Letter: Reagan's legacy is often misread

Republican presidential candidates emulate a mythological version of Ronald Reagan ["Perry insists he can beat Obama in debate," News, Oct. 31]. This version created from the aspirations of conservative Republicans is molded in their own image and likeness. This Reagan is a tax-cutting Rambo. However, the real Reagan was a more complicated man.

By his own admission, Reagan was a New Deal Democrat who often said that he never left the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left him.

Click on YouTube under the heading "Reagan-Truman," and listen to his 1948 campaign speech for Hubert Humphrey, candidate for the U.S. Senate. It has the Reagan sales presentation style along with quaint stories of individuals harmed by the actions of the opposition party. But, in 1948, the opposition was the Republican Party, whose positions were opposed by New Deal Democrat Reagan.

As a New Deal Democrat-Republican, then-Gov. Reagan gave a televised speech in January 1967, embracing both tax increases and spending cuts as the solution to California's fiscal crisis. Republicans today don't even want to hear the term tax increase.

As president, Reagan turned to deficit spending, again a New Deal idea, as the solution to a major economic downturn. Both times, he was right, and both times he was rewarded with a second term, first as governor of California, then as president.

Like Dwight D. Eisenhower before him, Reagan was a foreign policy moderate, both deliberate and slow in picking up the sword. The Rambo Reagan of mythology would have carpet-bombed Lebanon in 1983 after scores of American marines were killed in Beirut. Unlike the demigod Reagan, the flesh-and-blood Reagan wanted to eliminate all nuclear weapons. For this reason, he embarked on the greatest peacetime military buildup in history. He wanted to deal with the Soviet Union from a position of strength and, again, his instincts were proven right.

Reagan the Legend would never have been elected governor or president. My advice to all Republican candidates for president: Be yourself, fight for the things you believe, and don't model yourself after a Ronald Reagan who never existed.

Kenneth E. Heard, Smithtown