At the Associated Press, where I worked, the top executive, general manager Keith Fuller, hailed Reagan's election in 1980 as a worthy repudiation of the excesses of the 1960s.
"As we look back on the turbulent Sixties, we shudder with the memory of a time that seemed to tear at the very sinews of this country," Fuller said during a 1982 speech in Worcester, Massachusetts, adding that Reagan's election had represented a nation "crying, 'Enough.'"
"We don't believe that the union of Adam and Bruce is really the same as Adam and Eve in the eyes of Creation. We don't believe that people should cash welfare checks and spend them on booze and narcotics. We don't really believe that a simple prayer or a pledge of allegiance is against the national interest in the classroom.
"We're sick of your social engineering. We're fed up with your tolerance of crime, drugs and pornography. But most of all, we're sick of your self-perpetuating, burdening bureaucracy weighing ever more heavily on our backs."
Fuller's sentiments were common in the executive suites of major news organizations, where Reagan's reassertion of an aggressive U.S. foreign policy also was widely welcomed.
At the New York Times, executive editor Abe Rosenthal, an early neocon, vowed to steer his newspaper back "to the center," by which he meant to the right. At the Washington Post, neocons also began asserting control over the editorial policies of that newspaper.
Losing the Thread
In short order, the institutions of the Republic, which had checked Nixon's crimes, ceased to function in that way. Instead, the institutions reversed roles, becoming cheerleaders -- and enforcers -- for the powerful.
The "professionals" of Official Washington quickly sniffed the change in the air. Many learned to survive by honing their senses on where the safe boundaries were. Those who didn't or wouldn't go along -- ethical journalists, diligent civil servants and some independent-minded members of Congress -- soon found themselves on the outs.
Yet, even as the nation's institutions stopped providing meaningful checks and balances in the 1980s, some individuals continued to do their jobs.
During much of the decade, the failure of the Republic's institutions was masked somewhat by the fact that some individuals stepped into the breach. There were still a few courageous investigators on Capitol Hill; a handful of journalists who would risk their careers to get out important stories; and some civil servants who believed in doing their jobs honestly.
Perhaps the most striking case of this was the work of Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a traditional Republican conservative who nevertheless took seriously his responsibility to investigate the Reagan administration's worst scandal, the secret sale of weapons to Iran and the diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.
Despite Walsh's establishment pedigree, Official Washington turned on him en masse. Especially after he broke through the Iran-Contra cover-up in 1991, he was subjected to withering attack -- from leading Republicans, such as Sen. Bob Dole, and from the right-wing news media led by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times.
But Walsh also faced ridicule from the mainstream news media, such as the Washington Post where he was mocked as some crazed Ahab pursuing a white whale or as some out-of-control weirdo who would leave Washington a "perceived loser."
Indeed, by the early-to-mid-1990s, there was little distinction between the mainstream news media and the right-wing press. Even when documented evidence emerged shedding light on the criminality of Reagan and his team, there were no institutions -- and by then few individuals left within those institutions -- daring to take note.
First the institutions failed; then the individuals who had dared to fight on disappeared.
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