My first vivid memory of Ronald Reagan is in 1986. I”m in school watching the space shuttle Challenger roar into the skies. On board are seven Americans from a broad spectrum of American society. There are two women, Judith Resnik and Sharon Christa McAuliffe, the latter of which is a teacher and the reason my 4th grade class is watching the launch.
When the shuttle burst into a flowering white cloud of shock and destruction my class was devastated. Later that day, Reagan made a speech eulogizing the astronauts in which he said these words.
‘We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.’
That”s a nice sentiment, and it pairs up oddly with the other memories of Reagan I have. Those are of my parents friends and my parents complaining bitterly about how he was ruining the country.
When I was in middle school (when Reagan”s predecessor was in office) I remember actually getting in discussions with kids who said Ronald Reagan was the best president ever. I would say he wasn”t, but since neither of us would know what we were talking about the argument was useless.
Today, I know a lot more about Reagan. What there is to know isn”t pretty, namely because of the resonance Reagan carries with us today.
Reagan was, like Bush, a delegator of responsibility. This led to his administration having 138 officials convicted, indicted, or under official investigation. This led to $900 hammers in the Defense Department. This led to Iran-Contra. This led to where we are today. This led to the largest deficit in U.S. history (that is until today).
President Reagan was an articulate, warm and telegenic personality. He reformed the conservatives of this country into what they are today; all style, no substance. Reagan taught the right that if you packaged things in tight, concise sound-bites, gave back to your rich cronies in the form of tax cuts, spent (in the words of Sen. McCain) like a drunken sailor on defense, then you could be successful.
Under Reagan the poverty level in the United States grew while yuppies dominated the airwaves. We all seem to remember Alex P. Keaton, but do we remember the malnourished and poor of America”s worst cities? Or if we do, the Reagan conservatives did a fine job of developing the inaccurate picture that survives today of the Cadillac welfare mother with her numerous tots in tow while she lives high on the hog off of the federal government.
Organized labor was dealt a harsh blow by the decision to jail and fine the leaders of air traffic controllers who went on strike in 1981. Participation in unions declined in the 1980″s, in no small part due to the ‘Rust Belt’ that was created in the U.S. by the closing of numerous manufacturing plants.
Crack ravaged the ghettoes, but instead of dealing with the roots of drub addiction (poverty, unemployment, poor education) we demonized drug users, impaired race relations and had Nancy Reagan on ‘Diff”rent Strokes’ telling Gary Coleman to just not do drugs. This simplistic, over generalized and poorly thought out anti-drug campaign has been declared a failure by nearly every organization ever to monitor its effectiveness.
Also under Reagan we get the infamous photo op of Donald Rumsfeld warmly greeting Saddam Hussein in his capacity as special envoy of the president. This would lead to massive expenditures of money in the forms of arms and military intelligence in Iraq”s war against Iran. It isn”t even necessary to point out the hilarity that is our foreign policy when it comes to supporting sociopaths one minute and declaring them ‘enemies of freedom’ the next.
With the development of the ‘Reagan Doctrine’ the U.S. officially backed any group or government that was diametrically opposed to the Soviet Union. This led to Lt. Col. Oliver North drastically breaking important intelligence agency guidelines and direct orders from Congress not to support the Contras in Nicaragua (who were ‘liberating’ Nicaragua while committing terrible human rights violations including the rape and murder of nuns, castration, kidnapping, torture and the like).
President Reagan was a smooth speaker and not unlike our current president, he was able to disarm many who met him with a well placed quip.
However, history won”t be fooled by the glib jokes like when President Reagan was heard saying before a press conference into a microphone he thought was off, ‘”I have outlawed the Soviet Union forever and we begin bombing in five minutes.”
Of course, what you won”t hear in the eulogizing of President Reagan is that the closest we came to actual nuclear war with the Soviet Union, except the Cuban Missile Crisis, was under Reagan”s watch during a training exercise in Western Europe named Able Archer.
I respect Reagan for what he was, a genial personality and an affable man who led the country while I was a child and delivered it to where we are today.
Today, we are in an age where gross over-statements and generalizations win the day in political arguments, where a glib speaker trumps the voice of experience, and where policies that are foolish in the long run but beneficial in the short term win every time.
Rob Deters is interning in Milwaukee this summer. He can be reached at [email protected].
