Simi Valley, California Visited
June 2013
I try to do a post on a president every February to
commemorate President’s Day. This is one
I’ve been looking forward to – Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator. The two terms of President Ronald Reagan happen
to represent the polar opposites of my journey across the political
spectrum. We’ll get to that; but first
here is my take on our 40th president.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born February 6, 1911, the second
of two boys, in Tampico Illinois. His
upbringing was classic Middle America – his father was a salesman who moved the
family around the mid-west following jobs, his mom a devoted mother and devout
influence in his life. Little Ron got
the nickname “Dutch” early in life because he was a little on the chubby side
and sported a ‘Dutch boy’ haircut.
In
high school Dutch Reagan engaged in sports and acting and worked as a lifeguard
in the summer. He enrolled at Eureka
College, a small Christian liberal arts school in Illinois where some of the
themes that characterized his future life began to emerge. Reagan played sports, did theater, involved
himself in student government, and graduated with a degree in economics and
sociology.  |
| Wedding of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman |
Coming out of college Ronald Reagan fell immediately into
the world of entertainment. He took a
job broadcasting Iowa Hawkeye football games and parlayed his natural talent
into other sports broadcasting gigs.
Most notably he developed an ability to do play by play for Chicago Cubs
broadcasts using just the wire feed. On
a road trip with the Cubs to the west coast in 1937 the 26-year-old Reagan did
a screen test, which led to a seven-year movie studio contract. It was also in 1937 that he joined the army
reserve. By the start of World War II in
1941 Ronald Reagan had already appeared in 30 Hollywood films and was voted one
of the top younger actors in Hollywood. He married his first wife, actress Jane Wyman,
in 1938. Reagan was called to active
duty in 1942, but due to poor eyesight remained stateside for the duration of
the war, producing training and fundraising films for the US Army film
division.
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| Dutch's low point in the movies |
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| Maybe his greatest film moment - the indelible 'Win one for the Gipper' |
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| Studio photo |
Following the war Reagan resumed his Hollywood career. While he continued to make pictures through
the 1950’s, Ronald Reagan never made it to the first ranks of Hollywood leading
men. He did become influential in the
film business, however, serving multiple terms as president of the Screen
Actors Guild. His leadership in the SAG
included the black list period of the early fifties and Reagan’s staunch
anti-communism caught him somewhat reluctantly into the hunt for communists in
Hollywood. It was apparently these
political impulses that helped bring about the end of his first marriage in
1949. Later that year Reagan met another
actress, Nancy Davis, and in 1952 they were married. Reagan had two children with Jane Wyman and
two children with Nancy. Nancy would
become his lifelong love and their marriage was by all accounts close and
affectionate through the end of his days.
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| Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis in the film that brought them together |
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| Governor Reagan |
Ronald Reagan began his political career as a democrat,
campaigning for Harry Truman in 1948.
But his increasingly conservative views led him to support Eisenhower
and later Richard Nixon in their presidential campaigns. He eventually switched to the Republican
Party in 1962. In 1964 he emerged onto
the national scene as political player with his rousing A Time for Choosing speech in support of
Barry Goldwater at the Republican presidential convention. He won the governorship of California in 1966
on a promise to ‘send the welfare bums back to work and clean up the mess at
Berkley’ (in reference to perpetual student demonstrations). His confrontations with protesters and use of
force to quell dissent made him something of a polarizing figure, but he was
popular enough to win a second term in 1970.
In 1976 Reagan launched his first serious challenge for the
White House, losing a primary battle to incumbent Gerald Ford. But in 1980 he was able seize on the Iran
hostage crisis and hard economic times to mount a winning campaign against the
vulnerable Jimmy Carter. On January 20,
1981 Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th president of the United
States, bringing in what he had termed during the campaign as ‘morning in
America’. At 69 years old he was the
oldest candidate ever elected to a first term as president. The first days of his presidency were
eventful. On Inauguration Day the Iran
Hostages were released after 444 days of captivity. On March 30, 1981 he was the target of an
assassination attempt by a mentally ill John Hinckley, Jr. Reagan was seriously wounded and near death
when arrived at the hospital but was stabilized and later recovered completely,
becoming the only president in US history to survive a wound from an
assassination attempt.
