I saw an interview with Gorbachev recently. He spoke very highly of Reagan and admitted that Reagan’s hard-line stance brought the Cold War to an early end. Despite the way Reagan was portrayed in the media, Gorbachev said he was a very clever man, refreshing as a politician, because he spoke his mind. When the two met, they spoke openly. Reagan openly told Gorbachev that he intended to bankrupt the USSR, and Gorbachev still respected him, even if the world’s media underestimated him.
The media in Europe in particular (and Michael Moore) have spent years ridiculing Bush, making out that he’s a half-wit. They have spread lies about Bush, which are digested and spouted by large swathes of the public, who seem to derive some kind of feeling of intellectual prowess by buying into any conspiracy theory going. I hope that the paragraph above goes some way to show that they were wrong about Reagan, and they are wrong about Bush.
I may not naturally align myself politically with Bush, and would dearly have loved to have seen an Al Gore victory in the last presidential election, but like Tony Blair, I respect Bush’s stance on the war in Iraq. The outpouring of cynicism and blatant falsehoods by the likes of Michael Moore have merely galvanised support for Bush. It only takes a little bit of research (from reliable sources) to discover that Michael Moore selectively edited quotes and film to completely alter the meaning of what people were saying. Frankly, the American Left has got what it deserved by going along with all this, instead of fighting the election from a reasoned and forward-looking viewpoint. It could have won on such a basis.
I am not a Conservative. The Conservative Party in the Great Britain remains unelectable, and has been as opportunistic as Kerry over recent months, since the rising tide of public opposition to the war in Iraq. I have broadly liberal views on most moral issues, but resent the increasing upsurge of political correctness; I believe in sound economic policies, but support the concept of caring for the weakest members of society.
Despite this, I am glad that people turned their back on cynicism and cheap satire and, if they didn’t vote for Bush, they at least voted against the former.