President Reagan, Mastermind - SNL
Why Hacker News recommends it
Used mainly as a reference for how contemporaries viewed Reagan's presidency, and occasionally as a joke.
What it is
A 1986 SNL sketch in which Phil Hartman's Reagan seems clueless in public but is a scheming mastermind in private.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2019 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites hindsightbias · 2021-11 · on “Debunking our narratives of the late 70s and early 80s”
This SNL skit provides one view: [this video] Even my mother, a product of an FDR world, who threw shoes at Reagan on TV could not stop laughing about how over the top it was. I credit Nancy. She saw the ideologues he put in during the first term where driving for a cliff and brought Baker, Deaver and Schultz in to right the ship. It helped to have someone like Tip O’Neil in the House who thought impeaching over Iran Contra would be bad for the country. Reagan, like W Bush wasn’t incompetent, he was just incurious and easily led the farther he went up. Look at Reagan’s 1964 speeches and W’s Governor debates and it’s like they both fell of a skateboard and cracked their heads open once they ran fo
Cites mixmastamyk · 2021-11 · on “Debunking our narratives of the late 70s and early 80s”
Agreed with all of this. Also, skits like this one by SNL made in 1986 (copied from elsewhere) wouldn't have been made unless people were already noticing a disconnect... even if they didn't know the exact cause: [this video]