Thursday, March 5, 2015

Attacks on Scott Walker Remind of Reagan - What it’s like when the gotcha left is out to get you!

American Spectator ^ | Paul Kengor 

".....Whoa. Now is that fair? The minute that this PolitiFact item was released, I got an email from a fellow Reagan expert who was steamed. “Paul, you’ve got to take this on!” he wrote.
No, I didn’t want to take it on. I instantly recognized what Walker was talking about, and was mystified by the harsh reaction. I knew the PATCO material published in Peggy Noonan’s and Edmund Morris’ books, and elsewhere.
Because a politician in an unscripted TV interview referred to documents rather than books by biographers, he’s a liar with his pants on fire? Should we hold a governor to the standard that we do scholars because he used the word “documents” in an off-the-cuff remark to a TV guy? Do we expect our politicians to be archival experts in Cold War documentation adhering to the utmost academic-scholarly precision while making general statements?
Clearly, Walker had indeed correctly read that the Soviets were impressed by Reagan’s actions, and surely assumed (understandably) that the authors he remembered writing about the incident (being authors) probably used some sort of “documents” for their research.
But because he used a word like “documents” instead of, say, “biographers,” we’re going to denounce him, “Liar, liar, pants on fire?!”
Does anyone really think that Scott Walker lied here? Please, give me a break...."
[SNIP]
As Scott Walker moves on, he can expect to get much more of this. Ronald Reagan certainly did. Don’t let it bother you, governor, you’re in good company.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...

T-Shirt