Recently a disproportionate number of columns and letters have appeared in this paper bashing Ronald Reagan. His funeral was even the subject of insults on a program aired by Valley Vision. That said, here are my feelings about this man that may provide some rational balance. I am proud to share them.
Clearly, a lot of bad things happened under Reagan’s administration (he may not even have been aware of some of them at the end of his second term), but at least one very essential thing he did was to give the country badly needed pride. By micro managing and failing to see the big picture, Jimmy Carter (for whom I voted) had left things in a terrible mess, particularly the economy. I can recall negotiating labor agreements in the vicinity of 15 percent per year until government controls were finally invoked. The prime rate was out of sight and Iran was holding our diplomats hostage. In short, we were perceived as a badly weakened and impotent nation. On a personal level, the lingering effects of Vietnam, the implications of race riots and racial unrest and the impact of runaway inflation weighed heavily on me and my family. Times were not easy and a sense of gloom seemed to permeate. However, this was soon to change.
Early on, President Reagan signaled to the rest of the world’s leaders that he was one tough hombre by firing the air controllers, a mortal and lasting wound to that segment of the labor movement that believed in illegal job actions. He then went on to fix the economy by resorting to fundamental economic policies; namely, slashing taxes, requesting huge budgets and resorting to deficit spending but, to everyone but Reagan’s surprise, it worked. The prime rate quickly went from 20 percent to 4 percent and the economy recovered quite nicely.
The thing I like most about him was that no one (including his own people) thought he could pull it off, but he believed in himself and in what was needed to get done, and he saw it through. He was a visionary who believed in what people could do for themselves rather than what big government could do for people and who clearly saw the glass half full. But most importantly to me, he actualized his beliefs; he achieved; he did things; he got things done; he left a body of work; he made tough, if not always popular, prioritized choices; he did not talk or debate or pontificate about it; he just did it. He was a doer.
I won’t get into star wars; suffice it to say that it ultimately contributed to a reduction in nuclear build ups and Reagan was smart enough to know that you could not achieve this without first having the negotiator’s leverage of possessing the greatest arsenal of weapons in history. As for those who would cloak Reagan with the current situation in Iraq and the Mideast, I suggest they are using specious logic. In this connection, I refer you to what his sons, Ronnie and Michael, will be saying on this very subject in the coming weeks. I also refer you to each and every word of Ronnie’s moving eulogy at the final services.
American to the core, he had small town Midwestern values and California optimism (Dixon, Ill. And Eureka College) not unlike Yankee values. Of course, being from Illinois there is a bias here.
That said, I know all about his many “bad” deeds including his “cruel” discharge of the mentally disturbed into the streets, cutting back on social programs, Iran-Contra, etc., etc., and some of his cabinet choices were simply atrocious. But he made the choices and the trade offs. All presidents make some bad choices and commit some “bad” deeds, some intended, some not and some more than others. I suggest this man was the perfect president for the time. As for Nancy, she had her quirks and was not perfect, but anyone who stood by her husband the way she did during his recovery from the attempted assassination and from his later illness gets my full respect. On balance, I think she was and is a fine and devoted person and I applaud her current efforts to push stem cell research. I also think she provided a compassionate and sometimes misunderstood balance to her husband’s tough agenda.
And speaking of his tough political agenda, Reagan could break bread with of those who disagreed with him on political issues at the end of a tough day in Washington. He tried not to personalize the disputes and understood that politics is all about the art of compromise and that every single point does not have to be the subject of emotional and irrational polarization, something present day politicians don’t get.
It’s too bad a photograph could not have been taken on the last day of Jimmy Carter’s term and be compared to one taken on the last day of Ronald Reagan’s second term. A rationale and objective comparison of these two snapshots might be revealing as to just what this man accomplished.
I can sum up my feelings about President Reagan by repeating what his adopted son, Michael, said at the funeral services, namely: “Never once, either in front of me or behind my back, did dad ever refer to me as his adopted son. It was always ‘my son.’”
As an independent, I had no problems celebrating this man’s life for a week. Indeed, it was a refreshing catharsis from the two who are now campaigning for the presidency, neither of whom could even begin to fill his shoes. At the end of the day under President Ronald Reagan, I could look in the mirror and feel pride in being an American. I could walk tall.
Ted Sares, PhD, is a private investor who lives and writes in the White Mountain area of Northern New Hampshire with his wife Holly and Min Pin Jackdog. He writes a weekly column for a local newspaper and many of his other pieces are widely published.
