Reagan praised by Newport-Mesa representatives
Paul Clinton
NEWPORT-MESA -- Ronald Reagan was “one of America’s greatest
presidents,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) said Tuesday
during an eight-minute speech on the floor of the House of
Representatives.
Rohrabacher, whose 45th Congressional District includes Costa Mesa,
wasn’t the only one saluting Reagan on his 90th birthday. Reagan joins
John Adams and Herbert Hoover as the only presidents to live to that ripe
age.
In a similar tribute, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach)
introduced a resolution recognizing the occasion.
In it, he called Reagan “instrumental in extending freedom and
democracy around the globe and uniting a world divided by the Cold War”
and said the former president’s “eloquence united Americans in times of
triumph and tragedy.”
A busy Cox could not be reached for comment, however.
Both congressmen spent their early years involved in national politics
in the Reagan White House of the 1980s. Before his election to Congress
in 1988, Rohrabacher served for seven years as one of Reagan’s chief
speech writers.
The congressman was always impressed with Reagan’s leadership skills,
he said Tuesday.
“Ronald Reagan was a real human being,” Rohrabacher said. “He
understood people. He knew how to inspire them.”
During his two terms in the White House, after handily defeating Jimmy
Carter in 1980, the former actor developed his reputation as “The Great
Communicator.” Rohrabacher said Reagan also broke the back of the Soviet
Union by building a strong military and laid the groundwork for the
economic boom of the 1990s with tax cuts.
Critics of the former president have said Reagan ran up the national
debt with the increases in defense spending and that “Reaganomics” -- his
economic program that relied on the “trickle down” theory -- further
increased the wealth gap between the rich and poor.
But Tuesday was a day for celebration -- of a man who hasn’t been seen
in public since disclosing, in 1994, that he has Alzheimer’s disease.
“As time goes by,” Rohrabacher said, “it becomes clear that President
Reagan was not only a great president but one of our greatest -- right up
there with FDR, Lincoln and maybe George Washington.”
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