TODAY'S LETTERS: Readers Respond to 'NYT' War Over Reagan and John Murtha's Call

By: E&P Staff Readers wrote in today about Reagan articleand John Murtha.

More Shots Fired in 'NYT' Op-Ed 'War' Over Reagan and Racism
Kudos to Krugman and Herbert. They are both correct. It's about time someone is telling the truth about Reagan. I am so sick of this man being portrayed as some kind of god/hero. I find it very curious that he chose to announce his candidacy in the deep south if he wasn't playing to white racists.

Maria Papi

I wrote about this issue myself several years ago when I was the senior political writer for United Press International. At that time I talked to a veteran GOP consultant named Kenny Klinge, who is still somewhere in Northern Virginia I expect, who calimed to have been the campaign operative who arranged the trip to the Neshoba County Fair -- which I recall him describing as "a must attend" event for political candidates.

If you're going to write about this again, you might want to talk to him.

Peter Roff

Would someone kindly explain to me why Robert Novak still has a job, or why anyone gives any credence to anything he writes?

Wiley Miller

Two Years After Murtha's Call: Another 1,800 American Troops Dead

Actually, a 'Cronkite moment' did occur similar to that of Murtha's call. The Vietnam war went on for five years after Cronkite's supposedly epochal announcement. However, at no time in those five years did public opinion oppose administration policy on the war - public opinion wanted out, but not 'precipitously', suggesting Cronkite's 'moment' was even less important than Murtha's. Nixon's handling of the withdrawal was, to put it gently, a bit more in tune with public opinion than were George McGovern's proposals, as the 1972 election indicated. Cronkite's 'moment' was important in the cultural history of the Democratic Party, marking the break between its urban-affluent, college-based, media-centric Kennedyish wing on the one side, and its hawkish constituencies in the labor unions, among the white working classes, and in the South on the other.

The 'Cronkite moment' is part of the urban mythology of the media-political echo chamber, along with 'Nixon said he had a secret plan to get us out of Vietnam' and other hard-to-document tales. It is being used retroactively to exaggerate the influence of Walter Cronkite and the old mainstream media. Haven't you and the folks who invoke such nonsense actually looked at election returns since the 1960s before making large claims in the service of constructing a cherry-picking, partisan narrative of American politics?


Mark Richard
Columbus, Ohio