A list of keywords from Reagan’s first term would be: Air Traffic Controllers Strike, Supply-side
economics (also called trickle-down economics or Reaganomics), Sandra Day
O’Connor, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or, derisively, ‘star wars’),
the Beirut bombing, Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada), and the War on Drugs.
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| The Teflon President and the Iron Lady in a golf cart |
Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a historic landslide victory
over Walter Mondale 1984. Notable
keywords from his second term include the Libya bombings, the Space Shuttle
Challenger disaster, the Gorbachev Summits, William Rehnquist and Antonin
Scalia, Tip O’Neill and the Iran-Contra Affair, Perestroika, and the Iron Lady.
In retrospect, his presidency has been called the Reagan
Revolution – a remaking of conservatism as a dynamic political force in
domestic affairs and a hard line stance against communism that set the stage for
the dramatic and largely peaceful fall of the Soviet communist system. Critics claim that Reagan was an out of touch
leader and his revolution set back civil rights and led to the economic bust of
the early 1990’s. But there is no
disagreement on the reality that Ronald Reagan was the most culturally and
globally influential president in the second half of the 20th
Century. Among the various presidential
ranking polls Ronald Reagan averages out to around 15th on lists of
the greatest presidents.
Ronald Reagan became know as 'The Great Communicator' because of his remarkable ability to connect with the American people and capture the sense of a moment in a way that raised the stature of the presidency. Consider these examples:
- As Leader of the Free World - June 12, 1987 at the Brandenburg Wall "Tear Down This Wall"
- As the Representative of the American People - January 28, 1986 - addressing the nation following the Challenger Disaster
- As the the Consummate Politician in his use of humor to win a crowd
After leaving the White House the Reagans moved to
California and the former president enjoyed a number of years of growing
stature as the elder statesman of the conservative movement. In 1994 at the age of 83 Reagan publicly
disclosed that he had Alzheimer’s disease.
His frank and personal letter to the nation about his illness raised
awareness of the disease and represented the last and most poignant public act
of ‘the Great Communicator’.
I have
recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be
afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease... At the moment I feel just fine. I intend
to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things
I have always done... I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset
of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.
Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.
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| Five Presidents |
Though he stayed active for as long as he could, Reagan
lived for ten years in a gradually degenerating condition, his last few years
with only Nancy as a regular presence in his life. On June 5, 2004 at his home in Bel Air, CA
President Ronald Reagan passed into history.
Over 100,000 paid their respects as he lay in state in the US Capitol Rotunda. He was buried in a site overlooking the Simi
Valley just outside of the Reagan Presidential Library.
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| Mikhail Gorbachev at Ronald Reagan's State Funeral |
My son Grant and I had the chance to visit the Reagan Museum
and his tomb at the Reagan Library. The
Museum is a wonderfully conceptualized and beautifully designed walk through
the Reagan era, and includes the full Air Force One in a special public
hangar. It is well worth a visit if
you’re in California.
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| My son Grant and Air Force One at the Reagan Library and Museum |
I never saw Ronald Reagan in person. But earlier I mentioned how the Reagan
presidency highlights my radical change in political orientation. Here’s the story.
When I was a senior in college Ronald Reagan was running in
his first presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter. It was during my phase Marxist years and, as
a leftist political science major, I should have been all wrapped up in the
political moment. But it was college and
there were so many distractions… Anyway,
I woke up one morning and realized that it was Election Day. So I borrowed a car and went into town to
vote. When I got there they asked me if
I was registered. I said, ‘No, I’m an
American citizen’. When it dawned on me
that I had missed that one little necessary detail of American civics I decided
to go back to school to await the outcome as a non-combatant in the political
process. One thing I did know is that it
was unthinkable that Ronald Reagan – a conservative! – could win the
election. Which of course is just what
happened. Of course, by the time they
called the results we had been at a party anticipating a great democratic
win. Incensed by defeat, aghast at the
project of four years of Republican rule and a little looser in judgment than
we should have been, my friend Rick and I found some spray paint begging to be
put into political use. There was a wall
located just outside the student union building that everyone had to pass in order
to go to class. We felt it needed a
paint job. With words. So we (as artfully as possible under the
circumstances) covered the wall with the immortal words: “Ronald Reagan – an actor playing his
greatest role”. Ok, it wasn’t Berkley in
the Sixties. But it seemed radical at
the time.  |
| Your blogger with Dutch at the Reagan Museum and Library |
