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By William A. Rusher The media have given President and Mrs. Reagan a very hard time over their recent private visit to Ja pan. According to the press, Mr. Rea gan was paid $2 million by his Japa nese hosts for making “a couple of speeches.” In an apparently unrelated transaction, he seems also to have persuaded the Japanese to make a substantial contribution toward the construction cost of his presidential library. Given the way House majority leader Richard Gephardt and other Democrats have complained about the alleged Japanese takeover of American businesses, you might sup pose that Mr. Reagan might get a lit tle credit for lifting a few yen. But no, he has been denounced as greedy, and compared unfavorably to former President Carter. Carter got a lot of laudatory press for coming up to New York twice after his 1980 defeat and doing carpentry, with his own weath er beaten hands, in a house being reha bilitated for the use of the poor. There is, of course, a lot the media haven't told you about Mr. Reagan’s financial situation and what he and Nancy actually did in Japan. The for mer president is not a rich man. The house he is currently living in, in Los Angeles, is rented from a group of friends who bought it for him and Nancy, as a prospective retirement home, several years ago. Now Mr. Reagan has to find the 2 million bucks it will take to buy it from them, and that undoubtedly explains his raid on Japan. But, in addition, there was a lot more to the trip than just “a couple of speeches.” There were intensive con ferences with high Japanese business and government leaders on matters of mutual interest to the two coun tries, and Nancy had a full program of her own, centering on her longstand ing interest in drug rehabilitation and related subjects. Nevertheless, envy isn’t listed among the seven deadly sins for noth ing, and the critics have been meow ing cattily. Among other things, they have complained that it costs the tax payers a bundle whenever a former president travels abroad. Indeed it does, and that persuades me to bring up a matter I had previ ously elected to leave alone. (You see how these people contrive to drag you down to their level?) I am speaking of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter’s 1985 ex pedition to Nepal. As it happens, I was in Katmandu myself in the autumn of 1985, in the course of a trip around the world. Jimmy and the Steel Magnolia had just passed through, on a private visit to Nepal to trek through its famous valleys and mountain passes. The lit tle Himalayan kingdom is world-re nowned as a trekker’s paradise. There are half a dozen favorite trekking ar eas, and the idea is to pick the one that appeals to you most. The Carters, however, had grander ideas. They tried to talk the Nepalese government into loaning them its mil itary helicopters to fly them and their entourage to one choice trekking area after another. Unfortunately, the Royal Nepalese Air Force had to re fuse, since the helicopters were being used at that moment to rescue a group of tourists who were stranded, in life-threatening circumstances, in a glacier. That Carter entourage, I should ex plain, numbered about 16 people alto gether, including Secret Service guards and communications techni cians (the latter being needed to the ex-president closely in touch of world events as he and Rosalyn tramped along those mountain trails on the other side of the globe). U.S. taxpayers ponied up about $1 million to transport the whole crew to and around Nepal and back. Of course, I was out of the country myself and may have missed the me dia’s extensive criticism of Jimmy's junket. Or was there any? © 1989 NEWSPAPER EASSN. THE CONSERVATIVE ADVOCATE RUSHER WILLIAM A,
Newspaper Details
Marshall Chronicle
Marshall, Michigan, US
Wed, Nov 29, 1989
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Roger M.
USA 01 Jul 2026
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