Josh Marshall wonders about the blatant use of the death of Ronald Reagan in the Bush/Cheney campaign: visitors to the Bush campaign website are greeted by a full screen tribute to Reagan with no mention of Bush at all.
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: June 06, 2004 – June 12, 2004 Archives:
I’ve got a number of notes from people (few of them Bush supporters in the first case, of course) who are outraged by the Bush campaign’s unabashed exploitation of Reagan’s passing as part of their reelection campaign effort — the morphing of the Bush website into the Reagan tribute website being a key example.
Yes, it’s crass and cynical. But it’s also a tad desperate. And that’s the more important point, I think. Having watched the Bush White House for some time and seen them try all manner of crude and crass political gambits, very few of them, in my recollection, haven’t ended up biting them in the behind.
I suspect this case will be the same.
I wonder if anyone will notice: are we overstating the importance of websites here? If the BC04 campaign were using Reagan in their TV ads (for all I know, they are) or otherwise replacing Bush with Reagan with the implication that a vote for Bush is a vote for the Gipper, that would be one thing. I think websites resonate in their space, but TV and to a lesser degree print ads are where the rubber meets the road.
I was struck by this commentary in the Guardian.
Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | The u-turn that saved the Gipper:
Now, George W Bush eulogises Reagan as his example. Bush has his own doctrine, a Manichean battle with evildoers, and an army of neoconservatives to lend complex rationalisations to his simplifications. Yet Reagan was saved by the wholesale firing of the neoconservatives, the rejection of conservative dogma, and a deliberate strategy to transcend his old typecasting. It is why he rose above his ruin, and rides, even in death, into the sunset of a happy Hollywood ending.
I don’t put either Bush pére or fils at the same level as Reagan, but assuming W is a tool of a similar band of neoconservative ideologues, his only hope may be to can them and disassociate himself from all that they’ve done. Iraq is a bigger issue than arming the contras was so that might be tough.
At the same time, I wonder how effective wrapping himself in Reagan’s mantle will be: do the faithful see the difference(s) between the student and the master?