Overuse of "Wilderness Years"
I've previously commented on how people like to overuse and misuse the word "fascist." I've just found an example of a misapplication of another term - "wilderness years."
The term has been applied to Winston Churchill in the years before he became Prime Minister, and the application to Churchill has established the general framework for the term. In Churchill's case, you have a politician who previously had an extraordinary political career, but now found himself out of office, ignored, and considered a has-been. In retrospect (when everyone is wise after the fact), Churchill's warnings about Hitler seem wise; at the time, they didn't.
Richard Nixon, in his writings, talked a lot about people who endured wilderness years, including Churchill, De Gaulle, and himself. Nixon's career fits the mold - from Vice President in 1960 to defeated candidate for California governor in 1962, Nixon's slide was dramatic. His inability to prevent a Goldwater nomination in 1964 only compounded the notion that Nixon was a has-been. Yet by the early 1970s, Nixon was the President who had moved toward the re-establishment of relations between the U.S. and "Red China," and who had crafted a peace in Vietnam. (Of course, everything went downhill after that...)
I was just reading the following:
When he left the California governorship in 1975, Reagan began a twice-weekly newspaper column and a five-day-a-week syndicated radio commentary that was carried on more than 300 stations, reaching an estimated 20 to 30 million listeners. It was a way of making a good living as well as keeping his views in front of the public, but it was also a way of making himself the rallying point for the conservative movement that was readying itself for a drive to power. In this respect, Reagan's media career during his "wilderness years" in the late 1970s resembles Winston Churchill's "wilderness years" in the 1930s, when he too used his writing to make himself the rallying point against his government's weakness.
Most of Reagan's newspaper columns were ghostwritten for him by Peter Hannaford, and it was always assumed that the radio commentaries were ghosted as well. But Reagan, an ex-radio broadcaster, took a keen interest in his radio portfolio and wrote the bulk of those commentaries himself. Over five years, Reagan broadcast 1,027 commentaries; the Andersons and Skinner discovered Reagan's handwritten drafts of 682 of them. It is likely that Reagan wrote even more than this, but the handwritten drafts were lost or discarded.
I'm sorry, but Reagan doesn't fit the "wilderness years" mold. Yes, he lost the nomination for President in 1976, but he was running against a sitting President in his own party. And after Ford lost the election in 1976, Reagan was unquestionably the leading Republican in this country, and the thing that concerned Republicans wasn't Reagan's politics, but his age.
Then I found an assertion that Reagan's wilderness years actually occurred in the 1950s:
Reagan’s struggle began in direct conflict with Soviet-backed street-level violence during Communism’s attempt to take-over Hollywood during the 1940’s; it continued through his “wilderness years” on the mashed potato circuit in the 50’s, then on to his confrontation with the radicals at Berkeley in the 60’s showing, throughout, his challenge of the Establishment’s policy of détente, his steady rise to power, his rejection by his own party, and his focus on the need for a complete victory over Communism.
Sorry, but that doesn't sound like wilderness years either. Other than a union presidency, his past political successes in the 1950s were zero. His political views had been mostly unstated. In fact, it was during the 1950s that he was developing his public political persona in the first place.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who applies "wilderness years" to any aspect of Reagan's career is a fascist.
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