Reagan's "Shoe-box" Memory

After almost a year of casual searching, I’ve had to give up on this one. I’ll just give you the quote, and wait to see what everyone thinks:

*Microsoft’s defence exhibits, many of which are available on the Microsoft trial site, are stuffed with not very interesting and not terribly relevant magazine and newspaper cuttings. It’s a sort of Ronald Reagan ‘shoe-box’ view of fact. (Note for younger readers - Ronnie’s world knowledge was based on a lifetime collection of clippings, many, we fear, from the Readers Digest, which he kept in shoe-boxes) *–The Register, 06/17/1999 ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/990617000005.html )

I have yet to find a single piece of information that corroborates this unusual “fact.” Has anyone ever seen in print a description of Reagan’s “shoe-box” library, or is this just a stillborn UL?

Let’s try that again:

( http://www.theregister.co.uk/990617-000005.html )

There is an excellent book called The Clothes Have No Emperor by Michael Slanksy, which documents all the stupid inane things(but not All, or it would be too long of a book) that Reagan did.

Of course, we can’t have a President that is too bright because then we have to answer the philosophical question of “That depends on what the meaning of the word is is”.

I’m not trying to start another debate here so I’ll just say this. Does a leader have to be book smart? Aren’t the characteristics of a strong leader supposed to be one who can make sound decisions, delegate appropriately, surround yourself with smart people, listen well, and communicate effectively?

Although Reagan “inspired” people, he didnt delegate very well, and he sure was oh whats the word: incompetent.

What we need is a president who everyone doesn’t Love(meaning he or she isn’t so charming all else is forgotten), but who can do the job.
I’d like to see it happen in my lifetime.

Since the responses have wandered into ‘what a fool Reagan was’ I thought I might try to reply to the OP.

Years ago Doonesbury did a series in which Rick Redfern meets with Reagan and sees his shoebox collection. While it is parody and satire, most people can’t make stuff that good up. And Garry Trudeau has a reputation of actually doing some reasearch. So keep looking. Someone must have mentioned it elsewhere.

Garry Trudeau? Research???

Please. The guy has been out to lunch for decades. He embarrasses himself no end when he tries to do strips about current pop culture or the current political scene.

THis is NOT a recent development, either. Twenty-plus years ago, when he tried to give Mike Doonesburry a punk-rock brother (Sal, short for Saliva) it was absolutely pathetic! Trudeau had no more understanding of the punk scene (or anything that’s happened since) than CHarles Schultz or Mort Walker. Cripes, a kid reading Hagar the Horrible for the past 20 years would have a better grasp of what’s happening in the world.

To his tiny credit, Trudeau admitted himself how hopelessly out of touch he was when he went on hiatus during the Reagan years. Unfortunately, he came back, lazier and more out-of-touchthan ever. He’s so lazy, he doesn’t even bother to draw his own strip (and its not as if those scrawled drawings of his ever took more than 5 minutes to toss together).

Al of which makes you wonder… where the hell did THAT bozo ever get off suggesting that REAGAN was lazy and unconnected to the real world?

Actually, it sounds as though you may not have been doing your research.

While Trudeau has certainly lost his ability to limn the current culture, he continues to use some very good stringers to get him political information that shows up regularly in his strip. (He has maintained the very short lead time that he always had because he wanted to keep his strip current with (nearly) breaking news.)

And, suffering the slings and arrows of constant criticism, Trudeau actually went back and took some drawing courses. The guy in Kansas is no longer drawing the whole strip, but simply providing final touch-ups. Unless he quit in the last year, most of the drawings, today, are actually Trudeau’s.

Oblong, doesn’t it seem reasonable to expect that in a country of over 200 million people we could find a president that is book smart AND has the leadership qualities you describe. Not to mention courage, integrity, wisdom, etc.

Unfortunately our system of election seems to be geared to reward candidates that are ambitious, charismatic, and lacking in conscience.

No, really, I think that the problem with this country’s leadership is that anyone who’s smart enough to do a decent job, is smart enough not to want the job in the first place. I mean, you end up with very little real power, but you’re the first person anyone blames for anything. It’s no wonder that only nutsos run for it.

Thanks for the lead, eepeepunk.

I know it is tempting to step in and defend or castigate the man, but I honestly don’t really see anything particularly wrong with keeping a shoebox database. It just seems unusual to me. Was this a common practice that Ron learned early and never abandoned, or was it a unique solution by a highly motivated but, um, forgetful person?

I see immense value in studying the organization and content of such a collection, because rather than a set of memoirs carefully crafted to preserve a President’s own image of himself for posterity, this sort of thing would provide insight into the mental organization of its creator, and the content of course could prove more revealing than a volume of ghost-written recollections.

Incidentally, I would add to Dumbguy’s list of presidential traits: ambitious, charismatic, and lacking in conscience, perhaps, but also schooled in the art of deal-cutting and compromise. These additional traits might just help a president to be more “fair” than the principled and righteous can be. A candidate like Ralph Nader or Pat Robertson doesn’t give a shit about what I think, unless he’s thinking of a way to minimize my opinion and influence. A self-serving, waffling baby-kisser is more likely to try to avoid pissing me off. I like that.

I don’t see any real value in having a guy who is booksmart. Henry Ford wasn’t as dumb as an ox, but he wasn’t much smarter either. He seemed to do OK with building and leading a company. It takes common sense. I’ll take the qualities i’ve mentioned, plus those others listed above “knowledge” anyday.

The whole Shoe Box thing is just jealousy on the part of intellectuals. They feel that only they should get the higher positions in life because they went to Harvard or Yale. Everybody else is just peasants who are too stupid to think for themselves.

As if J. Edgar Hoover running around in a dress wasn’t…

-Sam

Sofa King, the problem with self-serving, waffling, baby-kissers is that they try to avoid pissing everyone off, and the only way to accomplish that is to do nothing. Is that really what you want? Any worthwhile accomplishment is going to piss someone off. It’s unavoidable.

Oblong, Reagan may not have been book smart, and you may feel he was a great leader, but I can promise you he had plently of those ivy league intellectuals you deride advising him. You can’t make good decisions about a vast array of complicated issues without specific ‘knowledge’ of those issues no matter how much common sense you have.