We thank tireless gentle reader JB in CA for pointing us to a timely article by political sage Fred Barnes noting the revision of Reagan's legacy currently afoot.
What Barnes details is that the Reagan of history is very different from the Reagan to whom Dubya is unfavorably compared by Democrats (motto: "Speak no ill of the dead, nothing but ill of Bush"). E.g., the Reagan of actual history was a military hardliner; the Reagan of Democrat mythology was a multinational moderate.
Some "conservative" Republicans (motto: "No matter how conservative you are, I am more conservative") have done the same thing, of course. E.g. the Reagan of actual history agreed to massive federal spending increases; the Reagan of "conservative" mythology cut federal spending massively.
Politicians, it seems, will always hearken to a golden era of the past when all was right with the republic and the world. But they always do so to emphasize how awful things are right now with the other guy in the power and how much better things would be with themselves in power.* This is why actual history is so important: it's the antidote to political science ("history without facts"). In actual history, things have always been awful, making the present look not so terrible.
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E.g., John Kerry in Detroit the other day, commenting on Israel's incursions into Lebanon to stop Hezbollah: "If I was President, this wouldn't have happened."
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