Responsible commentators mustn't speak ill of the dead, so it's up to me.
I cast my first-ever Presidential vote for Ronald Reagan. It was 1984, and I was a freshman in college. I'll never forget the disappointment and disillusionment that grew within me as I proceeded to study the man's policies, both foreign and domestic. Disappointment turned to outrage as I plumbed the depths of Reagan's secret terror war in Nicaragua. I had been lied to, and I had bought it, and no one is more pissed off than a sucker who finds out he's been had.
Reagan's lies filled volumes, and the blood from his secret wars could have filled swimming pools. There was a popular little paperback, shelved in the bookstore's humor section alongside numerous Garfield books, called There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error. The constancy of the misinformation flowing from his lips, and the fact that his "mistakes" always broke his way, removed any reasonable doubt that he was a shrewd liar in the guise of an affable dumbass. The book included a letter to Reagan from John Wayne, asking him to stop all this goddamn lying.
For Reagan's second term, a revised and much expanded edition was called for.
This weekend, responsible journalists have been crowding every mic to share their warm memories of this President. None of them mentioned the hilarious time that Roberto D'Aubisson, an Administration favorite and head of El Salvador's "White Hand" death squad, danced with Nancy at Reagan's first Inaugural ball, then told reporters, "You Europeans had the right idea. You saw the Jews behind Communism and started to kill them."
Journalists' memories of Reagan seem to consist of shimmery soft-focus shots of a tall, handsome old cowboy waving in slow motion to cheering crowds while confetti snows down all around him. They remember stirring speeches and off-the-cuff wit. I confess that I remember mostly place names: Beirut, Nicaragua, Iran, Grenada, El Salvador, Libya. Also, the names of our friends: Marcos, Pinochet, Botha, Suharto, Duvalier, Somoza. And the accompanying jubilation that America was riding tall in the saddle.
As journalists recall Reagan's charming anecdotes, I remember his malicious, made-up claptrap about welfare queens driving new Cadillacs and living on prime rib. I remember his odes to free enterprise even as he pinned a third-of-a-trillion-dollar-bill to our asses for the S&L scandal over which he presided. I remember him as a backwards Robin Hood, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.
More than anyone, more even than Nixon, Ronald Reagan broke the heart of anyone who had any serious hope left in American politics. He proved that a half-smart crook who looked and sounded good on TV could be a wildly popular US President as long as he faithfully read what was handed to him. And he could get out of any sleazebag scandal just by smiling, tilting his head at a slight angle, and saying, "Well..." It scarcely mattered what he said after that. He had us at "well."
Nixon at least had the courtesy to look evil. And when we found out what a liar he was, we ran him out of town like a starving coyote. And we were ashamed before the world.
Under Reagan, we got used to the idea of the President lying to us. We grew accustomed to shady business dealings and clandestine violence in faraway lands. We applauded it all. If the world looked down on us for it, that was their problem, not ours. This was Ronald Reagan's contribution to American politics.
