From the archives: The Great Communicator stumbles

It’s been 25 years since the Iran-Contra affair – the scandal about the US government selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan rebels. It saw Ronald Reagan’s approval rating drop from 67 per cent to 46 per cent, and fourteen memebers of his staff were indicted. In a piece that appeared in The Spectator exactly a quarter of a century ago, Christopher Hitchens explains how the Reagan administration was unable to contain the story.

The end of the line, Christopher Hitchens, 29 November 1986

If you wish to understand the fire that has broken out in the Washington zoo, and penetrate beyond the mere lowing and baying of the trapped and wounded beasts, you must master three key concepts in the capital’s vernacular. These three – all of them coined by the White House itself – are ‘damage control’, ‘the line of the day’ and ‘reality time’.