Doolittle


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July 17, 2006
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Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur –  Monday, July 17, 20062, 2006

1. Israel briefly sends troops into Lebanon - Associated Press

Israeli ground troops entered southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah bases on the border, a government spokesman said Monday, but rapidly returned to Israel after conducting their military operations.

2. Wrong Airport - New York Sun Op-ed
"Instead of shutting down Beirut airport, how about shutting down Damascus airport?" Instead of making Syria feel pain for attacking Israel through its Hezbollah proxy, Jerusalem seems to be letting Damascus get off with no penalty.

3. A New Alliance Of Democrats Spreads Funding - Washington Post
A year after its founding, Democracy Alliance has followed up on its pledge to become a major power in the liberal movement. It has lavished millions on groups that have been willing to submit to its extensive screening process and its demands for secrecy. Some Democratic political consultants privately fear that the sums being spent by alliance donors will mean less money spent on winning elections in 2006 and 2008.

4. Senate Bill Creates Terrorist Loophole - Human Events
Just when the county is starting to make progress in the war against terrorism, the Senate has passed a bill that would unilaterally disarm the men and women on the front line. The only power they would be left with is the authority to write a speeding ticket and watch the terrorist drive away.

5. The Reagan Myth - Wall Street Journal Op-ed
The Gipper's record is being distorted to make President Bush look bad.

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1. Israel briefly sends troops into Lebanon - Associated Press

By HAMZA HENDAWI and LEE KEATH
Associated Press Writers

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli ground troops entered southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah bases on the border, a government spokesman said Monday, but rapidly returned to Israel after conducting their military operations.

Israel's six-day-old offensive against Hezbollah following the capture of two Israeli soldiers has been primarily an aerial campaign, but government spokesman, Asaf Shariv, said the Israeli army chief of staff confirmed that ground troops had gone into Lebanon, if only briefly.

A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said that a small group of Israeli troops had crossed into Lebanon overnight to attack a Hezbollah position, but then returned to Israel.

"There was a small operation in a very limited area overnight," the source said. "That is over."

Israel has been reluctant to send ground troops into southern Lebanon, an area that officials say has been heavily mined by Hezbollah and could lead to many Israeli casualties.

Israel would also want to quickly withdraw from the area, rather than get involved in a prolonged conflict like its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in May 2000. The bloody nature of the fighting at the that time and the high number of casualties finally forced the government to cave into public pressure to withdraw from southern Lebanon and end the contentious occupation

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LEBANON_ISRAEL?SITE=FLROC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

2. Wrong Airport - New York Sun Op-ed

July 17, 2006

We rang a wise veteran observer of the Middle East scene yesterday only to find him in a state of distress that Israel's actions in Lebanon were playing into the hands of the enemy. Instead of making Syria feel pain for attacking Israel through its Hezbollah proxy, Jerusalem seems to be letting Damascus get off with no penalty, while retaliating instead against Lebanon. "Instead of shutting down Beirut airport, how about shutting down Damascus airport?" our source said.

Syria is now in the position of being able to boast all over the region that had the newly free Lebanon allied with Iran and Syria instead of with America, it would have escaped retaliation the same way that Iran and Syria have. "You wanted Syria out of Lebanon?" the Syrians can say. "We left, and look what happened. The Israelis bombed you, but they are afraid to bomb us."

Israel, this individual said, is in danger of losing the credibility of its strategic deterrence against Syria and Iran. Hezbollah wouldn't have launched a raid into Israel and kidnapped the two Israeli soldiers without the approval of Iran or Damascus. But the Syrians and the Iranians have felt no penalty for that action. It's the Damascus airport, not the Beirut airport, that is used as a point for transshipment of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah. The government in Jerusalem said yesterday that it was Syrian-made weapons that landed in the Israel's northern port city of Haifa.

The Jewish State defends its attack on the Beirut airport, along with its naval blockade of Lebanon, as a way of ensuring that the captured Israeli soldiers aren't spirited out of Lebanon. But the likeliest route out of Lebanon is over land, to Syria.

