Opinion
 

Bush should become new 'communicator'

By Ken Stocks

After a week of remembrances featuring many humorous stories and lots of tears, the body of former President Ronald Reagan was laid to rest in the rolling hills of California, the sun setting on mourners and leaving the impression of a fallen hero riding off into the sunset.

Although many in the press tried to find ways to spin his political career into some kind of failure, it was obvious that the "silent majority" -- a term coined by former President Nixon -- remembered him for the great leader he was.

Reagan had many followers and his passing has called them into the political process once again, and will impact the coming election. Young people who had no previous experience with his ideas were exposed to the ideas that made him a great president.

His message of smaller government and lower taxes did not fall on deaf ears. Today's young people have learned that raising taxes has never affected the poverty level, or that bigger government has never cured the problems of the poor, the needy or the retired. Young people recognize the truth in the quote: Government is not the solution, it's the problem."

President George W. Bush and the people of this country face choices similar to those faced by Reagan. Then as now, liberals have tried to say that America is evil and America should not be a super power or act as the world's police force, nor should we face evil and defeat it.

The people of this country were attacked in a cowardly act of war on Sept. 11. The cowards chose to attack the innocent and showed themselves as evil from day one. From the beginning, the liberal press tried to hide the graphic images from the public. Few have seen the pictures of innocent Americans jumping from the flaming windows of the World Trade Center. They seldom show the images of that day anymore for fear of reminding the "silent majority" of the evil that attacked America.

Bush has boldly chosen to take the war to the enemy rather than cower and wait to be attacked again. Once again, the press has attacked the president and labeled him a cowboy. At every turn, the media tries to make the war effort appear to be failing.

Just as in the 1980s, the media is wrong. It said tens of thousands would be killed in a war that could last a year. Instead, troops marched into Baghdad in a matter of days and fewer died in battle than did in training accidents preparing for D-Day. 

Bush needs to take one final lesson from Reagan: He needs to become a better communicator and forget about playing to the liberal press. His job as president is to answer to the people of the United States of America. It requires that he stand up and make decisions that are right for this country. Then, he should take the reasons for those decisions directly to the American people. If he does that, the "silent majority" will stand behind him just as they did with Reagan.

Stocks, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at conservative_columnist@yahoo.com.