In History and Calumny, Brooks attempts to redefine Reagan's use of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" during his presidential campaign, calling it an erroneous myth:

Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

The distortion concerns a speech Ronald Reagan gave during the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier. An increasing number of left-wing commentators assert that Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a states’ rights speech in Philadelphia to send a signal to white racists that he was on their side. The speech is taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.

The truth is more complicated.

It is? I always thought that the truth was based upon facts. It only gets complicated when you have to go through gyrations to re-engineer the facts to fit the spin of the day.

Apparently, this is Brooksworld, where truth is complicated. It's complicated because it's not easy to re-write the history of the GOP's Southern Strategy and Reagan's role in that strategy. Brooks tries to explain that Reagan stopped in Philadelphia, Miss. on his way to New York from Chicago merely because he was in the neighborhood, rather than because he intended to send a signal to southern racists by starting his campaign at a county fair there. As he notes:

You can look back on this history in many ways. It’s callous, at least, to use the phrase “states’ rights” in any context in Philadelphia. Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. And it’s obviously true that race played a role in the G.O.P.’s ascent.

Still, the agitprop version of this week — that Reagan opened his campaign with an appeal to racism — is a distortion, as honest investigators ranging from Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the Reagan administration and is the author of “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” to Kevin Drum, who writes for Washington Monthly, have concluded.

But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff.

So facts -- otherwise known as "slurs" -- have this nasty habit of intruding on the spin. After all, no reasonable person would believe that pandering to the southern white crowd what Reagan intended in Mississippi. Those were the old facts, since replaced by the new version. Actually, the "whitewashing" (apt phrase that, no?) of history began shortly after Reagan died in 2004. At that time, as Steven Gilliard wrote, in his THE NEWS BLOG:

First, Reagan rode to power on a wave of reaction to the Civil Rights struggle. California, a state with a deep well of racial resentment, supported Reagan, who would protect the establishment and call for students to be murdered on their campuses. Reagan was regarded as a crank by many on the left, but his appeal to middle America was strong. It wasn't that Reagan was a racist, as fas as is known, he wasn't. But he sure could pander to them, as he did in [1980] at Philadelphia, MS. For those of you unaware, that is the place three civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan. It would be like a British Prime Ministerial candidate going to Amritsar to talk about the glory of the British Army (the site of a 1921 massacre of peaceful Indian protesters). Reagan pandered to the racist right with ease, even as Barry Goldwater, the man he supported in 1964 with a convention speech, slowly backed away from many of his reactionary views. Instead, Reagan depicted blacks as 'welfare queens' leeching off the society, when in reality, white women are the largest recipients of AFDC. Reagan used race like a club to hammer minorities and pander to the racist right.

Even Ken Melhman, former Chair of the RNC, acknowledged and apologized (sort of) for the GOP's decade's long Southern Strategy, saying:

"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," said Mr. Mehlman. "I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

Of course, he was criticized for suggesting that those days were over for the Republican Party. See, An Empty Apology. Yet, at least he didn't try to deny that it occurred in the recent history of the GOP.

After Brooks' tit, Krugman responded with a tat, which eviscerated, as only he could, the unnamed "campaign on to exonerate Ronald Reagan from the charge that he deliberately made use of Nixon’s Southern strategy." In his blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, Krugman labeled Reagan's missteps as a series of Innocent mistakes, as he scathingly recalls:

When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that “I believe in states’ rights,” he didn’t mean to signal support for white racists. It was all just an innocent mistake.

Indeed, you do really have to feel sorry for Reagan. He just kept making those innocent mistakes.

When he went on about the welfare queen driving her Cadillac, and kept repeating the story years after it had been debunked, some people thought he was engaging in race-baiting. But it was all just an innocent mistake.

When, in 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility.

* * * *

Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake.

In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating, he had no idea that the issue was so racially charged. It was all an innocent mistake.

And the next year, when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission, it wasn’t intended as a gesture of support to Southern whites. It was all an innocent mistake.

Poor Reagan. He just kept on making those innocent mistakes, again and again and again.

Next up was Bob Herbert, providing historical context to the silent battle between the Times columnists. As he notes in Righting Reagan’s Wrongs?:

The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order of the day.

That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his general election campaign. . . .

Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

* * * *

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Despite Brooks' essay, this was not just one instance of a slip by Reagan that was misconstrued by his visit to Philadelphia, Miss. As these series of unfortunate, but true, facts show, other instances abound. See also, Krugman v Brooks and Reagan’s ‘Mistaken’ Legacy of Racism.

With the facts against them, it is obviously time for a change of tactics. The latest is that these mean old liberals are trying to portray Reagan as a divisive racist.

Today's op-ed, by Lou Cannon, takes up that mantle, in Reagan’s Southern Stumble, with the observation: "Any fair-minded look at Mr. Reagan’s biography and record demonstrates that he was not a bigot. " Of course, this line is followed by a litany of examples, in the vein of "some of his best friends were black."

Apparently, this must be the flavor de jour , since Krugman also comments at his blog, Signs of desperation:

This represents a level of misunderstanding that has to be deliberate:

Enough already. Nobody believes Reagan is a bigot.

That is, of course, not the question. Reagan’s personal attitude is of no consequence. The question is whether he deliberately appealed to bigots, as a political tactic. And he did.

Personally, before the Republicans go too far down that path, I'm not sure how much this excuse helps. In my view, it almost makes it worse. Is it better that Reagan actually understood the effects of bigotry, yet acquiesced by knowingly taking advantage of those who subscribe to those beliefs, to the detriment of those who suffered at the hands of racism? I think not.

Rather, as noted by Canadian blogger Sans Everything, I think the words of Southern writer Eudora Welty, who lived in Mississippi, Eudora Welty on Reagan in Mississippi, are appropo:

Welty said in an interview she gave in 1985: “Mississippi is very conservative …. Reagan carried the state because he came down there and he talked about ‘We’ll be having states’ rights’ and a whole lot of things like that. You know that was very wicked of him.”

Welty was a lady of the old school. She never raised her voice and always used words precisely. When she said “wicked” she meant “wicked” with all its full and terrible connotations. (Emphasis added).

For a detailed of Brooks' position, see Driftglass' "A Rose for Bobo", (the 1st of 4 parts). See also, Group News Blog.

Tags: Commentary, Reagan, Krugman, Brooks, Racism