If Israel bombs Lebanon to smithereens without defeating Syria or Iran, there's a risk that Lebanon will be rebuilt after the war with Iranian petrodollars, instead of by the funds that were starting to be generated by a recovering free Lebanese economy. That, in turn, could put Lebanon under greater Iranian domination and influence, in the same way that the West Bank, Gaza, and Iraq are under Iranian sway.

Israel has plenty of experience dealing with Lebanon, and there are officials within the Israeli government who understand the need to choke off Hezbollah in Damascus rather than merely in Lebanon. Here's hoping Prime Minister Olmert listens to them. Certainly the American government has declared that Syria and Iran bear responsibility for the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas. It is Damascus that is the strategic fulcrum between Iran and Southern Lebanon. Any truce that is reached without solving the problems in Damascus and Tehran will be merely a temporary ceasefire, not a true peace.

http://www.nysun.com/article/36114

3. A New Alliance Of Democrats Spreads Funding - Washington Post

But Some in Party Bristle At Secrecy and Liberal Tilt

By Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 17, 2006; A01

An alliance of nearly a hundred of the nation's wealthiest donors is roiling Democratic political circles, directing more than $50 million in the past nine months to liberal think tanks and advocacy groups in what organizers say is the first installment of a long-term campaign to compete more aggressively against conservatives.

A year after its founding, Democracy Alliance has followed up on its pledge to become a major power in the liberal movement. It has lavished millions on groups that have been willing to submit to its extensive screening process and its demands for secrecy.

These include the Center for American Progress, a think tank with an unabashed partisan edge, as well as Media Matters for America, which tracks what it sees as conservative bias in the news media. Several alliance donors are negotiating a major investment in Air America, a liberal talk-radio network.

But the large checks and demanding style wielded by Democracy Alliance organizers in recent months have caused unease among Washington's community of Democratic-linked organizations. The alliance has required organizations that receive its endorsement to sign agreements shielding the identity of donors. Public interest groups said the alliance represents a large source of undisclosed and unaccountable political influence.

Democracy Alliance also has left some Washington political activists concerned about what they perceive as a distinctly liberal tilt to the group's funding decisions. Some activists said they worry that the alliance's new clout may lead to groups with a more centrist ideology becoming starved for resources.

Democracy Alliance was formed last year with major backing from billionaires such as financier George Soros and Colorado software entrepreneur Tim Gill. The inspiration, according to founders, was a belief that Democrats became the minority party in part because liberals do not have a well-funded network of policy shops, watchdog groups and training centers for activists equivalent to what has existed for years on the right.

But the alliance's early months have been marked by occasional turmoil, according to several people who are now or have recently been affiliated with the group. Made up of billionaires and millionaires who are accustomed to calling the shots, the group at times has gotten bogged down in disputes about its funding priorities and mission, participants said.

Democracy Alliance organizers say early disagreements are first-year growing pains for an organization that has decades-long goals. Judy Wade, managing director of the alliance, said fewer than 10 percent of its initial donors have left, a figure she called lower than would be expected for a new venture. And she said the group's funding priorities are a work in progress, as organizers try to determine what will have the most influence in revitalizing what she called the "center-left" movement.

"Everything we invest in should have not just short-term impact but long-term impact and sustainability," she said. The group requires nondisclosure agreements because many donors prefer anonymity, Wade added. Some donors expressed concern about being attacked on the Web or elsewhere for their political stance; others did not want to be targeted by fundraisers.

"Like a lot of elite groups, we fly beneath the radar," said Guy Saperstein, an Oakland lawyer and alliance donor. But "we are not so stupid though," he said, to think "we can deny our existence."

This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen Democrats who are members of the alliance, recipients of their money or familiar with the group's operations. None would speak on the record about financial details, but all such details were confirmed by multiple sources.

Democracy Alliance works essentially as a cooperative for donors, allowing them to coordinate their giving so that it has more influence.

To become a "partner," as the members are referred to internally, requires a $25,000 entry fee and annual dues of $30,000 to cover alliance operations as well as some of its contributions to start-up liberal groups. Beyond this, partners also agree to spend at least $200,000 annually on organizations that have been endorsed by the alliance. Essentially, the alliance serves as an accreditation agency for political advocacy groups.

