In anticipation of the big GOP Reagan fest today, I've donned my Flock of Seagulls t-shirt and rented Rambo to get into the mood. Yes, I'm old enough to remember Reagan. But I was out of the country as much as possible, so the Reagan years seem to me to be a vague pastiche of exotic beverages and very, very large shoulder pads. It was quite a long time ago, after all.
The post itself is important, showing how bereft our current crop of GOP Presidential hopefuls are, having to reach back to The Gipper for inspiration. For me, however, I just got all caught up in remembering Miami Vice and Duran Duran and fat sweaters and really big hair. U2. Cap Weinberger. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have just outlawed the Soviet Union. The bombs start flying in 5 minutes." Yuck-yuck-yuck, wasn't that a stitch?!?
While my reminiscing has been real, my feelings about the 1980's are hardly the warm and rosy ones usually associated with glancing back at one's life. I remember the day the Iranian hostages arrived back in the US, the weekend after Reagan took the oath of office (I was practicing for a piano duet for a piano recital at a friend's house; my uncle (my mother's brother), then a pilot for Eastern, flew them home from Germany). I also remember what I was doing on New Year's Eve, 1990 (watching a broadcast of Leonard Bernstein conducting a huge symphony and choir in Beethoven's 9th Symphony in celebration of the reunification of Germany; I am still astounded by the fact that Bernstein did the entire performance without a score). In between I graduated from HS and college, fell in love once or twice (well, not really; compared to what would come later in my life, these were almost like dress rehearsals for love than the real thing), read a ton of books, listened to four and a third tons of music, moved from one place to another as I tried, and repeatedly failed, to find a settled path in my life.
The middle years of the decade, when I was in college, were the most settled in an otherwise unsettled, difficult time. They were also, oddly enough, the time I remember with the least amount of fondness, for this was the ear of High Reaganism. Ronnie was at the peak of his popularity, and nothing - not his trip to Bitburg, not his defense of Ferdinand Marcos, not his constant display of utter ignorance on matters of policy and process (sometimes even the members of his cabinet), not his abject refusal to treat the Soviet Union as anything other than an abstraction, and an evil abstraction at that - seemed to dim our view of him. He may have been an idiot, the funny uncle of the American family, but he was our idiot, our funny uncle, and we loved him.
Except, of course, we didn't. Not really. Reagan won 1984, partly because the press, in a trial run for the election sixteen years later, simply kept announcing his re-election as inevitable, regardless of what the Democrats did. Walter Mondale was, perhaps, an awful candidate, but compared to Reagan, imagine what kind of President he might have been. No Iran-Contra. No Ollie North still polluting our airwaves as a faux hero. Elliot Abrams would be languishing in the obscurity of some small-time academic post, failing to make it to Georgetown out of his sheer idiocy. George W. Bush? Another failed business or two later, and he might be a footnote to history.
In 1984, I remember sitting in the laundromat of my hometown, washing a heavy comforter (my mother wouldn't allow such a heavy item in our home washing machine, God alone knows why), getting ready to head back for my sophomore year of college. I was reading Missile Envy by Dr. Helen Caldicott. A village resident walked up and started talking to me. I was full of myself back then (like the character in the Byrds song, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"), and I was afraid of some kind of reactionary idiocy from this example of the lumpenproletariat before me. What I got was a lesson in humility, as he said things much more intelligent, thoughtful, wise, and insightful than I could ever have imagined. That was the first seed in the distrust of the kind of elitism that would be pounded in to my head by an academic establishment that views too many of our fellow Americans as too stupid to understand basic English. One of the things he said that has stuck with me was, "That's that lady doctor from Australia, right? You think the missiles will fly?" (I shrug noncommittally) "Well, if Ronnie wins, I bet it happens. Sooner or later." (My look must have been one of shock) "Yeah, but I'll still vote for him." (Oh?, I ask, amazed by the seeming contradiction) "Yeah. He's fun. Having him around is a hoot. He's just so damn dumb."
That wasn't the most insightful thing the man said (that is between him and me), but it does provide a glimpse in to the ways many were perhaps thinking back then. Reagan was a hoot. He was entertaining. This man was genuinely afraid of what would happen were Reagan re-elected (serious policy differences and social concerns), yet Reagan was hysterically funny (the "who-would-you-rather-sit-and-have-a-beer-with" idea). He was funny because he was dumb. I wonder if we didn't keep him around for precisely those reasons.
In honor of the year mentioned in the title, here are the Eurythmics:
