Republican History...

Every Republican presidential candidate is trying to compare himself to Ronald Reagan in order to gain distance from George W. Bush. So they keep citing the accomplishments of Reagan and recall what a great President he was.

His major accomplishment, one that sticks with us today, is that he turned us from the world's biggest creditor nation to the world's biggest debtor nation. Bill Clinton came very close to reversing that situation, only to have us returned to indebtedness of major magnitude by Bush.

Then there was Iran-Contra and the beginning of a great Republican tradition of carrying out a phantom foreign policy while lying to Congress.

The increase in gasoline prices to a new record (3.19 per gallon) this week prompted the news shows to remark that the last time we scored a high record (3.10 a gallon) was in 1981 under Reagan.

Many of us in the arts area (I was the Director of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA when Reagan came into office), remember how Reagan cut arts funding and eliminated the CETA program, which was how many young artists got their first jobs.

When you get 20 or so years of space from the actual scene, it is much easier to make a destructive administration look great. It is only a matter of time before Republican historians try to make Bush look like a success.

Under The LobsterScope