Michael Kinsley: Remembering Reagan

How Romney and McCain rewrite history.

Posted Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008, at 12:41 PM ET

In the past few weeks, the Democratic Party has suddenly turned on Bill Clinton with the ferocity of 16 years of pent-up resentments. He will not be cut any more slack, and neither will his wife. Meanwhile, the Republican primaries have turned into a Ronald Reagan Adoration Contest. Neither ex-president deserves what he is getting. Clinton is a victim of long memories; Reagan is a beneficiary of short ones.

In the Republican debate at the Reagan Library on Wednesday, Sen. John McCain repeated his story about how he and other prisoners of war used to discuss this exciting new governor of California using tap codes through the walls of a North Vietnamese prison. Like many of the great man's own treasured anecdotes, it might be true. Unlike Reagan, McCain is a genuine war hero, so if he has overpolished this story a bit (it comes out almost word-for-word each time), he is honoring the great man by imitation if nothing else. In the debate, McCain repeatedly called himself a "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution." He declared that Republicans have "betrayed Ronald Reagan's principles about tax cuts and restraint of spending."