Blogging Reagan, Pt. I
In what I hope will be a long running series of blog posts, I'd like to start taking a look at who Ronald Reagan was, what he stood for, why he was so popular, and what role his policies and popularity continue to play today. I approach this project not as a partisan trying to bring Reagan down, but as curious American seeking to understand one of the most important and powerful figures of the last half-century, a man who continues to be held in tremendously high esteem by a significant segment of the population.
In large part, this stems from my own ignorance regarding Reagan. I was born just a few months before he defeated Jimmy Carter and won his first term. I was 8 years old when he left office. So my own political consciousness was mostly non-existent while Reagan was in the limelight. Yet it was recent enough that Reagan's legacy is not yet clear. As such, I'd like to make an honest attempt at understanding Reagan, on his own terms, from the perspective of his critics, and from the perspective of his supporters.
I've started out by reading Peggy Noonan's When Character Was King. I'm through the first 100 pages, and so far it's been exactly what I wanted. A gentle, easy narrative about Reagan's life from the perspective of someone who worked for, admired, and now misses Ronald Reagan.
With that said, let me get a couple of things off my chest. Peggy Noonan is not a great writer. I don't know if anyone claims she is, but she's not. She is passionate and heartfelt, and I am enjoying that. But there are a few passages I just have to point out before I move on with more substantive stuff. First:
He was our giant, a giant of history, we know that now, and we wish we could put our arms around him and rock him to sleep.
I'm perfectly willing to overlook the strange idea of rocking Ronald Reagan to sleep, but what is that "we know that now" clause doing there? I'm not sure the proper grammatical critique, but I am pretty sure you can't have three fragments cordoned off by commas before you actually start your sentence. Anyhow, there are a lot of these run-on sentences at the beginning of the book. Once the narrative begins, the writing improves.
The other passage I want to point out just struck me as truly bizarre. Perhaps it will make more sense by the end of the book, or by the end of my project of understanding Reagan. But right now it strikes me as some very strange Freudian psycho-babble. Noonan is discussing the speech President George W. Bush gave at the commissioning of the USS Ronald Reagan:
It occurred to me that Mr. Bush always seems to laud Reagan from a certain height. Maybe that's inevitable; it's how today praises yesterday. But I thought as he spoke: Every time he praises Reagan, who was different in so many ways from his father, I bet he wonders if his listeners are thinking Yes, Reagan was the man your old man wasn't. I wonder if little slivers of frustration or resentment shoot through his blood. I thought: I bet there will be another aircraft carrier commissioned before his presidency is over, and I bet it will be name the USS George H.W. Bush, and I bet George W. Bush will speak then not from a superior position but as a son speaks of a loved and wounded father, not praising him so much as raising him up.
Believe it or not, the italics are in the original. My first reaction to this paragraph is that it seems to be imbued with loathing of George H.W. Bush. But there's more to it than that. There's also a sense that both Bushes are simply riding on coattails still lingering from Reagan's revolution, and that they don't have any real claim of their own. Very interesting stuff that I'm sure will come up again and again, but it has manifested itself in a truly bizarre paragraph.
Anyhow, I'll be back later with more positive stuff from the book, which I actually have enjoyed very much so far.
