Category Archives: Reagan
Bush Funeral All About Humility
The funeral for President George H. W. Bush was beautiful, and informative. W’s eulogy was touching.
I drew Bush 41 a lot, and felt like I understood him pretty well as a goofy but decent guy. And I was aware of of his other virtues like integrity, kindness, courage, high speed golfing and fishing, airplane jumping and lip reading. But hearing the speakers, all of whom were close to him and loved him, one virtue seemed to stand out – humility. Maybe that’s because it’s a rare commodity these days, especially in Washington. Anyway, former Senator Alan Simpson nailed it in his warm and witty eulogy:
Those who crave the high road of humility in Washington , DC are not bothered by heavy traffic.
Then the camera panned to President Trump and the past presidents the front row and, well, this cartoon idea kind of jumped out.
It’s not often you get a pack of presidents together in one shot. So I try to make the most of it. Here’s a cartoon I drew when they gathered for Nixon’s funeral.
Maybe I’ll do the Bush bunch pondering, “If Perot hadn’t run…”
I know. I left Jimmy Carter out of the humility cartoon. It’s not the first time.
Reagan Legacy
Blame Government
President Obama told Chris Matthews not to blame him for the stumble start of ObamaCare. Blame the government. More specifically, blame outdated big agencies.
But don’t blame outdated big agencies for the web site. It’s up to “private sector velocity“.
Blame Government
The Gipper could have told The Messiah that government isn’t the solution to our problem, it is the problem.
George Will is amused.
Borked
Robert Bork died late this year. He was a distinguished scholar. One of his many distinctions included having a last name as a verb form – “to bork”. The good judge was borked by Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy during senate hearings on his nomination to the supreme court.
The late senator from Chappaquiddick claimed, “Robert Bork’s America” was a place where “women would be forced into back alley abortions and blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters.” A more circumspect Biden would wait 25 years before claiming they would be seated in chains.
Sketchy
How Peggy Noonan sees Romney’s Etch A Sketch problem:
…then-Sen. Barack Obama, in 2008, was widely viewed as a blank slate, an empty canvas on which people painted their hopes and yearnings. He knew it; he admitted it was part of his mystique. So he was a kind of Etch A Sketch too, only he let the voters turn the knobs. The other is that it illustrated with a disheartening vividness the essential Romney problem, which has never gone away after all this time: that he’s making it up as he goes along, that he’ll be one thing today and another tomorrow.