Reagan Redux

In Sunday's Clarion Ledger Sid Salter discusses the recent debate over Reagan's speech, "I heard Reagan's speech at Neshoba and didn't need The New York Times then or now to interpret it for me.

In the context of declaring that the federal government was too large and that government couldn't and shouldn't be tasked with solving all social problems and with his reform of welfare programs in California as a point of reference, Reagan said:

"I believe in state's rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment. "

Reagan's speech drew consistent applause. It was one of the largest political gatherings in Mississippi's history and Reagan played his movie and TV stardom to the hilt - telling the crowd how much John Wayne ("the Duke") would have loved the fairgrounds.

Following decades of listening to actual racist and segregationist political rhetoric from the likes of Theodore Bilbo, Ross Barnett and others, Reagan's use of the term "states' rights" caused no appreciable stir in the fairgrounds crowd and certainly wasn't digested as a racist call to arms - at least not by the overwhelming majority of Mississippians in the crowd.

But the venue in which Reagan uttered those two words made them painful to many and painted a huge political bull's eye on the Republicans' chest in terms of how the national media interpreted Reagan's Mississippi speech. It was as if "states' rights" were the only words Reagan spoke that hot, humid Neshoba County day.

For some, that's still the case."

The Ledger also carried this piece by Greg Mitchell from Editor & Publisher Magazine: "Reagan speech autopsy: Code words or county fair platitudes?"

Alabama's Anniston Star has weighed in as well.