Ask One for the Gipper

Since the guardian angel of all things Republican and conservative these days is the soul of the Gipper. Shouldn’t we be trying to determine how the acolytes are measuring up to the standards of the guy in the sky?

A reasonable starting point might be Saint Ron’s basic question: are you better off now than four years ago? Shouldn't we ask that not only about ourselves but about the nation itself?

How could the building blocks of the question be framed? Are we dealing with the real problems of our time? Have we advanced the nation’s well being by invading Iraq? Is our strategic position better now than on the day prior to the invasion? Is Iran as frightened of an attack today as they were prior to the occupation of its neighbor? If the grand dream of toppling Saddam and being greeted by united Iraqis strewing flowers before our troops had come to pass, would the Mullahs be more amenable to talks about their nuclear ambitions? Would the Syrians be more cooperative about helping close their border?

How about at the other end of that great land mass, would the North Koreans be as obdurate about their WMDs if we could really rattle our sabers at the 38th parallel?

Would we be struggling with our foot soldier recruitment program without the insurgency that is? Is the morale of our soldiers and marines as great as we hear in the face of third and fourth rotations into Iraq?

How about Afghanistan? Where would we be in the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda if we weren’t starving that front of the resources required to actively pursue our acknowledged enemies in the mountains outside of Kabul?

How’re our two trainee democracies going? Are those stories out of Iraq about the Shias using the security forces to settle old scores with Sunnis correct? Is it really true that foreign fighters in Iraq are really a very small percentage of those fighting in the insurgency? Is Iraq likely to break into three almost nations that despise each other? Will we be better off with three autonomous regions without a centrally controlled and reliable military to face up to the Mullahs of Iran?

Who’s that commie thumbing his nose at us from South America – you know, the guy with all that oil? Are we really paying as much attention to what’s going on in our hemisphere as we should?

Oh, and what’s the name of the commie country with all those nickel an hour workers that is stripping us of our manufacturing base? You know, the guys that we owe our grandchildren’s lunch money to – the guys who’re building all those nuclear subs and now aircraft carriers who’re gearing up to challenge U.S. supremacy, at least in their part of the pond? But it’s getting hard to talk human rights with those cats with our non-torture policies and mini-prison scandals, isn’t it?

Are we better off having abandoned the chance to make the Social Security program work for future generations? Was approaching it from the point of view of destroying it as a defined benefit program and turning it into a defined contributions program the best way to go? Now, instead of having faced up to the task, are we better off by forgetting that we ever brought up the subject?

What do you think Reagan’s answers might be?

Well, that’s enough brain strain for one day. Questions on budget and trade deficits, how we’re going to deal with the natural calamities and human misery on our Gulf Coast, and whether the president encouraging the study of competing theories in biology was useful to Kansas students will have to wait another day.

But I think we can safely assume that the number one resident of the White House has positive answers to each of today's queries.

Blog on!

Wild Bill