Meese ‘Made a Difference’

Gary L. McDowell’s love letter to Ed Meese both fascinated and outraged me (“ ‘Ed the Ordinary’ Made a Difference,” Op-Ed Page, July 25). It’s fascinating to see what wearing blinders does for the vision. It’s outrageous to think that some people might take stock in what McDowell’s saying.

Loyalty is to be commended, and it’s obvious that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III is Ronald Reagan’s soul-mate. “Liberals,” that new and somehow dirty word, which apparently represents anyone with whom McDowell disagrees, fear both men. And for good reason. Liberals value humanity over all else.

As for Meese being politically attuned, were we in the 19th Century that statement might be somewhat accurate. However, this is 1988, and the place of government is not to restrict personal freedoms while letting huge corporations run hog-wild. The scandals at the Department of Defense which Meese “revealed,” occurred precisely because of the money-is-no-object policy of defense practiced by officials in the Reagan Administration. If they didn’t wave big checks in the face of people out solely to make a buck, they wouldn’t have had a problem.

Meese’s legal agenda, which McDowell seems to adore, consisted primarily of efforts to load the courts with backward-thinking ideologues who believed only what he did. Right and wrong aren’t issues he seemed to care much about, and “technicalities” have another, more respectful name: points of law. It is only a “technicality” that prevents police from kicking our doors in should they get the urge late some night. Is it, in fact, an “infamous” decision which requires police to tell an individual why he or she is being arrested and what rights the person has?

We should be happy that Meese generally failed to turn back the legal clock. He did no service to his country by trying to beat old and long-dead legal horses back to life. He was doing a service to his and Reagan’s ideas of what government should be. Luckily for us, time has passed them both by. If Meese the Ordinary had possessed Reagan’s charisma, he would have been dangerous, rather than simply annoying and troublesome.

TODD HENSCHELL

Burbank