This accreditation process is the root of Democracy Alliance's influence. If a group does not receive the alliance's blessing, dozens of the nation's wealthiest political contributors as a practical matter become off-limits for fundraising purposes.

Many of these contributors give away far more than the $200,000 requirement. Soros, Gill and insurance magnate Peter Lewis are among the biggest contributors, but 45 percent of the 95 partners gave $300,000 or better in the initial round of grants last October, according to a source familiar with the organization.

Democracy Alliance organizers say they are trying to bring principles of accountability and capital investment that are common in business to the world of political advocacy, where they believe such principles have often been missing.

Wade declined to discuss the donors or the groups they fund. But, in an interview, she described how the groups were chosen. Alliance officials initially reviewed about 600 liberal and Democratic-leaning organizations. Then, about 40 of those groups were invited to apply for an endorsement -- with a requirement that they submit detailed business plans and internal financial information. Those groups were then screened by a panel of alliance staff members, donors and outside experts, including some with expertise in philanthropy rather than politics. So far, according to people familiar with the alliance, 25 groups have received its blessing.

The goal was to invest in groups that could be influential in building what activists call "political infrastructure" -- institutions that can support Democratic causes not simply in the next election but for years to come.

Those who make the cut have prospered. The Center for American Progress (CAP), which is led by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, received $5 million in the first round because it was seen as a liberal version of the Heritage Foundation, which blossomed as a conservative idea shop in the Reagan years, said one person closely familiar with alliance operations. CAP officials declined to comment.

Likewise, a Democracy Alliance blessing effectively jump-started Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). It bills itself as a nonpartisan watchdog group committed to targeting "government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests." Alliance officials see CREW as a possible counterweight to conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, which filed numerous lawsuits against Clinton administration officials in the 1990s. A CREW spokesman declined to comment.

The Center for Progressive Leadership and its president, Peter Murray, are getting funding from the alliance and are seen by some as a potential leader in training young activists on the left. While the center is still dwarfed by conservative groups such as the Leadership Institute, alliance donors have helped increase Murray's budget to $2.3 million, compared with $1 million one year ago, he said.

But Democracy Alliance's decisions not to back some prominent groups have stirred resentment. Among the groups that did not receive backing in early rounds were such well-known centrist groups as the Democratic Leadership Council and the Truman National Security Project.

Funding for these groups was "rejected purely because of their ideologies," said one Democrat familiar with internal Democracy Alliance funding discussions.

Officials with numerous policy and political groups in Washington said they have reservations about the group's influence. Several declined to talk on the record for fear of alienating a funding source.

But Matt Bennett, a vice president at Third Way, a centrist group that did not receive funding in the first wave of endorsements, said he believes that Democracy Alliance has merit. "It will enable progressives, for the first time ever, to build a permanent infrastructure to beat the conservative machine," he said.

Philanthropist David Friedman, an alliance partner and self-described centrist, said that "as our portfolio grows, we will fund a broader range of groups."

But some consider Democracy Alliance's hidden influence troubling, regardless of its ideological orientation. Unlike election campaigns, which must detail contributions and spending, most of the think tanks and not-for-profit groups funded by the alliance are exempt from public disclosure laws.

"It is a huge problem," said Sheila Krumholz, the acting executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. She noted that for decades "all kinds of Democrats and liberals were complaining that corporations and individuals were carrying on these stealth campaigns to fund right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups. Just as it was then, it is a problem today."

The exclusive donor club includes millionaires such as Susie Tompkins Buell and her husband, Mark Buell, major backers of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), and Chris Gabrieli, an investment banker running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Massachusetts this September. Mark Buell estimated that about 70 percent of alliance partners built their own wealth, while 30 percent became wealthy through inheritances.

Bernard L. Schwartz, retired chief executive of Loral Space & Communications Inc. and an alliance donor, said the group offers partners "an array of opportunities that have passed their smell test." This is most helpful, he said, for big donors who lack the time to closely examine their political investment options.

