Fascinating tidbit in Andrew Glass’ profile today of Reagan-era hawk and arms negotiator Max Kampelman in Politico:

Did Reagan vote for Humphrey in 1968, over Richard Nixon, whom Reagan privately detested?

Kampelman says he has reason to believe he did. He first met Reagan in 1978 in Palm Beach, Fla., when the former California governor spoke at a fundraiser for the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which Kampelman chaired.

“He asked me how I got to Washington,” Kampelman said. “I told him I had come from Minnesota with Hubert Humphrey. His eyes lit up. He told me Humphrey was one of his best friends and that he would have made a great president.”

Before Nancy Reagan, even before Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan had … Lili St. Cyr?

From Kelly DiNardo’s sensational blog The Candy Pitch: Tasty Burlesque Tidbits and Delectable Striptease Confections:

It’s Super Tuesday and even The Candy Pitch is wonking out so here’s a political tease. In the picture below, which former president is watching Lili St. Cyr shimmy out of her clothes at a Vegas nightclub? Here’s a hint: Tomorrow would have been his birthday.

Nostalgic admirers of Ronald Reagan should take heart — the Gipper merited eight mentions during last night’s Democratic presidential debate from either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.  Not as many as the 14 times John McCain was referenced, but double the four times George Bush was cited.  And making his first appearance in a presidential debate was this surprise target: John Edwards proudly remembered, “I’ve been in a fight with Bill O’Reilly.”

Barack Obama had this to say last week:

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory in America, in a ways that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.”

The Clintons immediately threw their red flag challenging the play and calling for a review.  They blustered after Obama, saying he was not sufficiently a Reagan-hater.

But guess which Democrat joins Obama in publicly recognizing the historical significance of Ronald Reagan?  It’s Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.

Kaine said this on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” today:

“I think Democrats, you know, we didn’t like an awful lot of what Ronald Reagan did, but we do understand, most of us, that one thing he was good at was communicating to the American people a message of hope and uplift at a time where we were in a period of, kind of, gridlock and malaise.

“We’re in that kind of time right now, a time when we can’t really count on Washington to produce solutions that matter, when it doesn’t seem like Washington can competently manage either an overseas war or an at-home response to a hurricane.

“And so what we seem to need, I think, is somebody who is going to have transformative effect of really being about hope and uplift and optimism and counting on the best of the American spirit….

“Everybody called Reagan “the great communicator,” whether they were Rs or Ds. Again, whether you didn’t like what he did, that was one thing, but he had a way of capturing that spirit of optimism and pride in America.”

First off … Kaine is straight-on correct.  Second off… Huh?  A Democratic official invoking malaise — that most Carter-esque of political memories? A Democratic official citing optimism — that most Reagan-esque of political emotions?

What’s going on here?

Well, here’s one theory. Kaine, one of the first to endorse Obama, is jockeying to be a running-mate.  Today’s Washington Post:

“Kaine comes from a swing state, is term-limited out of his job in 2009 and will be looking for the next step.”

The Democrats would be well-served to choose for a VP candidate a Southern governor who fondly remembers Ronald Reagan.  Any chance they’ll do so?  Hardly.

Is Barack Obama right — was the Vietnam War “senseless”?

Here’s what Obama said yesterday after John Kerry endorsed him  (we’ve bolded the word we’re focusiing on):

“Well, first of all, I want to thank John Kerry.  I want to thank John Kerry for his support in this campaign, but more importantly for his service to this nation.  This is a man who knows how much people who love their country can change it. This is a man who sacrificed the comforts of youth to fight in the jungles of Vietnam, the young lieutenant who extended his hand to a brother in arms, pulling him from a river, as bullets screamed by.  This is a hero who returned to a Washington where politicians continued a senseless war day after day, life after life, because they were too afraid to challenge the conventional thinking, too consumed with their own careers and ambitions.  This is the patriot who saw all of this and said, “No more,” who posed a question to our leaders that challenged the conscious of a nation, who believed in his heart that change does not come from the halls of power, but from the power of a movement thousands of voices strong.”

“Senseless”?  The Vietnam War can be described many ways – but is “senseless” one of them?  It was a war that split our country, brought tragic deaths to thousands of Americans, was poorly executed from Washington, and was betrayed by many of our own folks back home.  But is it correct to say the war itself made no sense?  Does even Hillary Clinton believe the Vietnam War was senseless?

And should a potential commander-in-chief be calling any American war “senseless”?

