More About Ronald Reagan and 'The Slur'

It seems appropriate that David Brooks' column about Ronald Reagan's "I believe in states' rights" moment from the 1980 campaign is, once again, the subject of a column in The New York Times.

This time, the author is Lou Cannon, an op-ed contributor who also happens to have written five books on President Reagan and is the co-author of another book on George W. Bush's efforts to achieve a presidential legacy comparable to Reagan's.

Cannon appears to agree with Brooks, who asserted in a column a little over a week ago that those who still believe that Reagan was speaking in code language to reassure Southern whites are perpetuating a "slur" against the former president.

"It was one of many blunders Mr. Reagan made in August 1980 when he was an undisciplined candidate who lacked an effective campaign manager," writes Cannon. Among the "blunders" committed by Reagan, according to Cannon? Well, one was his much publicized statement to an audience of veterans that America's presence in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s was a "noble cause."

But the "states' rights" comment to a mostly white audience at the Neshoba County Fair, a short distance from Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered 16 years earlier, was more than a "blunder." And even the comment about Vietnam pales in comparison.

Cannon attempts to make the case that Reagan was not a bigot because he befriended a black teammate on the Eureka College football team who was denied admission to a hotel where the team was staying prior to a game in 1931 and because he opposed the segregation of major league baseball, quit a country club that wouldn't admit Jews and opposed a 1978 ballot initiative that would have banned homosexuals from teaching in California's public schools.

But, as I wrote a few days ago on this blog, Reagan had ample opportunity to set the record straight. After all, this same discussion on the "states' rights" assertion occurred during his lifetime. Indeed, it occurred at the time that Reagan made the comment in 1980.

I grew up in Arkansas, which borders on Mississippi. I was living in Arkansas when Reagan visited the Neshoba County Fair in 1980, and I was still living there when Reagan sought his second term in the White House in 1984. I knew many segregationists who were still Democrats when Reagan was elected in 1980, but they switched parties before he ran for re-election.

I know for a fact that these former Democrats weren't motivated by Reagan's lip service for the anti-abortion movement. Or even by his opposition to communism.

They were motivated by what they believed the Republican position was on civil rights. Reagan's 1980 speech at the Neshoba County Fair, as well as his opposition to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, fueled their belief.

Reagan lived for nearly a quarter century after making that comment. He never once attempted to clarify it.

He was certainly old enough to remember Strom Thurmond's race for the White House as a "states' rights" Dixiecrat.

And he knew what that phrase meant in 1948. And what it still meant in 1980 and what it continues to mean today.