R.I.P Ronald Reagan

Poststructural Pub
1

It should be no surprise that I differed with President Reagan’s politics. But, certainly anyone could find things to admire about him. I always think about the assassination attempt. You watch the video and you learn a lot about Ronald Reagan. A guy is shooting at him and Reagan stops smiling and waving long enough to look at the guy with stony, paternalistic disapproval. He undoubtedly would have stayed longer to chastise the guy but for the Secret Service shoving him into the limo. I myself would have wet my pants and cried for my mommy. Then, as best one can tell from the anecdotal reports, he pretty much started smiling and making jokes again. The guy doesn’t even know he’s been shot in the chest. The smiles and jokes are only briefly interrupted by the emerging knowledge that he was shot in the chest. He smiles and jokes his way through the exams at the hospital and is clowning with the surgical staff until they finally put the guy under (the beginning of the now legendary, brief Presidential term of Al Haig). The surgeons take an unexploded exploding bullet out of his chest and the guy bounces back in amazing time, in spite of relatively advanced age.

Unbelievable guy.

Dale

2

He has certainly been dying for the past few years, ever since I can remember. Rest in peace.

3

He said to Nancy: ‘Honey, I forgot to duck!’
following Jack Dempsey.
He said to the surgeons: ‘Tell me you are all Republicans!’

He was one of the peace makers, he won
the Cold War, he accomplished great advances
in the reduction of nuclear weapons.
His administration oversaw a great
birth of democracy in many nations
that had been dictatorships. He was
a liberator of Eastern Europe.
When Gorbachev visited the USA there
was an extraordinary scene before reporters,
where Reagan said:

'There is an old Russian saying: ‘Trust but verify!’

Gorbachev said: ‘You keep saying that!’

Reagan answered: ‘I like it!’

The spectacle of an American president
and a Soviet premier who obviously liked
each other, teasing each other over
arms control, in public. Well, for those of us
who had practiced air raid drills as children,
diving under desks in buildings that would have
been instantly incinerated, this was a wonderful
thing.

4

and he could remember his lines! Sadly missing these days…

Denny

5

I think that Reagan was the last widely popular president.

6

See a post I’m about to make on the Political thread.


Dale

7

Yes, but he was hated by the left and the Western Europeans,
not the Eastern, worse than Bush is today, because
he stood up to the Soviet Union. ‘Reagan on his white
horse!’ my German friends kept saying.

And he couldn’t remember his lines, he was bumbling.
Liberals mocked him as a moron. Best

8

I was never a fan, but at least he was a decent man. We have certainly had worse presidents (cough)…

9

Though I disagreed with his politics and with many of his policies, I must admit that he managed to restore a certain lustre to the presidency that had been lost through the disgraces of Johnson and Nixon, and the failures of Ford and Carter. His wit, dignity and charm will be remembered fondly, even by those who opposed him politically.

Rest in peace.

10

I was for Carter, though, granted, I was not of voting age, and was too young to be aware of the issues. I preferred Reagan to Mondale, on moral issues.

I wonder what the average American thought about Helmut Kohl. :slight_smile:

Yes. I rmember the caricatures of him calling Nancy “Mommy” and asking for “mushed Pablum.”

11

Referring to your wife as “Mommy” is just slightly creepy.

12

I find it hard to like or dislike Ronald Reagan. I’m surprised he lived for so long, being so sick for so many years. He gets to rest, the US gets a badly needed new saint. We get to hear about something other than Iraq, for a while.

But Reagan, he was one who managed to become the President so perfectly, that he barely continued to be a person. He reminds me of Elvis. He became the symbol, became all that people wanted. In the end, there was very little left.

People were kind to him and in the end spared him the humiliation of public exposure in his decline. This is the rarest kind of kindness, in the USA, these days, and was in my view his greatest achievement.

13

No reigning American president has really visited Brazil, but Air Force One made a fuelling stop there when Reagan was president. He’s said to have looked out and greeted warmly the people of “Bolivia”.

