Here's to You, Ronnie!
By: Toby Vest
"So after watching several hours of biographical programming dedicated
to Reagan, I came to a conclusion: when an American President passes to
the next life he becomes the greatest elected official in the history of
our country."
Recently, I’ve been on a television boycott and I know a lot of people
say they don't watch TV, but seriously, I hadn't even turned on the tube
in three and a half weeks until that faithful Saturday; June 5th, 2004.
I’m not even entirely sure what prompted my sudden lust for the idiot box
but there I was trapped on the couch starring into the screen, destined
to a Saturday of endless channel flipping.
Pretty soon the journalistic magnet buried somewhere deep inside me drew me to the news channels. As soon as I reached the first, I was bombarded by images of Ronald Reagan. Apparently, the former president who had been struggling with Alzheimer’s disease since 1994 had passed away. I remember thinking what a relief it must have been on the man as well as his family since both had been saddled with this disease for many years. So I said to my brother, still half asleep, "Let's have a drink on Ronnie's behalf and be done with it.
So we took a shot of the Peruvian liquor a friend had recently smuggled back into the U.S as a gift for me (what if the gift had been anthrax?) and I started scanning the other news channels trying to see what else was being reported for the day. Little did I know that when a former President of the United States of America dies there simply is no other news.
So after watching several hours of biographical programming dedicated to
Reagan I came to a conclusion: when an American President passes to the
next life he becomes the greatest elected official in the history of our
country. Countless stories had convinced me that the Reagan presidency
was an overwhelmingly positive and monumental event in the history of the
world. To hear the news channels tell it, Reagan was undoubtedly the most
important person of the 20th century. As I drifted off I couldn't help
but think you simply have to hand it to a guy who single-handedly defeated
communism, banishing it forever for the betterment of the human race.
A few days later I snapped out of my propaganda induced trance and started thinking about the last presidential death I remembered, Richard Nixon's. Suddenly it was clear. This is what they do. Let me explain.
Nixon has the dubious honor of being remembered for many things. What I, and probably most people, remember is his involvement in the Watergate scandal but as I looked back at some of the information reported after his death and noticed a glaring similarity between his death and the resulting news coverage versus the coverage that Reagan was getting now: nothing derogatory was reported. Death absolves us all.
After Nixon’s passing the media focused entirely on his "greatest
achievement," opening relations with China and while it was an important
step forward for the idea of all encompassing global trade, opening relations
with another country pales in comparison to bringing shame and degradation
to the moral character of the United States and its citizens. Nixon was
a devious and manipulative president who entrenched in the American psyche
the idea that the most important elected office in our country, arguably
the world, could be occupied by a spineless, back street hustler. May he
rest in peace.
In all seriousness, Nixon’s indiscretions throughout his presidency were
instrumental in the decline of the American public's faith and trust in
their government and are far more important to his legacy, if a man of
such abysmal character traits even deserves to have a legacy, than opening
trade with China could ever be.
Now take Reagan. A lot of earth shattering events took place on or
under the watch of the Reagan administration. Newsweek's Charles Krauthammer
said, "(Reagan’s) legacy was winning the longest war in American history,
the long twilight struggle of the cold war." Reagan won this "war"
by increasing defense funding, initiating a huge military build up, deploying
nuclear weapons all over Europe, instituting strategic missile defense
systems, and providing unconditional support for "anticommunist"
contras in South America and the middle east. Some of this support killed
thousands of civilians in Nicaragua and helped train and arm many of the
Middle East groups that threaten the United States today.
The Reagan's administrations funding of the resistance movements across
the globe led to power struggles for government control in South American
countries such as Nicaragua and created an entire region of the world that
to this day remains extremely unstable. Of course, this was heralded as
America's and Reagan’s commitment to fighting the global spread of communism
but as Tim Curry said in Clue, "communism is just a red herring."
At the root of Reagan's anticommunist struggle is the idea of installing governments that would provide favorable trade conditions for the United States and its companies, as well as, serving as listening posts in volatile areas of the world. So, as long as these governments fulfilled their obligations we continued to send the guns and sign the checks, oblivious to any human rights violations or atrocities that might take place in the guise of the war on communism. And that is not the path to be taken by a man portrayed as righteously as former President has been in the days following his death.
Secondly are Reagan's radical economic policies and most importantly the emergence of the "trickle down" theory. The basis of this idea is if wealthy people have more money it will eventually trickle down to the not so fortunate. The first steps in widening the gap between the rich and the poor began here and continues to grow under the watch of our current president.
Reagan, like President Bush, claimed to represent the average man but this
is the man who once referred to poverty as a "character flaw.” Reagan's
romantic view of America created an atmosphere where greed is good, so
get all you can and keep it all for yourself while we watch the deficit
ballooned to three times what it was when he took office. Truthfully, I
don't recall the eighties being a particularly prosperous time for my family
so all the talk of his “inventive” economic policies just don't hold any
weight.
Reagan has a number of flawed policy decisions through out his presidency,
his refusal to speak out on AIDS and union busting during the Federal air
traffic controller's strike are a couple of them but the most dreadful
was the Iran Contra scandal and his ridiculous testimony before Congress.
His robotic repetition of “I don’t recall” will always stand out to me
even though I was young when I witnessed it. Reagan’s performance was the
antithesis of everything he claimed to stand for and what the media said
about him after his death. How can a man who portrayed himself as such
a strong leader throughout his presidency simply not know what his vice
president and other White House and military officials were doing? Whatever
way you spin it, you get the same result. Either he actually knew and lied
to avoid tarnishing his image or he was a bumbling actor propped up like
a puppet who played the part of the everyman while his vice president ran
everything behind the scenes. Man, this all sounds eerily familiar and
the thought of it is enough to make my head twitch in pain.
Later, I still found myself confronted with the idea that death washes
us all clean but is the charity and convenience given to the deceased a
worthy substitute for accuracy, or at least the other side of the stories.
One of the many biographical pieces I saw on Reagan said, "His presidency
shaped the way we live today." This is obviously meant as a compliment
but above all, the grandiose idea of ending the cold war, Reagan's two
terms have had a profoundly negative effect on the following decades and
that should be his legacy.
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