Page Two

A number of people asked about my take on the commentary and editorializing over President Ronald Reagan's death. Mostly it was business as usual, the media indulging in the full menu of response from absurd beatification to vicious and inappropriate vilification with every stop in between. Personal prejudice obviously was the determiner, with the event very much a Rorschach test. Reagan always had a terrific sense of timing, evidenced again at this leaving of the mortal coil. Right wingers and Republicans having to deal with the realities of Bush's presidency have been just a bit too obvious in their relief at the opportunity to celebrate conservative vision without messy reality getting in the way. Liberals and Democrats clearly savor getting to reassert their beliefs without the moral complexities of supporting troops while decrying a war.

Delirious, the right reminded us that Reagan turned the nation around, saved our culture, and re-established our international military presence, ending the cold war in the process. The great communicator just damn saved the day. Let's put his head on Mount Rushmore so he can look down on the liberals in a great celebration of democracy. If there isn't enough granite left for another head, let's find it. After all, Americans can do anything. Reagan's administration has been granted perfection by his death – the right wing's challenges, criticisms, and accusations of betrayal of the time are now erased.

As this is so beyond ridiculous, some just had to remind us that this presidency without flaws was flawed. Some did it gently – Paul Krugman in the Times acknowledging Reagan's massive tax cut also pointed out all the tax increases during his administration. Other critics went rabid, which is more troubling. Out of respect, almost anyone's death should be treated with restraint. I'm not talking about refraining from criticisms and corrections, nor am I suggesting rewriting history or offering phony compliments but simply demonstrating moderation. The more hysterical anti-Reagan tirades may have been cathartic for their authors, but all they did was preach to the choir, changing no minds, offering no new insights, and reinforcing the right's completely unearned and self-righteous, self-satisfied sanctimony.

What's my take? Not all that much really; in fact it's almost timid. Ronald Reagan was a mediocre president who did more harm than good but was hardly outstanding even there. Don't get me wrong – I disagreed with most of the policies and legislation he championed. He did genuine damage to the judiciary, pandered to the religious right, was profoundly anti-labor, and further undercut the structure of the social welfare system. Rather than a unifying leadership as some claim, his presidency marks the beginning of a long period of ever more hysterical divisiveness. Tributes paid to him for changing the course of the country and salvaging our society are basically fantasy.

Humans love melodrama; we thrive on exaggerating the nature of our world. The genius of this democratic republic is that it goes on. The country was structured to change course; the very principles it is based upon demand it. Regardless of how little I personally liked Reagan, if he was nowhere near a superior president neither was he an outrageously evil one from whom this country will never recover. History, the Constitution, participatory democracy, and American tradition all conspire to limit the impact of most presidents. Bill Clinton wasn't an unusually great president, for example, nor do I understand the basis of those who claim he was. I certainly liked his administration more and agreed with more of its policies than Reagan's. Even more confounding to me are those boasting a fanatical distaste for Clinton, so outsized to his performance. Their seemingly bottomless hate, almost daily harping years after he left office, and truly apocalyptic predictions find precious little support in his administration's record.

Mostly the system works, the country moves one way then another, most presidents are neither as great as their supporters swear nor as destructive as their detractors insist. There was a difference between Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton – a significant difference – but not one so great as to violate the imagination of the Constitution.

Those of all political stripes – conservative, reactionary, liberal, progressive, libertarian, Naderite – who insist that we are (or were) at a moment of such explosive crisis that the country is/was to be lost and the true meaning of American freedom forever distorted don't really believe in this country.

If this democracy can be so easily overwhelmed, if American ideals so nonchalantly tainted, then how can you believe in them? The argument that there is an enemy within is its own vindication – if you believe the dialogue is dangerous, the shifts in priority inappropriate, the lack of a consistent national vision dangerous, then you don't believe in this country's core democratic ideals, so why bother? If you believe democracy needs to be saved, then there is nothing to save.

Which is not to argue that everything is groovy, but that little is as close to the brink as rhetoric suggests.

This is not to be oblivious to the inherent human instinct to paint in black and white; certainly this column often does so. It is easier not only to mobilize, but also to think in terms of extremes rather than in much subtler shades of differences. Listen to the Republican right: They control the Congress and presidency, they believe God is on their side and that they hold the true vision of this great country in their hearts, but almost every argument they make is from the viewpoint of the besieged. Alienated righteousness is a potent, protected place to be – you know your beliefs are pure, you know you hold the truth, but the easily manipulated masses have voted the fools into power who are determined to destroy this nation.

Witness the happily paranoid right wondering why mainstream media has been so nice to Reagan since his death. Their hallucination is that it was hostile and negative toward him during his presidency and since. This completely ignores his Teflon run, when despite often egregious actions he was mostly adored by the mainstream media. Reagan knew how to sell himself and his message. The media bought and then spread it.

We are in conflict, times are troubled, some divisions are deep. But Armageddon is nowhere closer or farther than it's ever been. We like to think in extremes, they energize us – but that doesn't make them real. This country wasn't overwhelmingly liberal before Reagan, and it's not prohibitively reactionary now.

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote: "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure" (letter to William Stephens Smith, 1787). He also wrote to Smith, "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. ... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?"

Without hesitation, let us suggest that rather than the blood spilled by violent revolutions, this revitalizing has and is occurring bloodlessly. The exaggerated hysteria of those truly politically involved offers baptism not by blood but by ballot. The embattled despair at the elected entrenched. Tones of gray are ignored as any political debate is reduced to Good vs. Evil. Finally, mobilized by outrage (and aided by the passage of time), those in power are turned out. Now those who've lost feel not simply temporarily disenfranchised, but instead are sensitized to the impending demise of the Republic. They fume and plot, waiting for their turn to come around again.

The revolution not only reinvents the country but also reinvents itself and its procedures. The ongoing reality is the system works. The Constitution is more than Ronald Reagan, more than William Clinton, more than Bush. For this, I thank God and the framers.