From The Economist's clear-thinking people, updated
The Economist got the cover right. Of course they couldn't just leave well alone and inserted in the cover story the usual left-handed compliments the MSM tacks on to Reagan, "Oddly enough, he had what it took. He was, most clear-thinking people clearly saw, not the right man for the job". Most clear-thinking people who voted for him? or who didn't? or who helped him beat communism so their countries could live in freedom? The next paragraph tells us "He was bound. . . to be a bit of a bumbler" since "He disliked, and sometimes dodged, painful arguments with awkward colleagues. He could fail to notice murky things going on behind his back". One of the smartest people I've ever met taught me as a young child that intelligent people choose their fights -- maybe the President was one of those people.

Then they got the man wrong in the obit, by constantly contradicting themselves: "The performance was all", yet "Behind all that lay a surprising toughness"; "his more fantastic schemes, such as Star Wars, were also linked by his detractors to his ability to live in unreal worlds", but all the while, "As a self-taught politician, he had come to know what was right and what was wrong". Makes sense to the guy that wrote the article, I guess. Seems that I probably don't qualify as "clear-thinking people" since the article as a whole doesn't make much sense to me.

As a long-term subscriber I've observed that The Economist has been self-contradicting in their opinion pages (the reporting seems OK so far) for the past year or so. Have they changed editors? Or is the op-ed staff slowly being replaced by clear-thinking people?
Update Is Peggy Noonan "clear-thinking people"?