Reagan's "monkeys" comment to Nixon leaked before 1980 campaign

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Why don't we just peel the onion back further & bash other previous Presidents, who've said despicable things back in the day while we're at it:
1.) Grover Cleveland
2.) William McKinley
3.) Teddy Roosevelt
4.) Taft
5.) Wilson: he had the entire Federal Government segregated, which remained that way until either JFK or LBJ
6.) Harding
7.) Coolidge
8.) Hoover
9.) FDR
10.) Truman: referred to controversial US Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., (D-NY St) as an uppity expletive who needed to be taught a lesson.
11.) Eisenhower
12.) JFK
13.) LBJ
14.) Nixon: I've heard rumors he was hostile towards SCOTUS Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall & United States Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-MA): noted that Nixon & Brooke didn't get along at all.
15.) Ford
16.) Carter
17.) Reagan
18.) Bush, Sr.,
19.) Clinton
20.) Bush, Jr.,
21.) Obama
22.) Trump
How is this at all relevant to the quoted post? This just seems like using whataboutery to defend Reagan.
 
Why don't we just peel the onion back further & bash other previous Presidents, who've said despicable things back in the day while we're at it:
1.) Grover Cleveland
2.) William McKinley
3.) Teddy Roosevelt
4.) Taft
5.) Wilson: he had the entire Federal Government segregated, which remained that way until either JFK or LBJ
6.) Harding
7.) Coolidge
8.) Hoover
9.) FDR
10.) Truman: referred to controversial US Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., (D-NY St) as an uppity expletive who needed to be taught a lesson.
11.) Eisenhower
12.) JFK
13.) LBJ
14.) Nixon: I've heard rumors he was hostile towards SCOTUS Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall & United States Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-MA): noted that Nixon & Brooke didn't get along at all.
15.) Ford
16.) Carter
17.) Reagan
18.) Bush, Sr.,
19.) Clinton
20.) Bush, Jr.,
21.) Obama
22.) Trump

How is this at all relevant to the quoted post? This just seems like using whataboutery to defend Reagan.

Just because several other people in the same position made racist statements doesn't at all make it okay or excusable for Reagan to have used that kind of racist language. As a public servant and as a human being he had an obligation to be above hatred and bigotry. Sure, it was a different time. But what he said - and what other Presidents have said along those same lines - wasn't okay then, now, or any other time in our history. The sooner we recognize that the better we become as Americans and as people.
 
I don't think anyone's argued this would flip the election as a given. On the contrary, there's been a lot of people suggesting it would have minimal impact.

In terms of the presidential level it might end up with 'just' Carter doing more respectably in the electoral college and popular vote, but given how narrow a thing the Republican takeover of the Senate was, it could have a fairly sizeable impact on Reagan's time in office.

I can imagine Reagan making token gestures to remedy the damage during his Presidency.

But overall, it wouldn't prevent him from becoming President.
 
What could happen is that Democratic incumbents outside the South like Rep. Al Ullman D-WW who was the Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee would have won reelection and that would have blunted the Reagan agenda.
If the election was a little bit closer then Carter would not have conceded before the polls on the West Coast closed and more Democrats could have won.
That is what change on the margin could have done.
 
Why don't we just peel the onion back further & bash other previous Presidents, who've said despicable things back in the day while we're at it:
1.) Grover Cleveland
2.) William McKinley
3.) Teddy Roosevelt
4.) Taft
5.) Wilson: he had the entire Federal Government segregated, which remained that way until either JFK or LBJ
6.) Harding
7.) Coolidge
8.) Hoover
9.) FDR
10.) Truman: referred to controversial US Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., (D-NY St) as an uppity expletive who needed to be taught a lesson.
11.) Eisenhower
12.) JFK
13.) LBJ
14.) Nixon: I've heard rumors he was hostile towards SCOTUS Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall & United States Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-MA): noted that Nixon & Brooke didn't get along at all.
15.) Ford
16.) Carter
17.) Reagan
18.) Bush, Sr.,
19.) Clinton
20.) Bush, Jr.,
21.) Obama
22.) Trump

Yeah, this is after 1900 when stuff like that was definitely frowned upon but more accepted. By your terms, no one in today's society should be judged for what they say because it was ok to do it in the past?
 
I will admit what Reagan said was flat out STUPID. But like I've said before, he's NOT the only POTUS to have said despicable things & I know for a fact his predecessors used uglier language if those tapes get leaked out too.
 
I will admit what Reagan said was flat out STUPID. But like I've said before, he's NOT the only POTUS to have said despicable things & I know for a fact his predecessors used uglier language if those tapes get leaked out too.

But the issue is WHEN all this happens. If a tape emerges in 2019 of a still-active politican using the word "Jap" ten years earlier, we can surmise that the results are gonna be a little more dramatic for his career prospects, then if they had found out in 1952 that Eisenhower used the same word in 1942.

And yeah, they're equally despicable, but that's not really the topic here: it's not a debate about the morality of racial slurs. It's simply about what would have happened had Nixon's tape been released in 1980.
 
You can listen to the entire conversation here.

