💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › humor › MLVERB › reconcil.hum captured on 2022-06-12 at 09:43:38.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
GREAT RECONCILIATIONS By M.L. Verb Forgiveness is marvelous to see. So cleansing, uplifting, cathartic. So rare, too, especially in politics. Politics--especially at the presidential level--is full of examples of unforgiving attitudes. For instance, more than 10 years ago I sat in a South Dakota coffee shop with former Sen. George McGovern and listened to him grouse about how Sen. Tom Eagleton, briefly Mr. McGovern's 1972 running mate, had ruined chances for Democrats to win the White House that year. Even impossible dreams die still clinging to deception. There are other examples of twistedness that an unforgiving attitude can create in politics, but I don't want to dwell on sorrow. I want to praise an example of political forgiveness that may set a new standard for enlightenment and tolerance. The forgiver is Vice President George Bush. The forgivee is (it embarrasses me to say) someone in the newspaper business, the late William Loeb, publisher of the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader. The Loeb national reputation was achieved by venomous editorial attacks on any politician who dared express a position to the left of Friedrich Nietzsche or Attila the Hun (aka, the Scourge of God). These vicious Loeb opinions were widely read only because of the disproportionate importance each four years of the New Hampshire presidential primary election. He once attacked kindly President Ford as "Jerry the Jerk." President Eisenhower, a man almost anyone would love his sister to marry, was dubbed "Dopey Dwight" by the poison Loeb pen. He made Ed Muskie cry. Once he called Jimmy Carter an "out-and-out leftist coated over and disguised with peanut oil." He described Eugene McCarthy as a "skunk." Henry Kissinger, in classic Loeb words, was "a boot-licking supplicant to the communists." He even called Ronald Reagan, long a darling of conservatives, "Rudderless Ron." And when George Bush campaigned for the presidency in 1980, Mr. Loeb called him "The Hypocrite," said he was "incompetent" and suggested voters reject the Bush campaign "as if it were the Black Plague itself." But guess what. George Bush is bigger than Bill Loeb. The vice president refuses to carry a grudge. George Bush has forgiven Mr. Loeb. In an inspiring gesture of magnanimity Mr. Bush plans to walk the second mile, give up his cloak, turn his other cheek. There is a $250-a-plate Washington salute soon to honor Mr. Loeb (who died in 1981). And Mr. Bush has agreed to give the keynote "special tribute" to Mr. Loeb. But that's not all. The event is sponsored by an outfit called "Project '88," organized by Max Hugel, a former CIA deputy director, and there are lots of Republicans who say that even though "Project '88" is not committed to any candidate yet, it's an anti-Bush group that still thinks Mr. Bush is a closet liberal. Great reconciliations of history come to mind. Richard Nixon, after all, went o China. The pope paid tribute to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation a year or two back. Liz Taylor remarried Dick Burton (well, not ALL forgiveness is forever). Even Ronald Reagan recently sat down with the head of the Evil Empire. But what are those compared with George Bush forgiving a man who once wrote that his election "would lead to the destruction of this nation"? It seems too much to hope, but maybe influential Republicans can talk Mr. Bush into running for president again himself some day so everyone-- including Bill Loeb's widow, Nackey Loeb, who writes editorials for the paper today--can have a chance to vote for a man whose capacity to forgive is so vast and undiscriminating.