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In reply to the discussion: Wanna Know Who Made Racism ''Acceptable Again'' in the good ol' USA? [View all]calimary
(80,699 posts)Glad you're here, Your Honor! Oh MAN, did America EVER suffer a giant collective aneurysm during that era.
It was the pizazz. The staging. The Hollywood stuff. The sloganeering. The schtick. He wore blue jeans and a cowboy hat off duty up in them thar Santa Barbara Mountains - and he looked good in them. He rode horses. He'd been a movie star. He then had a radio show and thus, a national pulpit and he was good at that. Sure knew how to use a microphone, including the time he yelled about how he'd PAID for that microphone (and nobody was gonna cut it off on him, either).
He had this triumvirate of close advisors - James Baker, Michael Deaver, and Ed Meese. James Baker was White House Chief of Staff. Ed Meese was first legal advisor and then full-on (and rather crooked) Attorney General. And then there was Michael Deaver. Mr. Showbiz. He was Deputy White House Chief of Staff under Baker and, as a former PR guy, he capitalized on reagan's actor skills to manipulate the masses. He was an "image guru," what CBS White House reporter Mark Knoller described as "the man behind the curtain."
"When it came to conveying Mr. Reagan's message, the cry at the White House was, 'Leave it to Deaver,'" Knoller said. "He chose the settings and staging, and operated the bells and whistles, that helped President Reagan earn his reputation of being 'the Great Communicator' but he couldn't have done it without Michael Deaver."
(snip)
To exert as much control as possible, Deaver steered the president away from reporters when he could, instead arranging Reagan in poses and settings that conveyed visually the message of the moment. Presidential news conferences were a rarity, which suited an actor-turned-politician who was at his best when using a script.
Deaver's greatest skill "was in arranging what were known as good visuals televised events or scenes that would leave a powerful symbolic image in people's minds," former first lady Nancy Reagan recalled in her memoir, "My Turn."
One example was Reagan's visit to the beaches of Normandy, in France, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II. Deaver arranged for Reagan to appear on a cliff overlooking the English Channel and address D-Day veterans, which yielded dramatic video and still images of the president.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/reagan-advisor-michael-deaver-dead-at-69/
Get that? reagan had this famous and much-vaunted "troika" of his closest advisors. And one of those three rarified-air jobs was his IMAGE GURU. It was THAT important. His IMAGE was absolutely THAT important. Economic advisor? Nope. Foreign policy advisor? Nope. Executive staffing guy, legal advisor guy, and IMAGE GUY. What does that tell you? Packaging above just about EVERYTHING else. It was the "how you sell it", not so much the "what you're selling" that was important. Nothing but surface treatment.
It was INFURIATING.
And, the SOB took about an equivalent of a full year out of his eight years in our White House - ON FUCKING VACATION!!!! He used to tie up traffic all over the Westside of L.A. over and over and over again, either going from LAX to Santa Monica Airport by helicopter and then limo'ing either to the Century Plaza where his entourage would take up at least a floor of the hotel there, or else up to Bel-Air to the former 666 St. Cloud Road (rich benefactors bought the exclusive Bel-Air home for the reagans toward the end of his second term, and had the street number changed to 668). OR it'd be helicoptering from LAX to Santa Barbara, up to the ranch. Either way, it was murder trying to get around West L.A. when he was coming through there. And we taxpayers were paying for all that nice time off he was always taking. Don't care if he was as old as Methuselah. If he needed that much time off and that many naps while supposedly on duty back in DC, maybe he shouldn't have wanted to be President. I certainly didn't get MY tax money's worth outta that old fart.
The ONLY good thing about ronald reagan is that he's dead. Gone. Can't initiate any further harm on America. His days are over. Unfortunately, his legacy is well-cared-for, at least for the moment. But he himself is gone.