> budge wrote:
>
> >Ronald Reagan was not a Texan, but a Californian, and I can
> >hardly think of a more archetypical Cowboy than RR.
>
> Reagan played at being a cowboy, clearing brush and all.
> Bush really thinks he's one, and unlike RR, who lived in
> some pretty posh places, retreats to a blasted patch of
> earth in Texas in some flight from his Yankee roots. And
> there's something mean about W - RR was always sunny,
> optimistic, all about possibility and the future. W
> looks like he loves killing & jailing people.
I'm not sure what you mean. They both play(ed) at being cowboys, neither one of them actually ever ranched. They are both big phonies in that sense. I agree that Bush comes across as being mean, and I agree that he bought his 'ranch' in one of the uglier parts of Texas that's not in the West or the Panhandle. I think Reagan was probably more 'cosmopolitan' as a result of hanging out in H-wood all those years.
But I think they are both heartless bastards, Reagan just is folksy about it, like my ex-father-in-law the fundamentalist preacher, who would smile and be fatherly while he was cutting your throat. I've worked with 'christians' like that too.
-- no Onan