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Here's something I wrote that, I think far more accurately reflects the truth than what Howard Fineman just blathered - about how the Reagan legacy will actually help bush. HAH! Another one from the "Yeah, SURE" file. I just sent it to DebateUSA and Democrats.us.
Reagan Reflux Disease
Ronald Reagan finally made the jump to light speed. Rest his soul. He lingered so long I started to believe he would never die, and as the days dragged on, I felt worse and worse for his wife. Having watched an ailing elderly relative do a long, slow, anguished exit shuffle myself, I know a little bit about what she went through. But it’s over now. And for that, for Nancy’s sake, I’m glad.
I can find other reasons for great comfort. I’m glad for him. His agony is over. He’s free now, wherever he is. And so are the rest of us, frankly. His friends, family, and followers are finally free of the gnawing death-watch that throws a black pallor on everything, every day, and I’m relieved for them. For many conservatives, however, we have very likely entered a time of “Mourning in America,” and while I offer my condolences to them, I find a long, wide, glistening silver lining to the clouds both chilling their hearts and hanging over the political landscape.
There is more in Reagan’s coffin than just his long-suffering body. We will be laying to rest the blaring, honking, mean-spirited, Gingrich/Limbaugh in-yer-face heyday of the right wing.
Ronald Reagan’s ascendance wasn’t much fun for us liberals. We saw the beginnings of all kinds of reversals. The progress we made over many decades, inspired by THE Certifiably Greatest President of the Twentieth Century (Franklin Roosevelt, NOT Reagan) was denounced, unraveled, and up-ended. We began pledging allegiance to “Style” over “Substance.” And we learned to appreciate irony. Often of the very saddest, most unfair, and most unfortunate kind.
We discovered that it’s just fine to break the back of a union (PATCO) when its members have the nerve to ask for the pay they deserve for such a high-stress job (and at the hands of a one-time union president, no less). We have an increasingly blurry line between church and state, since Reagan was the first in contemporary America to make it okay to worship two masters at once: the flag AND the cross. Actually, it was THREE masters, flag, cross, and money. We learned that it was just fabulous to reroute precious funding supports from programs designed to level the playing field, provide more opportunity for EVERYBODY (not just the well-heeled), and help pick someone up when they’re down. That money was far better spent building up an obscene amount of killing machines and exhorbitant 640-dollar toilet seats, and lining the pockets of Wall Street profiteers, merger/acquisitions pirates, and megacorporations. I myself can appreciate the fruits of that every time I stroll through Santa Monica, which became the homeless capital of the world after Reagan cut funding for mental institutions. There was literally no place for the people they housed, so they truly were turned out on the street.
Lying for ideology’s sake suddenly became just ducky, especially if you could get away with it. We learned it was appropriate to tell our kids that trees pollute and that ketchup was a vegetable (especially for their inner-city neighbors who couldn’t afford any other nutrition at lunch time). We learned it was okay to lie to Congress when you decided you really knew better than they did, even though it almost got you impeached. It was okay to SAY we weren’t dealing with terrorists, at least to everybody’s faces, when we couldn’t sell ‘em enough guns and ammo once people’s backs were turned. It was just fine to be so duplicitous with the people’s money and reputation when you were fighting those dirty Commies under every corner of every rug in the Western Hemisphere – any way that might win, even the ruthless, torturous ways. It was great to get into bed with the ickiest, most unprincipled people on the planet as long as they shared your basic money-centered beliefs. It was laudable to throw out the federal standards and guidelines and yes – that dirty word – regulations – that kept broadcasters’ noses clean, and kept their programming slants walking a straight line down the middle of the road, rather than lurching off to the right like some drunk.
We learned one of the most creative double-talking lines ever uttered: about how the facts told him something was false, but his heart still told him it was true. Has Dubya tried that one yet? In fact, under Reagan, we saw seeds planted for many of the ripened ills and public plagues with which we as a nation are now infected.
I could go on listing the lowlights of the eight extra-long Reagan years but I’d rather not relive all that misery. The obit orgy that follows Reagan’s demise will take care of that better than I can. I’d rather look at what’s upbeat about this, since that, too, is paying tribute to Reagan’s legacy. He was nothing if not upbeat. He was the President of the Optimistic States of America, and everyone, even his political foes, could not help but be taken in by his sunny allure, especially in the way it was packaged, visually and viscerally – like a Busby Berkeley production. He was such a nice, congenial old gent that everything nasty, unfair, and unjust that he sold to America, took on the same benign veneer. It became okay to place your bets with a fellow only because you just liked the guy, even though you might despise what you knew he was going to do.
