FROM THE
March 4, 2004
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Remembering
-- and forgetting -- Reagan
by KEITH EASTHOUSE
"The struggle of man against
power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." The
Czech author Milan Kundera said that in one of his books. He
went on to talk about the perversity of memory, of how on one
occasion he'd actually felt a pang of nostalgia when looking
at a photograph of Adolf Hitler. Not because he thought highly
of Hitler -- quite the opposite -- but simply because he was
young when Hitler was in power; in looking at Hitler, the slaughterer
of 6 million Jews, the man who started a war that claimed 54
million lives, he was reminded of his youth.
I have a similar reaction to
Ronald Reagan. I'm not in any way comparing the 40th president
to Hitler; I think Reagan was fundamentally a good man, whereas
Hitler was fundamentally evil. It's just that Reagan, whose politics
I actively disliked, was in the White House when I was in my
20s. When I think of Reagan, the president who started the unraveling
of the New Deal and the Great Society, who left behind a massive
national debt and a bloated military, who presided over the Iran-Contra
scandal, I can't help but think of my "salad days."
I had a great time, for the most part, in the 1980s, and that
era, naturally, looks gauzier and more golden the further I get
from it. President Reagan, as perverse as it sounds, is an indelible
part of those fond memories.
But it's a little more complex
than that. Reagan, you see, reminded me of my father. While they
weren't exactly of the same generation -- my Dad was 15 years
younger -- they more or less held the same values, had the same
party affiliation, projected the same sense of firmness and certainty;
hell, they even parted their hair in the same way. They saw life
through the same prism -- or at any rate I think they did.
That's not to say they had similar
personalities. My Dad, a scientific type, was a detail man, analytical;
Reagan, the great delegator, was neither. His legendary inattention,
his reliance on 3-by-5 cards to get him through cabinet meetings,
his frequent misstatements, his lack of depth, of basic knowledge
-- none of that was like my Dad. But the fact that they are paired
in my mind forces me to admit that, despite his glaring shortcomings,
Reagan achieved what few presidents have: iconic status. He was
a bad movie actor but a consummate political one, and his timing
was perfect. A nation hammered by assassinations, by Vietnam,
by Watergate, suddenly was led by a figure unsullied by all that
simply because he'd cut his teeth in another, better, time. The
youthful optimism he radiated, the traditional virtues he projected,
all spoke to a bygone era, my father's era. Reagan was about
nothing if not nostalgia.
Which explains why the current
occupant of the White House, a Reagan wannabe if there ever was
one, simply doesn't pack the same punch. George W. Bush has a
good populist touch, but he's incapable of moving people with
his oratory, and he doesn't really symbolize anything beyond
dumb luck. He's just a child of privilege who overcame a drinking
problem and became, first, governor of Texas, and then president
of the United States, because his old man had connections. Not
exactly stirring -- certainly not the way Reagan's rise from
the son of a Midwestern shoe store manager and alcoholic to the
most powerful man in the world is stirring. Even though, as president,
he was always playing a role, and even though he was a product
of Hollywood, he was authentic -- or seemed that way -- because
of where he came from.
Reagan had one other thing in
common with my Dad, and maybe this is why, when I learned Sunday
he'd died, I felt, more than anything else, empathy for his wife,
whom I never really cared for as First Lady. My Dad went through
the long, terrible and sad decline of Alzheimer's, just like
Reagan. And, like Reagan, it destroyed his mind and personality
well before it killed his body.
I know what President Reagan
was like at the end -- believe me, I can see it. So to everything
else that complicates my feelings about him, let me add one more
thing: pity.
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