For whatever reason, Ronald Reagan has been resurrected from his interred state of sleep and become a symbol of proper leadership in the last three years. I understand that much of this is an attempt by the Conservative Republicans to place a spotlight on the faults of a Democrat president, and as a banner and trumpet call for a Republican revival in the next Presidential election cycle. Strategy and propaganda are one thing, but this deification of Ronald Reagan is becoming a bit macabre, as well as completely misleading.
So it has become an opportunity for me to get back to a passion of mine -- that being the examination of U.S History, and especially a moment for a cognitive scalpel to interrupt this postmortem lovefest with a few facts about this idolized president.
I understand that we all want to return to better days and memories are powerful things. Memories tend to be more powerful as the years pass because our understanding of the world and its current times provides for criticism moreso than adulation. History also tends to mitigate the criticisms of a person at that time, and therefore I understand the newfound desire to place Reagan in the pantheon of great men and leaders. But a close examination, and a return to a dispassionate understanding of that particular time, should remand his deification and portray him as merely human -- a man acting as President, without divine connections, without omniscience, and without the "herculean strength" to bring down an entire nation through sheer will and some buzzwords or catchphrases scribed by White House speechmakers.
So please allow me to break down this model of worship and provide some facts that will disrupt the concept of Ronald Wilson Reagan as the greatest thing since sliced bread -- and the last great leader of a great nation that was divined from God to promote its idea of greatness upon the rest of the world.
Perhaps we can begin with the election of Reagan to office. The issues leading up to this are well-recalled in the minds of those who voted at that time. They are also listed in current history books. Nineteen-seventy-nine was a culmination of three decades of strife and international stare-downs, beginning with Truman and the Korean War, the dismissal of MacArthur, the onset of Vietnam (engaged under Eisenhower), the shock of a Catholic President gunned down in Dealey Plaza -- Watergate, Fumbling Ford, and Carter's Adminstration held at gunpoint by OPEC and Iran. There was the counter-culture hippie movement, the movement of "Mother's Little Helper" for the household wives, and use of LSD, marijuana, and opiates for revolutionaries and drop-outs. When in doubt, there was a cowboy elected to office ... the State Governor of California.
Ronald Reagan was a screen actor, and a B-movie best actor. He was a liberal Democrat at that time, and was the head of the Actors' Union. He was a man that you could view on the Big Screen and consider him a solid figure, an upstanding man representing the best qualities of an American citizen. And then he became Governor of California.
He railed against the counter-culture movement. He threatened violence against opposition, especially on California University campuses. He tried for the Presidency twice, failing to gain nomination to the Republican Party post. He received his third opportunity with the election of 1980.
And then he won election. Over Jimmy Carter. Carter was an embattled President under the yoke of an energy crisis, a hostage situation in Iran, and the mantle of one unable to garner public trust after the torrid 1960s and the decadent 1970s. And Reagan was resoundingly the victor, receiving 80% of the popular vote as an apparent reaction to the failure of Jimmy Carter. Right time, right place. The first four years of the Reagan Adminstration did not seemingly characterize him as the cowboy to the rescue of the American people. Unemployment continued a similar trend as it had under the Carter Administration. Energy prices remained high. The U.S.S.R. continued to dominate eastern Europe. Something greater than Reagan happened, and the Election of 1984 posed less difficulty. Buoyed by a recovering economy, and enhanced by a weak Democratic candidate in Walter Mondale, Reagan won a second term overwhelmingly. The trees grew taller, people whistled as they walked, birds sang once more. It was reported that a rainbow spread from Staten Island to the Golden Gate Bridge. And the Second Term was as lionized as the First. But then there was a great deal of investigation and consideration that followed in the coming years that shed some light on the happenings during those eight years of bliss.
More to come …
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