Trial lawyer Fred Baron, a member of the alliance and longtime Democratic donor, agreed: "The piece that has always been lacking in our giving is long-term infrastructure investments."

There also are a few "institutional investors" such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that pay a $50,000 annual fee and agree to spend $1 million on alliance-backed efforts.

Some Democratic political consultants privately fear that the sums being spent by alliance donors will mean less money spent on winning elections in 2006 and 2008.

But Rob Stein, co-founder of Democracy Alliance, said the party will become ascendant only if it thinks beyond the next election cycle.

Stein has closely studied the conservative movement -- often with envy. Armed with a PowerPoint presentation for potential donors, he argues that Republicans dominate the federal and many state governments because they methodically made investments in groups that could generate new ideas, shape public opinion, train conservative activists and elected officials, and boost voter turnout among conservatives -- aware that there was no near-term payoff. Liberals have done nothing comparable, he said.

"It is not possible in the 21st century to promote a coherent belief system and maintain political influence without a robust, enduring local, state and national institutional infrastructure," Stein said. "Currently, the center-left is comparatively less strategic, coordinated and well financed than the conservative-right. These comparative disadvantages are debilitating."

Cillizza is a staff writer for washingtonpost.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/16/AR2006071600882.html

4. Senate Bill Creates Terrorist Loophole - Human Events

by Kris W. Kobach
Posted Jul 17, 2006

One important lesson our country learned on Sept. 11, 2001, is that state and local police can make the difference between an unsuccessful terrorist plot and an attack that kills nearly 3,000 people. But some in Washington, D.C., still have not absorbed this lesson.

The immigration bill (S. 2611) approved by the Senate last month strips local police officers of arrest authority that could have been used to stop the 9/11 attacks.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we learned that five of the 19 hijackers had violated federal immigration laws while they were in the United States. In other words, they were illegal aliens. Amazingly, in the months before the attack, four of those five terrorists were stopped by local police for speeding. All four could have been arrested-if the police officers had realized that they were illegal aliens.

These were missed opportunities of breathtaking dimension. They demonstrate the crucial role local police can play in the war on terrorism.

The first case is that of Saudi national Nawaf al Hazmi. Hazmi entered the U.S. through Los Angeles International Airport with a B2 tourist visa on Jan. 15, 2000. He rented an apartment with fellow hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar in San Diego and lived there for more than a year. In almost every instance, however, the authorized period of stay for B2 visas is only six months. After July 15, 2000, Hazmi was in the U.S. illegally.

Traffic Tickets

For nearly a year, he managed to avoid contact with law enforcement. Then, on April 1, 2001, he was stopped for speeding in Oklahoma while traveling cross country with fellow hijacker Hani Hanjour. Had the officer making the stop asked a few questions and determined that Hazmi was in violation of U.S. immigration law at the time, he could have arrested him.

Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader of the 9/11 attacks who was at the controls of American Airlines Flight 11 when it crashed into the World Trade Center, provides the second case.

Atta entered the U.S. on numerous occasions, using B1 and B2 visas, which are for temporary visits for business purposes and for tourism, respectively. His first entry was on June 3, 2000, through Newark Airport. He, too, was unable to avoid contact with local law enforcement.

On April 26, 2001, a police officer in Broward County, Florida, stopped Atta for a traffic violation and ticketed him for possessing an invalid driver's license. The officer did not know Atta had overstayed his visa on a prior visit to the U.S. Within days of this stop, Atta obtained a valid Florida driver's license, despite his prior illegal presence in the country. He failed to appear in court for the April 26 ticket, however, and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.

On July 5, 2001, Atta was pulled over for another traffic violation in Florida-this time in Palm Beach County. The police officer was unaware of the bench warrant issued by the neighboring jurisdiction. He issued a warning to Atta, then let him drive away.

The third case is Hani Hanjour, the Saudi who was at the flight controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it hit the Pentagon. Hanjour entered the U.S. on an F1 student visa on Dec. 8, 2000, through the Cincinnati airport. He said that he intended to take classes at the ELS Language Center in Oakland, Calif. His immigration violation commenced when he failed to show up for classes. Thereafter, he was in the country illegally.

