Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

The nation has taken Will Bunch to its heart, thrilling to his knocking Ronald Reagan down a couple pegs in his Tear Down This Myth.

Until now

Lately Bunch is embracing a cuddly vision of Reagan as an old violence-averse softee who would not stoop to torture like that mean George W. Bush.

“BUNCH: I do think that some of the swaggering rhetoric that Reagan used…have been I think misinterpreted by Republicans that this was his actual policy, when actually his policies didn’t have the same kind of cowboy attitude that some of his rhetoric did. I can’t imagine, particularly torture, I just doubt that would have been something that would have been condoned during the Reagan administration.

He actually was kind of a — in fact this was used in a headline in the Washington Post — he was actually kind of a pussycat so to speak when it came to the job of killing people through various acts of war.”

Well yes, if offshore don’t count.

The old pussycat just couldn’t help himself when it came to hiring the swarthies to kill, maim and torture for the cause, whether car bombing in Beirut,  dubiously funding our Funding Father equivalent Nicaraguan Contras,  to our gallant witch burning allies in Angola.

Perhaps that is the problem with Bush, that unlike the old magician he did terrible things “in our name” and didn’t leave a sufficient number of cut-outs in between for Americans to feel good about themselves.