has a nice piece reminding us about Ronald Reagan and what he brought to the American landscape in the 1980s<\/a>.\u00a0 My parents were Reagan Democrats.\u00a0 That is, they were sick and tired of Jimmy Carter\u2019s lackluster leadership and felt that he, as well as the Democrats, had embraced values and ideas that were incompatible with America\u2019s ultimate well being.\u00a0 The rest of their families, as far as I know, remained Democrat in votes as well as name.\u00a0 Their families liked Reagan, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 There was no real animosity.\u00a0 They simply wouldn\u2019t vote for him, being staunch Democrats. <\/p>\nAmong our younger generation, however, that sentiment was different.\u00a0 I began watching politics in 1980 when it came to my attention that we had just elected a war monger president who would be nuking the world any minute.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 The message us youngsters heard, especially from Boomer aged pundits,\u00a0was \u2018Go get laid now, because ol\u2019Ronnie is going to nuke the world!\u2019\u00a0 Recently, a special on the Cold War run by National Geographic actually postulated that the whole \u2018get it now\u2019 attitude of our generation came from this period in time; this idea that our end was now inevitable and there would be no retirement. The NatGeo special didn\u2019t directly link it to the Leftwing propaganda against Reagan.\u00a0 But at least it admitted the feeling of inevitable doom from that period of time.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The 1982 Recession didn\u2019t help, and soon we heard charges of senility and stupidity that was leading to poverty, racism, discrimination and Big Brother (that was big in 1984).\u00a0 Yet, by 1986 things were changing.\u00a0 The economy had rebounded.\u00a0 Yes, Reagan\u2019s almost na\u00efve faith in the goodness of Americans paved the way for a godless market in a godless country to seize upon his policies and exploit them for the benefit of the wealthy and\u00a0the exclusion of the middle class and American welfare\u00a0in general.\u00a0 But at the time, things were leaps and bounds better than 1979.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Plus, we just came off of the Geneva Summit where Reagan\u00a0 and Gorbachev took the first fruitful steps that would not only diminish the fears of a nuclear holocaust, but made it clear we might just end this whole Cold War thing peacefully.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Naturally, not wanting to be burned by inconvenient progress, the Left attacked, and we had the Iran Contra scandal.\u00a0 Most people couldn\u2019t tell you want the legalities of that scandal were.\u00a0 The point wasn\u2019t to get Reagan legally.\u00a0 If they could, all the better.\u00a0 But it was to smear his reputation by forcing out the fact that he had broken his promise about negotiating with terrorists, or something similar.\u00a0 That was the hope.\u00a0\u00a0Despite the scandal, however, and despite the market downturn that happened in 1987, Reagan left office the most popular president since polls were started.<\/p>\n
Why?\u00a0 First, because he appealed to the older generation that might not like the other party, but supported the well being of America more than partisanship.\u00a0 Second, he had a strong sense of who he was and what he believed and he governed accordingly.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t a detail kind of guy and that was no problem.\u00a0 He handed the details to his workers and let them do the heavy lifting.\u00a0 But he knew what he believed and he set out a set of policy plans in 1980 based on his beliefs, and with the exception of lowering our debt, he accomplished those promises in his first term.<\/p>\n
Finally, he was a good leader, and by most accounts, a good person.\u00a0 Even if at the time he towered above other figures, he was a down home sort of guy.\u00a0 He could lead.\u00a0 He could get America where he wanted it to go.\u00a0 But he did it by getting people to join him.\u00a0 Whether a Democratic congress, or\u00a0a Soviet leader.\u00a0 So strong was his leadership abilities\u00a0that Gorbachev was picked to lead the Soviet Union as a direct result of Reagan\u2019s unwavering style in the US. <\/p>\n
But despite this, he was a good man.\u00a0 During the special about the Geneva Conference that I\u2019ve referenced before, there was a charming little anecdote told by some of the staff workers who were with the Reagans.\u00a0 The Reagans were staying somewhere with a family in Geneva.\u00a0 One of the children asked Reagan to watch his pet goldfish.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the goldfish died the night before Reagan was to meet with Gorbachev.\u00a0 Reagan was crushed in the morning when he saw the fish was dead.\u00a0 He told one of his staffers to find another fish just like it!\u00a0 He then went onto the meeting, all the world watching, all the critics in knots worried that he would nuke the world, everyone\u00a0 holding their breath.\u00a0 When the historic meeting was over, Reagan returned to the residence and \u2013 this is told by those who were there \u2013 the first thing out of his mouth was, \u201cDid you get the fish?\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It reminds me of the famous story of Joe Montana in his Super bowl XXIII victory.\u00a0 Pressed against the clock.\u00a0 Seconds ticking away.\u00a0 Touchdown needed to win.\u00a0 Starting at the other end of the field.\u00a0 As the team gathered in the huddle, nerves on edge, adrenalin pumping, it\u2019s said that Montana suddenly looked up and said, \u201cHey, is that John Candy?\u201d\u00a0 Whether it happened that way or not, I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But it illustrated the leadership Montana brought to the game. Perhaps the strongest leader pro football ever had.\u00a0 Joe Cool.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And that was Reagan.\u00a0 The fate of the world on the line, the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the eyes of the world and history glaring down.\u00a0 And through it all, the first thing he had on his mind when he returned was concern for a child\u2019s pet fish.\u00a0 That\u2019s leadership.\u00a0 That\u2019s that It<\/em> factor.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what made my generation a bit off kilter when it came to the media generated Reagan hate.\u00a0 Because the Boomer dominated pop culture\u00a0we in which we grew up hated the man,\u00a0we should have had no love for him ourselves.\u00a0 Many did hate him.\u00a0 Worse than anything I\u2019ve heard said about Obama.\u00a0 And yet, on the street level, even if we didn\u2019t like him and were obliged by the media narrative to ridicule the man, many of us also knew, deep down, we were better off than we had been only a few years earlier.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t proclaim our admiration openly of course.\u00a0 But we knew. And what\u2019s more, we felt safe and believed there was light at the end of the Cold War tunnel because of Reagan, not despite Reagan.\u00a0 In the bigger scheme of things, in the fallen world we\u2019ve always been forced to live in, that\u2019s not bad.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over at The American Catholic, for Reagan\u2019s birthday, Donald McClarey has a nice piece reminding us about Ronald Reagan and what he brought to the American landscape in the 1980s.\u00a0 My parents were Reagan Democrats.\u00a0 That is, they were sick and tired of Jimmy Carter\u2019s lackluster leadership and felt that he, as well as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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