Comparing media eulogies: Carter vs. Reagan

In all the somber coverage of Jimmy Carter’s death, the audience could and should expect the tone of kindness that wafts over wakes and funerals. Each president served as leader of our nation, shouldering a great burden over a large country with an ever-enlarging government.

But sometimes the tributes grow a little too treacly. CBS reporter Lesley Stahl mourned during the state funeral in Washington that Carter was already unpopular when she became a White House correspondent in 1979. But she claimed Carter “ended up accomplishing so much more than we realized when he was president. He turns out not to have been a weak president at all.”

America in 1980 was mired in inflation and a hostage crisis, and the Soviet Union had expanded into Afghanistan. But now we should pretend Carter didn’t project weakness?

This is quite different from CBS when Ronald Reagan died in 2004. Within minutes of the news of Reagan’s death hitting the television, CBS ran a canned piece by reporter Jerry Bowen that hammered Reagan for getting a cozy home loan and “cashing in” with personal appearances after his presidency was over. It was a very cheap shot. It looks even cheaper with the post-presidential cash-ins by the Clintons and the Obamas.

A few days later, CBS “60 Minutes” veteran Morley Safer gruffly dismissed Reagan on Larry King’s CNN show: “I don’t think history has any reason to be kind to him.” Safer wanted history to be cemented in the leftist media’s hostile first draft.

Ronald Reagan drew mostly positive or at least sensitive coverage when his time came. But we still found the Democrat itch coming through. Early on, there was this CNN on-screen text: “BY-PRODUCT OF ‘REAGANOMICS’: HUGE BUDGET DEFICITS.” ABC’s Sam Donaldson blamed the big deficit on Reagan for “stubbornly” refusing to raise taxes.

Later, Donaldson claimed if you said, “‘Mr. President, I’m down on my luck,’ he would literally give you the shirt off his back. And then he’d sit down in his undershirt and he’d sign legislation throwing your kids off school lunch programs, maybe your parents off Social Security, and of course the Welfare Queen off of welfare.”

Associated Press reporter Beth Fouhy provided this less-than-objective analysis: “By persuading Congress to approve sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy while slashing welfare benefits and other social services like the federal housing assistance program, Reagan was blamed for a huge surge in the nation’s poor and homeless population.”

Somehow both were true: Reagan exploded the deficit, and mercilessly cut off spending for the vulnerable. The allegations of “slashing” social spending were perpetually overwrought.

But the first AP dispatch upon Carter’s death hinted Carter was a very special leader. Bill Barrow and Alex Sanz insisted, “Carter forged a path that still challenges political assumptions and stands out among the 45 men who reached the nation’s highest office. The 39th president leveraged his ambition with a keen intellect, deep religious faith and prodigious work ethic.”

To these journalists who tout Carter as keen and deep and prodigious, whenever Carter is maligned in retrospect, he is misunderstood.

For political purposes, these historical images are mostly useful in terms of the political parties shaping their own image. Carter has long been a drag on the Democrat image, so trying to “correct” it is unsurprising.

Journalists have noted how Biden and Carter were each defeated on similar “misfortunes” like inflation and foreign crises. Uh-oh. Biden has reopened his party’s wound of domestic ineptitude and global weakness. Lesley Stahl and Sam Donaldson can only accomplish so much.