An avalanche of hostility. Could they have found a single person to say a single good thing about him? Nah. Just don’t call them a liberal magazine.
BOBBY VS RONNIE: Here’s a fascinating transcript of a 1967 debate between Bobby Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. (Thanks to a devoted reader.) I’d say Reagan does extremely well. How was it that a man who could out-debate Kennedy was soon to be described as a moron? Here’s his discussion of racism:
I happen to believe that the greatest part of the problem lies in the hearts of men. I think that bigotry and prejudice is probably the worst of all man’s ills the hardest to correct… Now we’ve found it necessary to legislate, to make it more possible for government to exert its responsibility to guarantee those constitutional rights. At the same time, we have much more that can be done in the area of just human relationships. I happen to bridge a time span in which I was a radio sports announcer for major league sports in our country, in athletics, many years ago. At that time the great American game of baseball had a rulebook whose opening line was: “Baseball is a game for Caucasian gentlemen.” And up until that time, up until World War II, there’d never been a Negro play in organized major league or minor league baseball in America. And one man defied that rule–a man named Branch Rickey of one of the major league teams, and today baseball is far better off and our country is far better off because he destroyed that by handpicking one man and putting him on his baseball team, and the rule disappeared. Now I don’t say this is the only answer, but we must use both, and I think the people in positions like ourselves like the Senator and myself, like the President of the United States, can do a great deal of good, perhaps almost as much as proper legislation, if we take the lead in saying those who operate their businesses or their lives on a basis of practicing discrimination and prejudice are practicing what is an evil sickness. And that we would not knowingly patronize a business that did such a thing, and we urge all right-thinking people to join us and not patronize that business. Soon we will make those who live by prejudice learn that they stand alone …”
Yes, Reagan was a skeptic about legislating tolerance. But these are not the words of a racist.
The Dish 