But, folks, it’s over. It’s truly over. Reagan’s passing can be considered great in its symbolism. The “glory days” of the Republican Party are over. He’s taking them with him. I guarantee you this: In the days following the lying-in-state, the tributes, the retrospectives, the eulogies, the prime time news specials, and the film festivals, there will be many true believers whose souls are dressed in sack cloth and ashes. If you search their faces, you’ll see the metaphor they sadly recognize. They’ll be thinking back on the “good old days” when Reagan was running things, and they won’t be able to avoid a comparison with where we are now. They will be frantically racing around the maze in their own minds, trying to find a decent exit. Instead, they’ll repeatedly find themselves smacking nose-first into a dead end. Their somber expressions will betray the desolate realization that “it’s come to THIS.”
Think of it. What has Reagan’s legacy brought us to? Young George, mainly. The sorriest son of the Reagan era that America ever could have produced. They will unconsciously compare their finest hours (the Reagan years) with their very worst (Bush Two). It’s unavoidable. And they won't like what they see, because Bush just doesn’t measure up – and, deep down, they know it. Many among of the old guard – the “true conservatives” – who look again at today’s reckless spending, the mushroom cloud that actually is the exploding size of the federal government – not any threat from any swarthy Third World boogey man with a big, black moustache, and the current fiasco in Iraq with its lies, torture, and needless carnage and they'll be thinking "Ronnie wouldn't have let that happen." Or "Reagan would have done this the right way." Some of them might admit this in closed company over brandy, and others may even dare to speak it aloud. And to add insult to injury, neither the mismanagement nor the misguidedness is even being sold well now. We’ve gone from “the Great Communicator” to a spoiled brat who can’t even smooth two sentences together. Reagan’s death will remind the party faithful of NOT how far they’ve come, but, rather, how far they’ve fallen. They’ll remember how they stood tall with Ronnie. And standing tall is just not possible now. It’s not only Ronald Reagan for whom this bell tolls. It tolls for the soul of the Republican Party and the conservative movement as well.
It’s the fitting end of an era. As Reagan passes, the followers he left behind are now rudderless. I’m sure they take little comfort in the hand presently at the wheel, once they really stop to think about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if many of them weren’t murmuring to each other about Ronnie’s death being a bad omen. This year, so far, hasn’t been the greatest. Since January, almost everything for Dubya has gone wrong, from his lackluster State of the Union address to the AWOL controversy to Iraq turning from bad to worse. There have since been many bestselling books that won’t find their way into any Bush-lover’s library, photos of coffins and pointing female soldiers and naked Iraqi prisoners, not to mention the upcoming film they’re already dreading from Michael Moore. Bush’s poll numbers keep going down, John Kerry AND the Democrats have come back from the dead and won’t go away, Ahmed Chalabi’s been exposed for the double-dealing cheat that he is, and the days before Reagan died saw Bush having to consult a personal lawyer in a national security scandal, plus trying to sort out an unfortunately-timed CIA shakeup, on his way to collecting an in-person knuckle-rapping by the Pope. Things aren’t going well. The year 2004 may be a landmark year – of pain, grief, and gnashing of teeth, within conservative circles. The true Sons and Daughters of Reagan will look back on this year as the time when their rocket to the stars finally ran out of gas.
These times without Ronnie are already souring. Nancy’s been acting up. His widow has already broken ranks with the true believers, promoting the stem cell research they deplore to combat illnesses like his, torpedoing efforts to put his face on the quarter, and his name on some Colorado school. Their son, Ron Junior, has turned out to be an able spokesman for (GASP!) the Left. Reagan’s death and mourning period are stealing headlines not from John Kerry’s coronation week later this summer, but rather from Bush’s misbegotten “Olive Branch” European Tour now.
I think we ought to give everyone on the Right their due and let them self-flagellate to their hearts’ content. They’ve earned it. Their Beloved One is gone. Their Elvis really has left the building, for good. He embodied their dearest hopes and dreams, and if the first part of this year is any indication, they’ll be burying those hopes and dreams with him. I, for one, will not deny them their grief, the way their hyenas did to me when Paul Wellstone died. There assuredly will be many plantiff “Win one more for the Gipper” appeals at the Republican Convention in a couple of months. And for a few glittery, well-staged moments, that will lift their heavy hearts. But all “good” things must come to an end. I suspect that more than a few on the political right realize this. The Reagan era is finished. Certification will likely come in November. When it finally will, at long last, and with a sigh of relief that circles the globe, be a Brand New Morning in America.
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