Tuesday, June 08, 2004
The news channels, to be sure, have had their share of fawning packages. (Doesn't Ken Duberstein have a day job?) But by and large, the segments I've seen has been respectful without ignoring the low points. And that seems like a fair way to play the story.
If anything, it's the steady barrage of damning anecdotes that have unbalanced the coverage. But that's through no fault of the media--because the anecdotes are all being told by former Reagan staffers. And the staffers relating these bizarre, frightening stories see themselves as praising Reagan rather than defaming him.
Among the accounts open to more than one interpretation:
David Gergen on The Newshour:One [story] that I think impressed me and helped me understand leadership a lot more fully was what came from the summit conference, the G-7 summit conference in Williamsburg that he was hosting, and he had on a Wednesday he had a massive day of meetings--one-on-one meetings with world leaders, plus a couple of plenary sessions he had to be the host for.
So there was this great big thick briefing book that was prepared by the White House staff and the State Department, and Jim Baker went to him very gingerly, chief of staff, and said Mr. President, you know, you tend to really like to read slowly at night, because you want to memorize things, but tonight can you, we're really worried you won't get enough sleep...Could you just skim over this tonight and sort of come in the next day.
And so he came in the next morning, looked like...he had been hit by a Mack truck, his eyes were all gray and everything like that and he sat down and he got about 10 or 15 minutes into the eggs and he and looked up and, "See, fellows, I've got a confession to make, last night I sat down with your briefing book around 9 and you've done a great job, and I want to thank you for it, but about 9:15 I turned on the TV, and you know the Sound of Music was on last night.
"You know the Sound of Music is one of my favorite movies, so I never had a chance to read a briefing book, but I didn't get a lot of sleep."
We thought oh, wow, he didn't read all these things we put together. And then he taught me something about leaders.
You know, he was better that day in the meetings than we'd ever seen him, and that's because he wasn't bogged down with all those facts that we on the staff in our arrogance thought we had to stuff him with.
Right. What arrogance--trying to bog down the President with all those pesky, useless facts! He certainly showed them!
FINAL NOTE: The post's title comes from the first track of the Violent Femmes less-than-seminal 1986 album THE BLIND LEADING THE NAKED. Lyrics can be found here.
