Reagan: A Real American

Maybe I've been too hard on Ronald Reagan. I mean, the guy died and had to wait three years for a funeral. He deserves better than that. In a lot of ways, Reagan was the ultimate American:

1) He thought of the world in simple terms. I credit Reagan for hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's his presidency's greatest legacy and the universe is indebted to him. But by calling the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire," he made it OK to describe entire groups of people as "evil," and thus marginalize their real lives for the sake of easily digested political rhetoric. Politicians of much lesser finesse have later described unrelated countries without any political alliances or associations as an "Axis of Evil." The truth is that nations of people, empires as it were, cannot be evil. Evil requires a singularity of vision and purpose that by definition a group cannot advance. In the meantime, Reagan plunged us into debt amassing the largest nuclear arsenal in history, building bombs we'll never use. I can't deny that this brought about the fall of the Eastern Bloc sooner than later, but I also can't deny that it would have happened eventually anyway. The Soviet system was amazingly inefficient and would have imploded on itself without our help. But think for a moment the risk we took calling their bluff. The Reagan plan could have just as probably turned the world's greatest cities into molten glass.

2) Big, simple ideas were always more important than facts. One of my favorite memories of Reagan was during the 1980 campaign when he said that trees caused more pollution than cars. How could he be so uneducated about environmental concerns to confuse carbon monoxide with carbon dioxide? In the end it didn't matter, what stuck was the (incorrect) idea that we had overestimated our environmental concerns.

3) He believed in the American Dream: we're all responsible for our own successes and failures and government should get out of the way. I'm not opposed to tax cuts as long as we can still balance the budget. I'm not opposed to increased national spending, even on defense, if it creates more jobs. I am opposed to hawking our future and our children’s' future on debt we're still paying off to overheat the economy for political reasons, which is what I believe truly drove the 80s arms race. I think taking benefits away from unemployed women with children and turning out legions of mentally deranged citizens to create an epidemic of homelessness is inexcusable, even if it means my taxes are lowered and I have a better chance to grab the big brass ring. You can keep your American Dream -- I'd rather feed, house and clothe the brothers and sisters around me.

4) It's only a crime if you get caught (and convicted). Enough has been written about Iran-Contra and Savings and Loan scandals to fill a set of encyclopedias. Suffice it to say that Americans will always drive 10 miles over the speed limit, cheat a little on taxes, argue with the referee when they know they've committed a foul, sneak an extra glass of wine at Macaroni Grill, copy off their friends test, set their watches forward and exaggerate their accomplishments on their resumes.

Reagan really did show us what it meant to be American -- at least the ugly stereotypical variety -- and in a way, I miss it. Like millions of us this week, I'm caught up in a certain Reagan nostalgia. If not for the man himself, for the era of open possibilities, a time when I believed I could tell the good guys from the bad guys and an age where I still believed that any American could become anything they wanted if they just had a chance.