Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Morning in America
After Saturday's death of President Reagan, I was surprised to discover that I actually cared about it. After all, he had been out of the limelight for years, and he wasn't getting any younger. But I watched the coverage anyway, and briefly, with a friend, even flirted with the idea of playing hooky today to road trip to Simi Valley.
I'm not a conservative; I don't believe that "less government" is the solution to every ill (though it is to many). On many areas of policy, I think he made wrong decisions. But I nonetheless feel a certain affection for the man whose election first awakened me to politics.
I was seven in the fall of 1980. There were yellow ribbons on seemingly every tree at Fort Leonard Wood in southern Missouri for the Iranian hostages. The evening news came on just after my father, an Army officer, came home from work, and I would sit with him and watch and learn about the Ayatollah and Democrats and Republicans.
I asked my parents, eventually, whether our family were Republicans or Democrats. We were Republicans, as it turned out. I asked what the difference was, and they said, "Ronald Reagan and the Republicans believe in a strong military so we can stay free." That's oversimplified, but I was seven, so I think it was fair.
If nothing else, Reagan provided inspiration and optimism to many. He has been widely quoted this week as saying he hoped that history will record that he appealed to our best hopes, not our worst fears. He succeeded in this, I think, and for that achievement itself he deserves honor.
After Saturday's death of President Reagan, I was surprised to discover that I actually cared about it. After all, he had been out of the limelight for years, and he wasn't getting any younger. But I watched the coverage anyway, and briefly, with a friend, even flirted with the idea of playing hooky today to road trip to Simi Valley.
I'm not a conservative; I don't believe that "less government" is the solution to every ill (though it is to many). On many areas of policy, I think he made wrong decisions. But I nonetheless feel a certain affection for the man whose election first awakened me to politics.
I was seven in the fall of 1980. There were yellow ribbons on seemingly every tree at Fort Leonard Wood in southern Missouri for the Iranian hostages. The evening news came on just after my father, an Army officer, came home from work, and I would sit with him and watch and learn about the Ayatollah and Democrats and Republicans.
I asked my parents, eventually, whether our family were Republicans or Democrats. We were Republicans, as it turned out. I asked what the difference was, and they said, "Ronald Reagan and the Republicans believe in a strong military so we can stay free." That's oversimplified, but I was seven, so I think it was fair.
If nothing else, Reagan provided inspiration and optimism to many. He has been widely quoted this week as saying he hoped that history will record that he appealed to our best hopes, not our worst fears. He succeeded in this, I think, and for that achievement itself he deserves honor.
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I will confess that my feelings about Reagan and his legacy are less positive. In my mind, Reagan was the one who let the religious right (and astrologers!) into the white house, he was the one whose administration ignored the AIDS epidemic until it was literally impossible to do so, his was the administration that made shady deals with our enemies in order to fund "freedom fighters" who were indistinguishable from terrorists, his was the administration that gutted social programs beyond all sense of sanity, his was the administration that allowed the National Debt to spiral out of control in service of an economic theory that the first Bush aptly described as Voodoo Economics, his was the administration that made of mockery of the EPA by putting James Watt in charge of it.
The list goes on. Reagan was appropriately known as the Teflon president. Somehow, no matter how despicably his administration behaved, none of the oprobrium ever seemed to fall upon him. It baffled me at the time and it baffles me now. I think that Reagan was the perfect example of the dangers inherant in a charismatic leader. Everyone loved him in spite of his actions and, consequently, no one could ever stop his administration's reckless behavior. He may well have appealed to our best hopes and have provided inspiration and optimism to many, but I think that this very appeal masked any number of real problems.
I will not curse the dead. I know that many people loved and respected him but, honestly, I can't join in the sentiment.
The list goes on. Reagan was appropriately known as the Teflon president. Somehow, no matter how despicably his administration behaved, none of the oprobrium ever seemed to fall upon him. It baffled me at the time and it baffles me now. I think that Reagan was the perfect example of the dangers inherant in a charismatic leader. Everyone loved him in spite of his actions and, consequently, no one could ever stop his administration's reckless behavior. He may well have appealed to our best hopes and have provided inspiration and optimism to many, but I think that this very appeal masked any number of real problems.
I will not curse the dead. I know that many people loved and respected him but, honestly, I can't join in the sentiment.
First, thanks to the anonymous commenter for the cartoon. Very funny, and worth checking out. And safe for work. :-)
Both the cartoon and Andrew's eloquent expression of what was wrong with Reagan are fair. I don't deny it. It's not my intent to either defend his policies or deny that bad things happened on his watch.
My opinion of Reagan will always inevitably be colored by the peculiar circumstances of being a grade-school Army brat who wasn't even in the US between 1981 and 1983. That makes me biased, obviously, or at the very least it makes me less sensitive to the many flaws of his administration.
I suppose, in the final analysis, the question is whether Reagan's infectious optimism is enough to outweigh his sins. I won't pretend I can give this question the truly neutral analysis it deserves. Nonetheless, I don't think that praising Reagan for inspiring Americans is on the same level as praising Hitler for making the trains run on time. I don't know whether it counted for enough to make it all worthwhile, but I'm utterly confident that it was significant and ought to count for a lot.
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Both the cartoon and Andrew's eloquent expression of what was wrong with Reagan are fair. I don't deny it. It's not my intent to either defend his policies or deny that bad things happened on his watch.
My opinion of Reagan will always inevitably be colored by the peculiar circumstances of being a grade-school Army brat who wasn't even in the US between 1981 and 1983. That makes me biased, obviously, or at the very least it makes me less sensitive to the many flaws of his administration.
I suppose, in the final analysis, the question is whether Reagan's infectious optimism is enough to outweigh his sins. I won't pretend I can give this question the truly neutral analysis it deserves. Nonetheless, I don't think that praising Reagan for inspiring Americans is on the same level as praising Hitler for making the trains run on time. I don't know whether it counted for enough to make it all worthwhile, but I'm utterly confident that it was significant and ought to count for a lot.
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