Jimmy Breslin, the columnist said Reagan was senile and then insulted his supporters by saying they were proof that senility was a communicable disease. For good measure, he called Reagan “shockingly dumb”.

Newsweek columnist Eleanor Clift said that “greed in this country is associated with Ronald Reagan”. Along this common slur was USA Today’s White House reporter Sarah McClendon that “it will take a hundred years to get the government back into place after Ronald Reagan. He hurt people: the disabled, women, nursing mothers, the homeless.”

Lesley Stahl of CBS News (and now 60 Minutes) said ” I predict historians are going to be totally baffled by how the American people fell in love with this man.”

Hollywood director John Huston (not a pundit as such, but illustrative of a mindset in Hollywood-a major source of Democratic donors) said Reagan was a “bore” with a “low order of intelligence” who is “egotistical.”