The other famous one, though very scary, is when he was testing a microphone before some speech, and he said “I’ve just solved the Soviet problem… I pressed the red button.” (Or some such thing; i read about it in Portuguese.) He was unaware there were reporters in the room.

14

Yes, He said “I have just enacted legislation that will outlaw Russia forever, we begin bombing in ten minutes.”

A certain era ended with Reagan, none of the presidents after him have his integrity. Reagan believe in ending the cold war not just as a politician, it was in his heart. I can’t say that about any of the recent ones, the others have had too many personal agendas.

15

I think one of the greatest moments in politics was the Mondale-Reagan debate in which Reagan used that famous line about not making age an issue in the campaign: “I refuse to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

It was a great line and even better was Mondale’s response. Rather than a begrudging and forced smile, Mondale just had a big hearty laugh. I thought it said a lot about Mondale, too.

16

Perhaps, although I wish we had some idea of what he really knew, or didn’t know about that Iran-Contra thing. I’m inclined to believe his closest aides, who maintained long after RR left office, that he, RR, didn’t fully understand the deal. Meese said Reagan was visibly shaken when he explained to the President that, in fact, Ollie North & co. HAD sold arms to the Iranians (who Reagan had steadily maintained were terrorists and enemies of America) and had used the money to fund the Contras, who Reagan consistently supported. Of course, but the weapons sale to Iran the the funding of the Contras was illegal and impeachable offenses.

Dale

17

May he rest in peace; wonderfully accomplished life, going from actor to president (the first but perhaps not the last to do so), and facing the assination attempt with dignity and bravery.

However, I think it really simplistic and perhaps even insulting to his memory to paint all political opponents with the over-used liberal brush and to credit him with facing down the Russians when it was more other variables and internal Russian conditions that led to the end of the cold war.

I also think that mention should be made of Nancy; she was often viewed as arrogant, aloof and domineering, but has shown great loyalty and gumption in caring for the president these many years and expressing her own views strongly even though they do not always coincide with Republican party lines.

Best,

Philo

18

I’ve been reading Peggy Noonan’s book about Reagan - “When Character Was King” on and off for the past month or so.

Some previous posts have been along the lines of “while I disagreed with his politics, I liked him as a person…” or the like.

Here’s something that I would like you folks to consider: Reagan’s politics came from his character and beliefs. They were one in the same. In today’s modern society we try and try to compartmentalize our lives, thinking that for instance, how we act at work doesn’t affect our off-work lives and vice-versa. It’s not true. “Does a fountain bring forth both fresh and bitter water?” - James 3:11

My takeaway from Noonan’s book was that Reagan was a consistent man in his private and public life. I believe that is one reason why he enraged some people as much as he did.

He believed in God, and lived his life in accordance with that belief.

He called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” because he believed that it was true and had thought that way since the early 1950’s. He challenged the Communists in every way he could because that’s what he believed to be true and he acted upon it. He believed in Good and Evil.

I could go on about the man - he was in office when I was in my 20’s and I am a recipient of his positive outlook on America and its people. Young people need good examples to help guide them in their lives - Reagan’s life is a good one to learn from.

I also call to your attention to some excellent articles about President Reagan at the National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com

Just saw this quote from President Bush:

This is a sad hour in the life of America. A great American life has come to an end. I have just spoken to Nancy Reagan. On behalf of our whole nation, Laura and I offered her and the Reagan family our prayers and our condolences.

Ronald Reagan won America’s respect with his greatness, and won its love with his goodness. He had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility, and the humor that comes with wisdom. He leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save.

During the years of President Reagan, America laid to rest an era of
division and self-doubt. And because of his leadership, the world laid to rest an era of fear and tyranny. Now, in laying our leader to rest, we say thank you.

He always told us that for America, the best was yet to come. We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that this is true for him, too. His work is done, and now a shining city awaits him. May God bless Ronald Reagan.

19

What I remember most is Reagan’s metaphor of America as a shining city on a hill. Reading it again now, I find it to be poetic, stirring, and inspiring.

