Bill O’Reilly is a
conservative icon. His top-rated nightly
television show has been a staple on Fox news for over a decade. He is also a prolific author, who (along with
Martin Dugard) is habitually perched atop the New York Times best-seller list.
George Will is also a
conservative icon. His is a nationally
syndicated columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner. He has likewise served as a political
commentator for ABC and now for Fox.
And so it came as a surprise
when a nasty contretemps broke out between these two. Their quarrel was sparked by sharply
differing opinions over O’Reilly’s assessment of president Ronald Reagan. It rose to Olympian heights when O’Reilly
slammed Will as a political hack on national television.
First off, O’Reilly is a media
superstar. He has a well-earned
reputation for being both brash and courageous.
Often insightful about matters such as the family and race, he can be a
bully if others disagree with him.
Meanwhile Will is more
laid-back. Almost professorial in his
analytic style, his judgments tend to be more nuanced. Similarly courageous, he is not a brawler,
but neither does he back away from a fight.
The question is: Who’s appraisal
of Reagan is correct? Does “Killing
Reagan” make the former president look good or is it a hatchet job based on a misinterpretation
of history?
After reading the book, I
believe that Will’s estimation comes closer to the truth. Indeed, if the only information one had about
Reagan came from O’Reilly’s work, one might rightly wonder what the shouting
was about. Why have so many
conservatives lionized the Gipper?
In fact, O’Reilly
concentrates on Reagan’s weaknesses. He
repeatedly makes it sound as if his wife Nancy controlled his every move. O’Reilly also implies that Reagan’s staff
designed his policies and routinely kept him from making a fool of himself.
How casually O’Reilly treats
Reagan’s achievements is epitomized by the discussion of the military build-up
that helped topple the Soviet empire.
This accomplishment is relegated to a footnote. A reader would never know how much resistance
the policy encountered.
Nor would one suspect that
Reagan fearlessly tamed the roaring inflation he inherited from Carter, skillfully
negotiated with Tip O’Neill to lower taxes, or successfully began to reduce the
size of the federal government. Instead,
the emphasis is on how Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease might have been accelerated
by a would-be assassin’s bullet.
O’Reilly argues that Reagan’s
advisors believed that he might be mentally incompetent even before he faced
down Gorbachev in Iceland. The fact that
Reagan sometimes zoned out at cabinet meetings is taken as prima fascia evidence
of a growing incapacity.
I am now in my seventies and
I think I understand Reagan’s behavior a bit better. Having myself sat through innumerable bureaucratic
meetings, I can testify that most of these produce nothing but shared
vapidity. Tuning them out is therefore a
sensible strategy, not a sign of senility.
I am also reminded of
Charles Krauthammer’s description of a dinner he had with Reagan. He noted that when asked a question, the
president responded with an irrelevant story.
Krauthammer was perceptive enough to realize that this was an intentional
device. According to Krauthammer, Reagan
was sufficiently confident in his abilities that he didn’t need to go around
proving them.
Dwight Eisenhower used a
similar technique. When he did not want
to answer a question, he simply pretended to be confused. This too was attributed to old age, whereas
it was a conscious ploy—which usually worked.
There is a reason why Reagan
was elected head of the Screen Actors Guild five times, governor of California
twice, and president of the United States twice. And it was not due to dumb luck or the
machinations of a revolving team of puppet masters. This was a man who knew what he wanted and
had the dexterity to make it happen.
George Will understands
this. Bill O’Reilly seems to have
forgotten it.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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