Reagan

The earliest memory I have of No. 40 was social studies class in 3rd grade. We used to get those Kidz Pages papers with lots of graphics and very little information, but I read it thoroughly enough to know that the President was Ronald Reagan and his Vice-President was George Bush, and they were Republicans, and they were seeking re-election. Opposing them was former Vice-President Walter Mondale, the Democrat, with his running mate Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be so nominated. Later that week we had an "election" in our school. We were lined up in front of a computer of the Apple II/Commodore 64 variety and invited to press a single letter to record our vote: "R" for Reagan or "M" for Mondale. Or it might have been "R" for Republican and "D" for Democrat; I don't remember, because I pushed "R".


As my third-grade brain reasoned, Reagan already was President, and the country seemed fine to me. We weren't at war, we weren't all poor, things were okay. Why change?

I got home from school that afternoon and told my parents about the election. My mother wanted to know who I'd voted for. I told her, breezily, not thinking much of the matter.


You'd have thought I'd said that I voted for Beelzebub. Furiously she demanded to know why I had done such a thing. Too late I realized that I'd failed to take into account my parent's opinion on the matter. Too late I discovered that they were both Democrats, and they had a profoundly low opinion of Reagan. For the first time I experienced the mania of a liberal scorned. My father, a far more died-in-the-wool Democrat that mother, calmed the situation down and asked to hear my reasons. I gave them, somewhat tearfully. Mother relaxed and they sat me down and told me about all the horrible things Reagan had done and why they were voting for Mondale. I apologized for my ignorant decision, and we let it go and later laughed about it.


That opinion of the man now eulogized in the press as the Great Communicator was ubiquitous in my house and in the media when I was growing up. Reagan wasn't the Great Communicator then, he was the Vile Halfwit, a man too heartless to accept the obvious morality of the liberal outlook, and too stupid to realize it. He was old, he was out of touch, he believed in (gasp) capitalism, he was a (double gasp) Cold Warrior, who didn't care if the German Green Party didn't like him. He'd won two terms in the White House by tapping into the ignorant opinions of farmers and union guys and southerners and other people who were too provincial to live in New York or California. He didn't leap to the forefront and demand that we socialize medecine when a bizarre new disease popped up among the gay community. He was the beginning of the American Reich. This was self-evident.


One of the great surprises when I was in college was discovering how highly historians rated Dwight Eisenhower amont our Presidents. He was at No. 9 or thereabouts, the last I heard of him. This is in spite of the fact that Ike spent the 50's being mocked by the intelligensia as a golf-playing do-nothing brinkmanshipper. My political science professor informed our class that Presidents always look better in hindsight, and that history will judge them better than their contemporaries. He informed us that this was already becoming true of Reagan, and that it would become true, despite what we might wish to the contrary, of Clinton.


Extrapolate this how you will.