  • Bill

Full text at
http://www.reaganfoundation.org/reagan/speeches/farewell.asp
The close to President Reagan’s farewell address to the nation
Oval Office January 11, 1989:

And that’s about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thng. The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We’ve done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren’t just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.

And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

20

Part of a post I posted some time ago:

Ronald Reagan was a nuclear pacifist. He had a deep
personal horror of Mutually Assured Destruction. One
of his first acts as president was to retarget our nukes
away from population centers. He said: ‘There has to
be a better way of staying out of war than for the leader
of one nation calling up the leader of another and
saying ‘We’ll murder millions of innocent people on
your side if you murder millions of people on ours.’’
He said that the human spirit could not survive
under such circumstances. He meant it.

The Soviets had built
so many new long-range missiles–a four to one superiority,
with 30 foot accuracy-
spread in a band across Central
Asia, that there was a danger that they could take
out our land based stuff at home without damaging our
cities terribly–which would leave our submarines
and intermediate range missiles in Europe to
strike back. But would we use them? If we did
our cities would be blown off the face of the
earth. So the idea of a first strike wasn’t so impossible
to a Soviet leader in a desperate internal power struggle,
the Falklands scenario. Time for us to build more
offensive long range missiles, so that the Soviets
couldn’t get them all.

But Reagan refused–he couldn’t stand the arms race
anymore. He wanted to move to defense, to put up
an umbrella that would shoot down incoming missiles,
and to give the technology to the Soviets. Then nuclear
weapons would be obsolete, we wouldn’t have our gun
pressed to the head of Soviet children anymore.
For this he earned the undying enmity of the peace
movement, and the ridicule of intellectuals.

The only
people who took it seriously were the Soviets,
and it scared them silly, because they could’t
afford it. Their strategy had been to build
political strength through building up offensive nuclear
forces–it was leaving them impoverished,
and now it couldn’t work. There had to be
a better way, a new generation of leaders
came to the fore to find it, led by Gorbachev.

This was one of the wisest and most decent
things we ever did. Reagan saw in his
bumbling inchoate way that somehow
this was the thing that would break
the Soviet Union without causing a
war–that in this economic, political
andmilitary mix, this was the thing
they couldn’t do. A more clever
man probably wouldn’t have seen it.
And when the new Soviet leadership
emerged he embraced it.

It was interesting being an American
in those days, especially abroad;
you should have heard the things
people said about us then!

In the late 70s the Soviets moved
200 SS20s into eastern europe, with
10 warheads each. Carter, at the desperate
request of Germany, began deploying
Pershing intermediate missiles in
Western Europe. Reagan continued this,
saying, ‘We’ll take them out. Just take
out the SS20s, and well go back to where
we were in 1978.’

There were human chains across
Western Germany protesting this
American ‘aggression’–a pretext
by Ronald Ray-Gun to attack the
Soviet Union, bringing the world
to the brink of nuclear war! Vigils and sit ins at missile
sites in England, the peace movement
fighting tooth and nail to keep the
Russian missiles in place; and we doggedly,
kept deploying the Pershing
missiles, saying to the Soviets: ‘Our missiles
are closer to you than yours are to us;
we’ll take them out. Just take out the
SS20s…’ Then the Soviets took out
the SS20s and we took out the Pershing
missiles.

The Soviets were trying to break up
Nato, you see; they had conventional
forces able to overun Germany. The
only thing that could stop them was
intermediate nuclear missiles. The
overwhelming Soviet nuclear build-up made
them irresistible. The idea was to force
Germany out of Nato–the instability
that would have resulted, under those
circumstances, might well have led
to war which would have gone nuclear.

The Dems proposed a ‘nuclear freeze’ as the
alternative, and I suppose that if we had gone
that way, freezing with the Soviets ahead,
there might still be a Soviet Union or perhaps
we would all be dead. I doubt that the old
guard would have stepped aside just when
their aggressive policies were coming to
fruition.

Blessed be the peacemakers. Best