When it's wrong, of course!
This December 2003
Deroy Murdock Piece in
The National Review contains the following passage :
President Reagan's February 6, 1986 State of the Union address included this specific passage where he says the word "AIDS" five times:
We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS.
This is significant, because critics of Reagan's response to AIDS cite the date he first talked publicly about AIDS (May 31, 1987) as being callously late in the course of the epidemic. Murdock uses the appearance of AIDS in such a major speech to attempt to falsify the claim that Reagan did not give AIDS due public attention.
Unfortunately for Reagan and Deroy Murdock, the quotation given is not from Reagan's Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the State of the Union on February 4th, 1986.
It's from his February
6th, 1986
Message to the Congress on America's Agenda for the Future which contains the following quotation :
We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS.
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. It is unclear whether this "message" was given as a speech, but speeches seem to be listed in the Public Papers of the President: Ronald Reagan, 1981-1988 as "Address to" or "Remarks to" instead of "Message to." Its formatting also seems to indicate that it was not delivered as a speech. This is not, of course, conclusive proof that Reagan did not speak the words of his "message." Nevertheless, it is clear that the public profile of this "message" from Reagan could not possibly approach that of a State of the Union Address. Timeswatch noticed this mistake on December 17th, 2003.
With Reagan's passing, Murdock's inaccurate cite has been making the blog rounds again. I happened to notice it was inaccurate today, after searching for the original cite. If anyone has a copy of the source he cites (The Age of Reagan, 1964-1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order), I'd be curious whether its author (Steven F. Hayward) also cites Reagan incorrectly.
A Google search produces no correction. This must be that fabled accuracy and accountability they have in journalism!
I have emailed Murdock via the NRO and will update if I receive any response.
UPDATE : Reagan URLs were reversed. Oops!
UPDATE: To clarify, my curiousity regards the 1986 cite which Murdock incorrectly attributes to the SOTU, not the 1985 press conference cite. As noted, Reagan answered a question about AIDS in 1985. The perspective Murdock attempts to refute is the idea that Reagan did not give sufficient public profile to AIDS. Two public statements about AIDS in two years (85-87) do not materially support his case. A mention in the nationally televised State of the Union would, however, which is why I consider this error notable.
