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Reflections on Reagan
June 12, 2004
Now that the orgiastic collective mourning of Ronald Reagan is
complete, we can from the distance of a week honestly reflect on
the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Here is a look back at the
man and the myth, in his own words and those of who (threoretically)
admired him.
Former
President Ronald Reagan passed away on June 5, only one
day before the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Americans
across the political spectrum will rightly remember his
boundless optimism, praise his enduring faith in the goodness of
the American people, admire his steadfast determination in
halting Soviet expansion and honor his service to his country.
He will be mourned (endlessly, as it turned out).
To his legacy, future historians will be less kind. At
home, this fiscal conservative ushered in
unprecedented
budget deficits,
tripling the national debt in his eight years in office
(a figure greater than all the previous 213 years of
American history combined). Reagan’s visceral anti-tax,
anti-government rhetoric still handcuffs the United States,
jeopardizing Americans’ health care and retirement security.
(George
W. Bush, of course, now represents the Republicans,
the party of fiscal
irresponsibility.) The touching eulogist of the
Challenger disaster also referred to Medicare recipients
as “a faceless mass waiting for handouts.” Abroad, the
anti-Soviet stalwart who did not negotiate with terrorists
retreated from Beirut and presided, knowingly or not, over
the illegal and precedent-setting
Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal. The man who asked
Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1987 also
visited the SS cemetery in Bitburg two years earlier.
Sending Robert McFarlane to Tehran with a cake and a Bible
was Reagan’s faith-based initiative.
That critical analysis, though, won’t come till later.
For now, all we will hear about is Reagan the Gipper, the
Optimist, the Great Communicator, and the Winner of the Cold
War. Most of all, we will hear about the Reagan Revolution
and the reigning conservative ideology of tax cuts, limited
government and American unilateralism. It was wrong in the
1980’s and it’s wrong now, but none of that matters.
That, unfortunately, can only mean one thing:
conservatives, basking in the warm glow of Reagan’s life,
will seek to anoint George W. Bush as his heir. And that can
only mean trouble for John Kerry – and the nation.
Update (6/11/04): As
predicted
here,
conservatives have begun their effort to appropriate
Ronald Reagan's mythologized legacy for President Bush's
faltering reelection effort. In his grotesque and
nakedly self-serving eulogy for Reagan, Bush himself
transparently tried to make the case:
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"President Reagan was optimistic about the
great promise of economic reform, and he acted to restore the
rewards and spirit of enterprise." (Reaganomics = Bush tax
cuts)
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"He was optimistic that liberty would thrive
wherever it was planted." (Soviet Union/Eastern Europe =
Iraq/Middle East)
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"When he saw evil camped across the horizon,
he called that evil by its name." (Soviet 'Evil Empire' =
Iraq, Iran & North Korean 'Axis of Evil')
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"And where does that strength come from?
Where is that courage learned? It is the faith of a boy who read
the Bible with his mom." (Reagan convictions = Bush
convictions)
Despite these opportunistic efforts and tortured
analogies, George W. Bush is clearly emerging as the heir
not to Ronald Reagan, but to
Richard Nixon.
Not since the days of Tricky Dick has the White House seen such a secretive,
paranoid and vengeance-filled occupant. President Bush may not
literally have
the Plumbers, CREEP (the Committee to Re-elect the President), or
the "Enemies List", but in its essence his administration has all
the same hallmarks as the Nixon team. The politics of retribution,
secrecy, and infallibility are eerily familiar; only the names (Haldeman,
Erlichman, and Mitchell versus
Cheney,
Rove and Ashcroft) have changed.
The litany of Bush
secrets, scandals and probable criminality (of which Abu Garaib
and Ashcroft's likely contempt of Congress are only the
latest) are almost certain to surpass Nixon's in number and
gravity
Ron
Reagan, son of the late president, is an articulate,
mild-mannered man perhaps best known for hosting dog shows
on television. Since his father's passing, however, Ron
Reagan has made it clear in no uncertain terms that he will
not let George W.
Bush hijack his father's legacy.
The disdain that
Reagan the Younger holds for Bush the Younger extends far
beyond the stem cell research advocated by his mother.
First, Ron Reagan in
his eulogy rebuked
Bush for his
self-serving comments at the National Cathedral, stating
that his father "never made the fatal mistake of so many
politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain
political advantage." In a forceful
June 24th interview on CNN, he dismissed comparisons of
Bush to his father ("I bridle at the comparisons between the
two men as men..."). He refuted Jerry Falwell's claim
that the 40th and 43rd presidents had a mentor-protege
relationship ("my father really didn't know George W. Bush
from Adam"). He angrily rejected the assertion of
one-time Reagan NSA aide William Clark that his father would
have opposed stem cell research. As for Iraq, he fired
a shot across W's bow, stating that Ronald Reagan would not
have invaded "because it was an unnecessary and optional
war." Later, on the
Larry King show, he was clear about Bush's war-time
leadership: "we lied our way into the war."
If Ron Reagan has his way, the GOP won't gain any
advantage from the memory of the Gipper. He savaged
the Republican Party, flatly stating that "well, I couldn't
join a party that, frankly, tolerates members who are bigots
for one thing. Homophobes, racists." And as
he told Judy Woodruff, "I'll vote for the viable
candidate who is capable of unseating George W. Bush."
Ronald Reagan has passed on, but his words of wisdom live on
forever. Here's only a small sample:
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"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it
must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary."
(Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965)
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"I would have voted against the Civil Rights
Act of 1964." (Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966)
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"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
(Description of Medicaid recipients, 1965)
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"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid
vacation for freeloaders." (Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966)
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"[Not] until now has there ever been a time
in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There
have been times in the past when people thought the end of the
world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this."
(December 6, 1983)
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"...the moral equal of our Founding Fathers."
(Describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985)
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"I know all the bad things that happened in
that war. I was in uniform four years myself." (Reagan
spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach
Studios in Hollywood)
For an extensive compilation of the words of
Ronald Reagan, visit
The Reagan Years web site.
Ronald Reagan's last impact was also captured by colleagues
and contemporaries, family members and friends. Again,
here is a small sample of their esteem and respect.
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"He has the ability to make statements that
are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you
speechless." (Daughter Patti Davis from "The Way I See It")
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"...like reinventing the wheel." (Reagan
press secretary Larry Speakes on preparing the president for
press conferences.)
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"The task of watering the arid desert between
Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides."
(Columnist David Broder)
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"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
(Margaret Thatcher, 1988)
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"Ronald Reagan knew his own mind."
(Margaret Thatcher, 2004)
For many more fond memories, see
The Reagan Years web site.
Many of the arch villains of the Reagan years
are still with us.
Some serve or advise the Bush administration, while others have
gone on to lucrative careers in the media or corporate influence
peddling.
No Ronald Reagan retrospective would be complete without
Oliver North. A nostalgic
Avenging Angel shines the spotlight on this once and future
villain.
 Before
his stint at Fox and a failed Senate run, there was Iran-Contra,
stuffing
Fawn Hall, and a felony conviction overturned by none other
than Bush WMD panel head
Laurence Silberman. North glamorized the role pioneered by
G. Gordon Liddy (and carried on by
Manuel Miranda) of GOP scandal figure turned conservative
martyr.
There is a rich literature covering the Reagan years.
Two books provide a nice summary of the period.
 There
He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error by Mark Green,
Gail McColl Jarrett
 Way
Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold
War by Francis Fitzgerald
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