The broader context is Reagan trying to sell Nixon on some sort of passive-aggressive anti-UN strategy, where the US still shows up for the debates and whatnot, but doesn't actually vote, or obey the results of the votes. Nixon seems to evince muted skepticism about this idea, pointing out that the UN still performs useful functions for the USA, and gives India/Pakistan as his example.

Reagan had apparently returned from as Asian visit, where among other things, he met Chiang Kai Shek.

At one point, Nixon asks Reagan, somewhat sheepishly, for confirmation that the Vietnam War is going well, and Reagan assures him it is, and then Nixon congratulates himself for the US enduring only six casualties that week. It occurs to me that the families of those six, if they now listen to this tape, could calculate that it was their son among those being discussed.
 
Even Lester Maddox axe holding backwoods man had to appoint large numbers of folks of african decent to postions, and publicly keep his mouth shut.
Provided our friend from California, apologized, it won’t have a big impact.
 
You can listen to the entire conversation here.

The broader context is Reagan trying to sell Nixon on some sort of passive-aggressive anti-UN strategy, where the US still shows up for the debates and whatnot, but doesn't actually vote, or obey the results of the votes. Nixon seems to evince muted skepticism about this idea, pointing out that the UN still performs useful functions for the USA, and gives India/Pakistan as his example.

Reagan had apparently returned from as Asian visit, where among other things, he met Chiang Kai Shek.

At one point, Nixon asks Reagan, somewhat sheepishly, for confirmation that the Vietnam War is going well, and Reagan assures him it is, and then Nixon congratulates himself for the US enduring only six casualties that week. It occurs to me that the families of those six, if they now listen to this tape, could calculate that it was their son among those being discussed.

Considering that Taiwan got thrown under the bus, I can slightly understand Reagan's frustration with the United Nations. Big question is who's the next country to get Taiwan'd ?
 
Somewhat off-topic, but in a scenario where Watergate never occurred (a relatively unexplored topic on this board, surprisingly enough), I wonder if Nixon would use this as blackmail material. Reagan will certainly want to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 (even if Agnew does not go down in scandal, I do not see him really going anywhere), but if he dares criticize Tricky Dick too harshly on China or anything else, maybe a version of this tape (altered to exculpate Nixon, of course) is anonymously dropped off by Roger Stone or someone else in the mailbox of a major media outlet...
 
Somewhat off-topic, but in a scenario where Watergate never occurred (a relatively unexplored topic on this board, surprisingly enough), I wonder if Nixon would use this as blackmail material. Reagan will certainly want to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 (even if Agnew does not go down in scandal, I do not see him really going anywhere), but if he dares criticize Tricky Dick too harshly on China or anything else, maybe a version of this tape (altered to exculpate Nixon, of course) is anonymously dropped off by Roger Stone or someone else in the mailbox of a major media outlet...

I like it, but in a scenario with no Watergate, does anyone know about Nixon's tapes? If not, then might not leaking that conversation inadvertently let the secret out? There couldn't be too many people besides Nixon who could have recorded it. (Unless maybe they try to claim that someone was bugging either Nixon or Reagan, eg. the FBI, mob)
 
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Somewhat off-topic, but in a scenario where Watergate never occurred (a relatively unexplored topic on this board, surprisingly enough), I wonder if Nixon would use this as blackmail material. Reagan will certainly want to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 (even if Agnew does not go down in scandal, I do not see him really going anywhere), but if he dares criticize Tricky Dick too harshly on China or anything else, maybe a version of this tape (altered to exculpate Nixon, of course) is anonymously dropped off by Roger Stone or someone else in the mailbox of a major media outlet...

Nixon the blackmailer ?
 
Back to the original question, though, even if it does not make much a difference in the short term, I wonder if the slur being part of the public record means that the GOP is not so insistent on making Reagan their standard bearer in the 1990's, 2000's, and 2010's.
 
Calling black people monkeys would definitely not fly in the 80's. That term was offensive in the 50's and earlier even! So,right off the back,he's earned the ire (rightfully) of the NAACP and civil rights activists.Not to mention various celebrities of all colors who'd condemn it. Or the resulting tabloid frenzy. It would give a boost to Jimmy Carter in the election and might help Jesse Jackson. The 80's was an era where overt racism was not tolerated. So for Reagan to win,he'd have to spin it in such a way,that it didn't sound racist. Remember,even tho there was a recession in Carter's term,the economy was recovering and nowhere near as dire as during the end of Dubya's.
 
I don't see it happening because back then there was much more of a public-private distinction on what the media would leak about politicians. But if it did happen it's less about what voters think and more about how GOP apparatchiks would take it (including the substantial pre-Reaganite old guard still around and kicking then), because the party was far more in control of things then.
 
Could be another 1976, or even 1960.

Also, you can bet that the Soviets would make propaganda hay out of a known racist President Reagan or a more publically racist one, in the vein of Trump. It would also cast certain parts of his policies, like his support of the apartheid regime of South Africa, in a far worse light.
They had been doing the Whataboutism so long against every prez since Ike, wouldn't make any difference on the racism charge. They loved talking about how Americans treated blacks.
 
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