Dan Balz of the Washington Post compares the two Republicans, George the Younger and Ronald Reagan.
His lede goes (emphasis mine):
The parallels are obvious for all to see: two conservative presidents who made tax cuts at home and muscular confrontation abroad the centerpieces of their administrations, westerners who sought to restrain the federal government but who had trouble taming the beast, men of faith who courted Christian conservatives, politicians who were often controversial and divisive in office.
From their whitehouse biographies:
President Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, and he grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas.On February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born to Nelle and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois.
Reagan, of course, lived the majority of his adult life in California. He is an acceptable westerner despite his birth and upbringing.
However, George W. Bush was born in the East, educated in the East and settled in Texas. Texas is hardly a western state. Draw a line from the eastern border of Montana through the eastern border of New Mexico. There begins the west. A small chunk of Texas falls inside this boundary, but the majority lies to the central.
Furthermore, my experience on a short visit to Texas leaves me inclined to think that citizens of that state do not consider themselves the ally of any region. This is a state with its own national beer.
Both Presidents did style themselves as cowboys and ranchers. Perhaps this “western” adjective is a shorthand for that imagery.
Otherwise, using “western” in this way lumps the California and Texas sensibilities into a strange amalgm. Conventional wisdom posits the two states as direct opponents in today’s culture war. Liberal, free-wheeling California wrestles with Conservative, free-wheeling Texas for the soul of American politics.
This characterization is, of course, an oversimplification of several misunderstandings, but is no less confused than the approach Dan Balz takes to begin his article.
Tags: No Comments
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.