Ted Kennedy, Fooled to the Very End
According to Ted Kennedy’s biography (not titled “Swimming to Hyannisport”), Ronald Reagan just wasn’t all that bright.
The senator said it had been difficult to get Reagan to focus on policy matters. He described a meeting with him that he and other senators had sought to press for shoe and textile import limits.
The senators were told that they would have just 30 minutes with the president. Reagan began the meeting, the book said, commenting on Mr. Kennedy’s shoes — asking if they were Bostonians — and then talking for 20 minutes about shoes and his experience selling shoes for his father. “Several of us began conspicuously to glance at our watches.” But to no avail. “And it was over!” Mr. Kennedy said. “No one got a word in about shoe or textile quota legislation.”
I suppose if you were predisposed to think Reagan an amiable dunce, you might come away with that impression. On the other hand, you might not. I think it’s a lot more likely that Reagan ran a game on Kennedy so convincing that he believed what the President wanted him to believe until his dying day.
Why? Ronald Reagan was a staunch free-trader and an accomplished actor. There was no way in the world that he was going to waste his time listening to a protectionist spiel from his arch-enemy in the Senate. So he turned his thespian skills on the noxious windbag and fooled him so hard that almost 30 years later, he still believed it.
Really. Ronald Reagan not interested in policy matters? Pull the other one. It has bells on.
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Category: Progressives
But, Jimmie:
The feeling of moral and intellectual superiority is central to the modern liberal experience.
The fact that the Gipper played them like Don Ho on a ukulele is a disgusting an hateful thought, too terrible for our modern liberal overlords.
Cheers,
Chris
That's not the only time Reagan did something like that, so I agree. Kennedy got played and nobody ever deserved it more than he.
[...] Read it. [...]
It always amused me that the guy who called Reagan an amiable dunce ended up in the blast zone of the BCCI mess.