For me, the defining moment for Reagan was Lebanon. It was because it showcased his character in a key way. I already disliked him for his theatrics over substance, for his tax policies and crassness towards poor people (he started the drug war against minorities, after all, and really savaged welfare recipients), and a lot of other stuff. But Lebanon was an awakening for me.

I am dismayed that the media did not take note of this, but I suppose, after all, this was how he controlled them, and so naturally they would not comment on it. Here’s what I remember happening:

Many people forget that Reagan had his own Benghazi, except it was for real, and a hundred times worse than what happened in Libya. Reagan had sent the Marines there on a peace-keeping mission that was seen as indefinite and unachievable; worse, he ignored many warnings about how the US forces had become a target, and even left standing an order that the marines keep their weapons unloaded. The compound was left relatively open. There was pressure to get the forces out, but Reagan kept them in, and 241 soldiers died.

Keep in mind that the Democrats, wholly unlike Republicans today, did not start multiple character-assassination investigations, with endless subpoenas and hearings so they could take Reagan down. Reagan was not being fired upon for no reason. But he was under fire, for very good reason, for putting the Marines in the line of fire, essentially laying them wide upon when there was a terrible threat, and ignoring warning that could have easily been heeded. That was on him.

However, it was not that which awoke me to the real ugliness of politics. It was how Reagan ultimately played the sniveling coward. When he had the chance to step up and take responsibility after the attacks, he used the soldiers’ honor to cover his ass, deflecting any assertion that he had erred by berating the press for suggesting that the soldiers had died in vain. Only months later, when it became inevitable that he had to take the blame, after a Congressional report, which treated him with kid gloves but nevertheless pointed out the wholly obvious conclusion that Reagan screwed the pooch—only then did he “take the blame,” but only because (1) he had no choice by then, and (2) he knew he would get a great deal of respect for saying it (exactly along the lines of this blog post exactly 9 years ago).

Dubya Bush followed Reagan in this tradition in spades: anyone criticizing the horrifically bungled Iraq War immediately got buried by the Bush administration for “attacking the troops.”

However, it was after seeing the unimaginably craven handling of the event, and even worse, Reagan’s obvious wag-the-dog move of invading Grenada two days after the bombing, that I realized the utterly unspeakable depths to which a politician could—successfully!—manipulate the media, and come out looking like a noble hero after essentially bungling hundreds of soldiers into their deaths.

Ken: Well, yeah, but it’s been done quite a bit already.

Not to mention that Bush had about 10-20 Benghazis, depending on how you count them. Nobody had 8 hearings to attack Condi Rice.

Conservatives usually challenge this, saying that although they were attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates, only 10 Americans died, and none were ambassadors—as if that would have stopped Republicans from investigating Hillary were it under her watch! We’d be hearing non-stop about how there were more than 10 attacks, our embassies were under siege, our defenses are porous, etc. etc.