Thoughts On A Birthday

Ronald Reagan, so they say, made us feel good about ourselves. His boundless optimism, often based on stories in movies that he mistakenly remembered as real, was nice. After successfully invading that rising threat, the weevil empire and huge nation known as Grenada, he proudly announced we were once again, after the kerfuffle in Vietnam, "walking tall." So there's that. And his nice smile, his very good hair. I don't discount them, either.

But it's amazing to me the extent to which he's retroactively revered by the right. Why, exactly? He said "government is the problem," which they like to hear, and he proceeded to prove it in many ways, which they continue to do to this day: by which I mean they govern poorly. Reagan took the shining city on the hill to a place where the Constitution has no meaning, ignoring acts of Congress by selling weapons to Iran and giving the money to the Contras. He spent more, raised taxes more (mythology notwithstanding) and raised the debt, reversing, in fact, a decades-long trend of his predecessors (restored by Clinton until Bush got ahold of it).

Well, there's an argument to be made -- and make it they do, like breathing (while simultaneously ignoring his lily-livered America-hating born-again nuclear disarmament position) -- that Ronnie ended the Cold War, single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union. Well, that and the emergence of Mikhael Gorbachev, decades of rusting of an unsustainable system (heck, even as a clueless college kid traveling the USSR during the height of the Cold War I saw the crumblings), and a Polish Pope who inspired hope on that side of the curtain. Crappy cars, shoddy shoes, busted buildings making for tiring tovarishchs. But to whatever extent it's deserved, let's give the man credit. I just wish he hadn't sewn the seeds of our own economic calamities in the process.

Ignoring where those seeds were planted and by whom, reading tea leaves, Sarah Palin® celebrates Ronnie's century mark by turning history upside down and backwards. Ignorance and denial, reverence for ahistorical falsehood, clinging to failed economics like some cling to you-know-what and you-know-which: it's the only way to keep his holiness alive, and she's the embodiment, the wine and the cracker.

For some reason, she didn't mention the cut and run after the bombings in Lebanon, or his other softness on terror; nor did she opine on the impression that might have created in the minds of radical Islamists, how it might have fashioned their future thoughts on the value of terrorism. RWS™ were outraged at Clinton over the USS Cole. How can they abide the memory of turning tail after the deaths of three hundred Marines? The former half-term governor didn't bring it up. On this holy day, I won't either.

Two of Reagan's three Supreme Court nominees drove conservatives crazy. Too moderate, not ideologically pure. Reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, ferchrissakes! How does that fit on the icon?

I'm sure Mr Reagan was a nice guy, especially if you weren't poor or otherwise disadvantaged by circumstance, weren't gay, weren't from outer space and didn't have HIV, weren't a black South African. I bet he was entertaining as hell at State dinners, a great story-teller; and I'm sorry he had to suffer the ravages of Alzheimer's while trying gracefully to finish out his presidency. But really, I can't think of anything he did in office the legacy of which has worked out very well for us. O'Connor and Kennedy, maybe. If the timing had been different and he'd have said "Mr Krushchev, tear down this wall," the response would have been a shoe in a different place than a podium. And the economic disaster which was set in motion by Reaganomics has ramifications the reversal of which may still prove to be impossible despite the best efforts of Barack Obama. As governor, what he did to California, it appears, is irreversible. The myth of Reagan, as animated and amplified post mortem: I get why they love it. Perfect in every way. But his perceived greatness in death bears no relation to his actions and their results in his political life. In office, he often wasn't nearly as beloved as is his ghost.

We should all be so lucky.

He sold a lot of Borax, though, and GE products.

So today, on his centenary birthday, I'll adopt Ronald Reagan's reputed optimism and believe that the Super Bowl commercials will live up to their usual standards. If the rest are as good as the one I've already seen, the VW commercial with the kid in his D.V. suit, it'll be a day worth celebrating.

[Addendum, 8pm: I just found an amusing cartoon that says the same thing...]