On Aug. 1, 2001, Hanjour was pulled over for speeding in Arlington County, Virginia. The police officer who stopped him was unaware that Hanjour had violated his immigration status. He issued the hijacker a ticket and let him drive away.

The fourth case is Ziad Jarrah, the Lebanese man at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

Jarrah entered the U.S. on June 27, 2000, through the Atlanta Airport on a B2 tourist visa. He immediately violated his immigration status by going directly to the Florida Flight Training Center in Venice, Fla. He never applied to change his immigration status from tourist to student. He was therefore detainable and removable from the U.S. almost from the moment he entered the country.

Jarrah successfully avoided contact with state and local police for more than 14 months. Then at 12:09 a.m. on Sept. 9, 2001, two days before the attack, he was clocked doing 90 miles per hour on Interstate 95 in Maryland. He was traveling from Baltimore to Newark to rendezvous with the other members of his terrorist team.

The Maryland trooper did not know Jarrah had been attending classes in violation of his immigration status. He also did not know Jarrah's visa had expired more than a year earlier, a second violation of immigration law that rendered him detainable and removable from the U.S. The trooper issued Jarrah a speeding ticket carrying a $270 fine and let him go. The ticket would be found in the glove compartment of the car, left at Newark Airport two days later.

Civil, Not Criminal

In each of these cases, the police officers who stopped the 9/11 terrorists could have easily determined their immigration status by calling the Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC)-a facility run by the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service in Williston, Vt. The LESC, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is designed to let local police officers know if a particular alien is legally or illegally present in the U.S.

Adding even greater poignancy to these missed opportunities is the fact that they involved three of the four terrorist pilots of 9/11. Had the police officers detained Atta, Hanjour, and Jarrah, they would have been out of the picture. Moreover, Atta and Hazmi were the operation leader and the second in command, respectively. It is difficult to imagine the attacks taking place with three pilots and the leadership of the 9/11 cohort in custody. However, if even one of the terrorists had been arrested, the plot might have unraveled.

Importantly, all of these transgressions were civil, not criminal, violations of federal immigration law.

In the wake of the attacks, the Department of Justice in 2002 announced an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion: State and local police officers have the inherent legal authority to arrest any deportable illegal alien, regardless of whether the underlying immigration offense is criminal or civil. This conclusion had already been confirmed by the 10th and 5th Circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

Section 240D

Moreover, the OLC recognized that this authority had never been "preempted" or displaced by Congress. The 10th Circuit held in the 2001 case of United States v. Santana-Garcia that federal law "evinces a clear invitation from Congress for state and local agencies to participate in the process of enforcing federal immigration laws." Liberal interest groups such as the ACLU fumed, but the legal authority was clear.

This Department of Justice announcement did not create any new authority-the police had possessed it all along. But it did remind local law enforcement agencies of the crucial role they could-and should-play in the war against terrorism by making immigration arrests.

Police departments across the country responded by exercising their inherent arrest authority with renewed determination. The number of calls to the LESC by police officers who had arrested illegal aliens nearly doubled in the next three years, to over 504,678 in fiscal year 2005. That was an average of 1,383 calls a day.

Local police have beome a crucial force multiplier in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Unfortunately, the Senate immigration bill would change all of this. Buried deep in its 800 pages is a provision that most Senators probably did not read. Section 240D would restrict local police to arresting aliens for criminal violations of immigration law only, not civil violations. In other words, if the Senate bill became law, Congress would exercise its power to "preempt" state and local action and strip police officers of arrest authority for civil violations of immigration law.

If the Senate bill had been in effect in 2001, none of the hijackers who had violated immigration law could have been arrested by local police because all of the hijackers had committed civil violations.

Moreover, as a practical matter, the bill would discourage police departments from playing any role in immigration enforcement. Most police officers (indeed, most lawyers) do not know which immigration violations are criminal and which are civil. There is no particular logic to the distinctions. Overstaying a visa (something hijackers from the Middle East are more likely to do) is a civil violation, but marriage fraud is a criminal violation. Which is more dangerous to national security?

