Go Home

Due to a recent server outage, our video archives are currently unavailable. We are working as fast as we can to remedy this. Thanks for your understanding.

Get Adobe Flash player

DOWNLOADS: (191)
Download WMV Download Quicktime
PLAYS: (317)
Play WMV Play Quicktime
Embed

I found this fairly humorous while going back through some of CNN's coverage of the Ronald Reagan Centennial. Gloria Borger admits that Ronald Reagan's acting skills probably helped a great deal with his "aw shucks" appeal to every day Americans, even though as most of us are more than well aware of his policies were terrible for most working people. But after that admission she does her best to downplay it by saying that he really wasn't that great of an actor.

I guess she expects the rest of us to believe that just because his acting skills weren't all that great, he still wasn't still using them successfully to put a happy face on horrid economic policies.

KING: And Gloria, you know, Jack Kennedy was the first -- Nixon Kennedy was the first televised presidential debate, but the Reagan White House using the skills of Ronald Reagan the actor, the imagery of the presidency, came to a new level and it was the beginning late in the Reagan presidency, the cable age and Ronald Reagan was not around when the internet dominated our politics, but he did master the imagery. Mike Deaver and that team, the imagery of the presidency and again of the Reagan brand.

BORGER: You know, Mike Deaver and Jim Baker, of course, were brilliant. You know, somebody reminded me the other day that actually CNN started, of course in 1981, and the Reagan White House had to sort of start dealing with this notion of a 24/7 presidency and a cable network that would be on the air all the time.

And they understood, I was told by this former staffer, that this was going to change the nature of the American presidency in a way and that they had the perfect man to take advantage of it. You know, people made fun of Ronald Reagan. He's an actor. He's not a real politician, not an intellectual, et cetera, et cetera.

But it's those skills that allowed him to look into the camera, and people said about Ronald Reagan. He's the real deal. We believe him when he talks to us and it wasn't so much that he was a great actor, because he wasn't a fabulous actor.

It was because he had those beliefs, but knew how to talk to the American people. And I think there's some training he had that helped him -- that helped him do that in the dawning of the 24/7 era.

Share This Post

Link To This Post


3 Comments
John F A's picture

to be a liar and a swindler. Salesmen do it all the time, and that's all Ronnie was, a paid shill for the Military Industrial Complex.

gonbald's picture

Runny didn't start acting until he was resident

jaye's picture

It makes me laugh the way Republicans are so lop-sided!!! They are serious when they should be having a good belly laugh. They laugh when they should be in tears. They are led around by the nose by the likes of
Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Palin, Hannity, O'Reilly!!!

Also that O'Reilly is a nervy B@#&%. He is an absolute disrespectful pig. Watching him interviewing our President, with his arrogant, nasty questioning tone, only made me dislike him even more!

On the news he mentioned he asked Bush the same question (why he was disliked?) The difference was
the tone in his voice. Which truly matters!!!

He has to be an unhappy man .... because of his attitude!!!!!

Comments are closed on this entry