We asked Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews whether Obama can get away with it — whether it’s within the realm of rhetorical norms.

Richard instructs:

Nope.

Reagan said Vietnam was a “noble cause”.

Ask Obama: “Was Reagan wrong?”

Vietnam was our test.  We allowed ourselves to be vanquished; but we regrouped, and we came back stronger.

Afghanistan was the Soviets’ test.  They crunpled, then collapsed.

Indeed.  The Soviets invasion and occupation of Afghanistan — now that was senseless.

Ah, defeating Communism without firing a bullet.  Ah, inflation rate decreased to less than 4.4% — with 68 consecutive months of job growth. Ah, tax cuts.

That was just Ronald Reagan.  Imagine what could have been — if we had only elected Ed Brooke.

From today’s Washington Post:

… in the Republican Party, Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts had quietly begun thinking of himself as a future president. As the first African American to be popularly elected to the Senate, in 1966, he had quickly become a national star, called on to give speeches and appear at fundraisers across the country. According to Brooke, Michigan Gov. George Romney talked to him about a Romney-Brooke ticket in the early phases of the 1968 presidential race.

Romney’s campaign imploded after the governor made some ill-advised remarks about being the victim of “brainwashing” regarding the Vietnam War. But the Romney overture got Brooke to pondering his own ambitions. “Why couldn’t I be president of the United States? Is it too soon? How strong would the support of blacks be? Would I be acceptable to white voters in the South and Midwest as I assumed I would be for white voters in New York and the Northeast? I delved into it more than I have said,” Brooke disclosed in an interview.

Like Obama, Brooke had just arrived in the Senate and was already wondering what more he could become. He had been an Army officer in World War II, attorney general in Massachusetts and “had gained a lot of confidence,” as he put it, in navigating segregated environments. In Brooke’s time, the prevailing wisdom was that the only imaginable path to the Oval Office for a black politician would be to somehow get picked as a running mate first. On a few occasions, notably when Richard Nixon was pondering replacements for Vice President Spiro Agnew, Brooke’s name was floated. Soon Brooke began thinking grander possibilities. He even perused some national voting data his staff compiled.

“Had I been reelected in ‘78 and served another term,” he says, “I would have thought about testing the waters.”

Brooke, however, lost that year’s Senate race to Democrat Paul Tsongas and never reentered politics.

And to think, we came thisclose to cheering a Brooke-Bush ‘80 campaign — and reaching a far shinier city on the hill.  Ah, perchance to dream.

From today’s Washington Post profile of Mike Huckabee, two different approaches to addressing politics and religion.

A bad way:

“I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer,” he [Huckabee] told a group of pastors on the eve of the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention. “I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.” He concluded that speech with words he says he’d phrase differently today: “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

A good way:

It was another huge gathering of evangelicals in Dallas that reignited Huckabee’s interest in politics. In 1980, he and 15,000 other pastors and conservative Christians gathered at Reunion Arena in what is often characterized as a political “coming-out party” for the evangelical movement. …

Ronald Reagan, who had just won the Republican nomination for the presidency, was the event’s keynote speaker. And he brought down the house by famously telling the believers: “I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you.”

It’s an inspiring day in politics when Barack Obama gives a speech — calling for “a new era of American diplomacy” — and cites Nixon and Reagan, but not a Clinton:

Just look at our history. Kennedy had a direct line to Khrushchev. Nixon met with Mao. Carter did the hard work of negotiating the Camp David Accords. Reagan was negotiating arms agreements with Gorbachev even as he called on him to “tear down this wall.”

I agree with Obama — Ronald Reagan was a great president.  Nixon wasn’t too shabby, either.  He might consider dropping Carter from the pantheon of great presidents, however.  But as they say, baby steps.

Quite a double-take this morning reading this New York Times headline:

For Thompson, Goal Is to Don Reagan Mantle

For a moment I thought they were remembering this guy…

Howard Kurtz has the goods on Ronald Reagan diaries coming out soon in Vanity Fair, compiled by Douglas Brinkley.

This item is great:

The former actor was well aware of his public image, and tweaked the Fourth Estate after he deliberately reversed the order of the opening sentences of his welcome at the 1984 Olympics: “The press having a copy of the lines as written are gleefully tagging me with senility & inability to learn my lines.”

Reminds me of the press savaging Dan Quayle over spelling potato wrong.  The same press corps that lives off spellcheck and copy editors.  You can just hear them: ”Let’s call him an idiot.  Is that spelled with one ‘t” or two?”