Fearful of arresting the wrong type of illegal alien-and getting sued as a result-many police departments would stop helping the federal government altogether. And that is precisely what the ACLU and the American Immigration Lawyers Association have wanted for years. The Senate bill gave them the vehicle they needed.

Hidden Time Bomb

Section 240D is a hidden time bomb. The provision is not labeled "stripping of local police arrest authority." Indeed, Section 240D is worded so that a person reading the first few lines actually might think that the provision enhanced, rather than diminished, the arrest authority of local police.

However, the wording of Section 240D sends an unmistakable message to the courts: making arrests for criminal provisions of immigration law "has never been displaced ... by Federal law," therefore making arrests for civil provisions has been displaced. No other conclusion can be drawn from Section 240D's limitation of this authority to criminal violations only.

I recently testified about this terrorist loophole at the field hearings held in San Diego, Calif., by the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism. Articles in HUMAN EVENTS and other publications have also exposed Section 240D for what it is.

So what do the drafters of the Senate bill have to say in defense of this pernicious provision? Nothing intelligible. Asked about Section 240D by HUMAN EVENTS Editor Terence Jeffrey, one Senate Judiciary Committee aide tried to sell this line: "The committee provided a statutory basis for state and local authority on criminal violations. The committee did not address the issue of civil violations, thus maintaining current law."

Rubbish. The first hole in the aide's argument is that no "statutory basis" is necessary for state arrest authority in criminal cases. The states' arrest authority is inherent authority-it comes from the states' status as sovereign entities. Moreover, the states' authority to make criminal arrests in the immigration context has never been seriously contested.

The second, and more damning, problem with the aide's story is that it does not reflect the way the courts have interpreted federal immigration law. A fundamental principle of statutory interpretation, one routinely applied by all courts, is "Inclusio unius est exclusion alterius." (The inclusion of one is the exclusion of another.) Where a statute expressly describes a particular situation in which it applies (i.e., criminal violations of immigration law), an irrefutable inference must be drawn that what is omitted was intentionally omitted (i.e., civil violations). Section 240D would be interpreted by any court as stripping arrest authority from the police in cases of civil violations. The Senate staffer was either ignorant of this principle or he was attempting to mislead.

A basic rule for all terrorists is to avoid contact with law enforcement officers. Each contact presents an opportunity for the officer to make an arrest and derail the terrorist plot. If the Senate bill were to become law, the power of police to take advantage of those opportunities would be stripped away. Just when the county is starting to make progress in the war against terrorism, the Senate has passed a bill that would unilaterally disarm the men and women on the front line. The only power they would be left with is the authority to write a speeding ticket and watch the terrorist drive away.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=16048

5. The Reagan Myth - Wall Street Journal Op-ed

The Gipper's record is being distorted to make President Bush look bad.

BY FRED BARNES
Monday, July 17, 2006 12:01 a.m.

I was recently asked about President Bush's chances of a political resurgence. Might Mr. Bush be able to recover as strongly as President Reagan did from a slump in his second term in the 1980s? My response was, Reagan recovery? What Reagan recovery?

Though he continued his ultimately successful fight to win the Cold War, Reagan achieved nothing new--practically nothing--after the Iran-contra scandal broke in 1986. His presidency was crippled. The Republicans had lost the Senate. His nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 was defeated, partly because of feeble White House support. His veto of a transportation bill was overridden.

The question was innocent enough, but it reflected a broader pattern of misrepresentation of Ronald Reagan's record in the White House that has become not only widespread but widely accepted. Reagan was, I believe, one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century, but many of the things that both liberals and conservatives now credit to his presidency simply never were. And there's a political purpose behind this Reagan revisionism. He is cited mostly to criticize Mr. Bush and congressional Republicans for falling short of some mythical Reagan standard.

