As painful as it is to say

Ronald Reagan was a hell of a lot smarter than the movement he spawned, and this sums it up exactly:

Bill Clinton went to North Korea and got two Americans freed from its prisons by issuing an apology on their behalf. This reminds us of Jesse Jackon's independent mission to Damascus in 1983, by means of which he got Navy Lieutenant Robert O. Goodman back from the Syrians. President Ronald Reagan, who had not approved of the mission, nonetheless had the brains to say of it afterwards, "You can't quarrel with success."

Our current rightbloggers, on the other hand, seem to think Reagan was a pussy.