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Doonesbury Dossier: The Reagan Years

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The current Republican touting of Ronald Reagan and proclaiming of how great a president he was amuses me, as I am someone who was politically conscious through the years of his presidency. Reagan invented the massive federal deficits during peacetime that have plagued this country since then, with of course the exception of the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton. Those times were nowhere near as rosy as the Republicans proclaim, which made my reading of this book so interesting.
Trudeau's Doonesbury cartoons were based on current events and reading this book takes me back to the headlines of those years. There is the presidential campaign of 1980, where Carter, Reagan and John Anderson were all major players. The disastrous American intervention in Lebanon is once again brought up and when contrasted with the current involvement in Iraq, proves once again how little we have learned. At least Reagan had the courage and intelligence to recognize when it was time to cut and run. And who could forget Secretary of the Interior James Watt, a man who openly ridiculed the environmental movement and proved to be one of the politically dumbest people ever to serve in the cabinet. To the best of my knowledge, Watt was the first example of a born-again who used his religious beliefs as a rudder for the generation of his policies. It is somehow fitting that he was ultimately indicted on 18 felony counts and reached a plea agreement that kept him out of jail.
If you did not live through the early Reagan years, then these cartoons will probably not make sense to you. That is one of the unfortunate consequences of the best political cartoons in that they simply do not have a long shelf life. Once the context of their appearance fades, then they can be made incomprehensible. Nevertheless, they are still just as biting and entertaining as they were when they were a thorn in the fatside of the Republican group who was in power at that time.