Liberals pretend the Reagan years--in contrast to the Bush years--were a golden idyll of collaboration between congressional Democrats and a not-so-conservative president. When Reagan died in 2004, John Kerry recalled having admired his political skills and liked him personally. "I had quite a few meetings with him," Mr. Kerry told reporters. "I met with Reagan a lot more than I've met with this president."

Of course, that wasn't Mr. Kerry's take on Reagan during his presidency: In 1988, he condemned the "moral darkness of the Reagan-Bush administration." A chief complaint of liberals and the media in those days was that Mr. Reagan was a "detached" president, not one easily accessible to Democratic members of Congress or anyone outside his inner circle of aides. But Reagan had to talk to Democrats on occasion since they controlled at least half of Congress. Mr. Bush rarely consults them for the simple reason that Republicans run all of Capitol Hill; so he talks frequently with Republican congressional leaders.

Liberals today talk about Reagan as if the hallmark of his administration was a lack of partisanship--again in contrast with Mr. Bush. Mr. Kerry noted in 2004 that Mr. Reagan "taught us that there is a big difference between strong beliefs and bitter partisanship." Mr. Bush, naturally, is the bitter partisan. Of course that's what liberals then thought of Reagan--and they were partially right: While never bitter, Reagan was in fact a partisan Republican.

On foreign policy, some liberals peddle the notion that Reagan wasn't the hardliner he might have seemed. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, has argued that Reagan, having won the Cold War, was ready to rely on international organizations to police the world. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, is impugned as the enemy of the U.N. and multilateralism.

Reagan a moderate in foreign affairs? It strains credulity to imagine the president--who supported wars of national liberation in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan, who bombed Libya to punish Gadhafi, who defiantly installed Pershing missiles in Europe, who invaded Grenada--as anything but a hardliner. He was a hawk for whom defeating the Soviet Union was the essential priority.

It's on foreign policy that liberals and conservatives find common cause. Patrick Buchanan, rehearsing the pieties of the political left, argues that Mr. Bush has turned the world against America. The "endless bellicosity" of Mr. Bush and his neoconservative advisers, he recently argued, "has produced nothing but ill will against us. This was surely not the way of the tough but gracious and genial Ronald Reagan."

Of all people, Mr. Buchanan ought to know better, having served as Reagan's communications director from 1984 to 1986. Reagan generated massive antiwar and anti-American demonstrations around the world, far larger and more numerous protests than those Mr. Bush has occasioned. He famously denounced the Soviet "evil empire" headed for "the ash-heap of history." He was treated by the press as a cowboy warmonger, just as Mr. Bush has been. Ill will? Reagan produced plenty--all in a noble cause.

Conservatives attack Mr. Bush most vehemently on excessive government spending, and there they have a point. He could have been more frugal, despite the exigent circumstances, especially in his first term. But it's also on the spending issue that the Reagan myth--Reagan as the relentless swashbuckler against spending--is most pronounced. He won an estimated $35 billion in spending cuts in 1981, his first year in office. After that, spending soared, so much so that his budget director David Stockman, who found himself on the losing end of spending arguments, wrote a White House memoir with the subtitle, "Why the Reagan Revolution Failed."

With Reagan in the White House, spending reached 23.5% of GDP in 1984, the peak year of the military buildup. Under Mr. Bush, the top spending year is 2005 at 20.1% of GDP, though it is expected to rise as high as 20.7% this year, driven upward by Iraq and hurricane relief.

Mr. Reagan was a small government conservative, but he found it impossible to govern that way. He made tradeoffs. He gave up the fight to curb domestic spending in exchange for congressional approval of increased defense spending. He cut taxes deeply but signed three smaller tax hikes. Rather than try to reform Social Security, he agreed to increase payroll taxes.

The myth would have it that Reagan was tireless in shrinking the size of government, a weak partisan always ready to deal with Democrats, and not the hardliner we thought he was. The opposite is true. Reagan compromised, as even the most conservative politicians often do, to save his political strength for what mattered most--defeating the Soviet empire and keeping taxes low. Today, the latter still remains imperative, and the former has been superseded by a faceless death cult. We can't understand George Bush if we distort the real Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and author of "Rebel in Chief" (Crown Forum, 2006).

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008665

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