Remembering Ronald Reagan. And a warning from history....

Today, fittingly enough for American Independence Day, sees the unveiling at the US Embassy in London of a statue of President Ronald Reagan http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14009137.  It seems to me, though, that what we’ll also be watching today, besides the ceremonial uncovering of a bronze simulacrum, is another moment in the creation of historical memory, in this case the public memory of the 40^th President of the United States.  There is nothing necessarily sinister or even much measurably or at least indisputably wrong with all this.  Historians routinely acknowledge that people, events, and indeed all kinds of historical phenomena are open to differing interpretations and thus get “remembered” differently by different people and differently in different times.  Reading the press on today’s ceremonials, what we* seem to remember right now is that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by landing a bunch of rhetorical body-blows on the “evil empire” in his first term, and then offering inspirational statesman-like speeches and conferences with Mikhail Gorbachev in his second.  *By “we”, by the way, I mean those who get to tell the story in some sort of official capacity—the government, mainstream broadcast and print media—such as the BBC writer of the account in the link at the beginning of this post.  I do not wish to imply that this memory is uncontested or shared by everyone (see below), though I would argue that this kind of “official” memory is important because it is that of the most powerful and because they push it for a reason (also see below).  Indeed, many people, especially those hostile to Reagan, will point out that the Cold War ended because the people of the former Soviet Union and eastern bloc rose up and revolted against their oppressors.  Of course that’s true—and, to be sure, much of Reagan’s own rhetoric was predicated on the notion that those very people yearned for freedom and would one day rise to claim it.  On the other hand, it’s difficult to sustain the position that Reagan was in some ways dangerously powerful while denying him any agency in things that turned out for the best.  Anyway, point is, right or wrong, that’s officially and largely how he seems to be remembered at least at the moment—as a statesman of great vision and effectiveness.  He also resonates fondly in Britain, it has to be said, because of the close relationship that he and Margaret Thatcher had, pictures of which help sustain the idea over here that “the special relationship” is a real thing that actually exists, rather than a figment of our post-imperial sad imaginations.  It is, I believe, a doubly demeaning thing to Brits who espouse it and do so with such pathetic insistence and enthusiasm: a)—because it doesn’t exist, at least in the way those who think it does think it does, and b)—because if it did exist it would basically mean that we think we’re important because we pay obeisance to the biggest kid in the playground, and are therefore in fact very obviously a weedy side-kick, a Robin, not a Batman, or a David Cameron’s Gideon Osborne if you like.  Anyway, I digress.          

            The construction of one historical memory often leads to the side-lining or at least partial obscuring of others, either because they’re inconvenient or because they’re incompatible.  Very much in the inconvenient corner stands a Reagan whose Presidency saw a then-unprecedented and staggering rise in the US national debt and in inequality, poverty, and crime at home.  Those who would prefer us to see the current economic crisis as abnormal and fixable only through the drastic diminution of the state sector—rather than something that occurs on a regular basis because it’s built into the structure of capitalism and can only be fixed by radical reform of the private sector—are of course very happy for us to forget this inconvenient fact.  On the incompatible side, though, it’s difficult to square the image of Ronald Reagan now with the image he had, at least on this side of the Atlantic, when he was first elected President just over 30 years ago.  No other way to put it, he was thought of as at best a B-movie cowboy, and widely as an ancient comedy cretin who could surely never be elected President of the United States (until, of course, he was).  Certainly, in hindsight, this image is now inflected by the evidence that at some point in his time in office Reagan developed early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.  If and when that happened, no one can be sure, but no one knew anything about that at the time, and his reputation for burbling imbecility was based on various gaffes and perhaps above all on his folksy, down-home, cowboy image, which the gaffes helped to buttress.  So, many people, at least here in Britain, were genuinely shocked when he was elected President.  If you don’t believe me, check out the two following links from 1980s British satire show Not the Nine o’clock News.  Besides being interesting historical documents, they’re both funny, if somewhat misguided for reasons argued below, and they contain some very early Rowan Atkinson, which is good.  Press Conference (you only need see the first 2 minutes 40 second to get the point here): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdorjqj6aS4 --

I Believe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmWLJmbytkk

As I say, though, he was regarded as a buffoon ... at least on this side of the Atlantic.  But perhaps what we don’t understand so well over here is the American political style of folksiness.  Our politicians, for sure, are not immune to attempting to act like ordinary people.  Hence, for example, the unconvincing glottal stops affected by Tony Blair, Ed Miliband, and even, for crying out loud, Gideon Osborne.  But, although we Brits paradoxically and no doubt unfairly and perhaps even impossibly demand that our politicians be able to relate to us, we nevertheless do not want them to be just like us, much less actually be one of us.  But while “I’m one of you chaps” doesn’t work, “Ahm one of y’all” certainly does.  In fact, it’s essential.  Many Americans want their President to be someone they could live next door to, go huntin’ ‘n’ fishin’ with, and have a beer with.  We interpret the folksy act that US politicians consequently adopt as hokey, and indeed as evidence of idiocy, but we could hardly be more wrong.  It requires enormous skill to pull it off.  Witness how it didn’t work with George Bush the elder.  No matter hard he tried with various forms of verbal demotic (assumed in Britain to be signs of inarticulacy per se, rather than the very particular kind of inarticulacy it actually was), and no matter how often he hitched his belt up cowboy-style, he still sounded and looked like the wealthy, preppy New Englander he was and is, and was thus a one-termer, and perhaps only even that because he rode into office on the coat-tails of Reagan.  Of course Bush the first lost to Bill Clinton, who could do folksy so well perhaps because he was the real deal—and was a two-termer.  Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry couldn’t do it—no termers.  George W. Bush could do it, despite being anything but the real deal—two-termer.  And Ronald Reagan showed them all how.  He truly was a "Great Communicator," whatever else he may have been.  So, to conclude on a topical note, and with the promised warning from history, those who laugh at Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and at whoever the next surely-unelectable-brain-free-borderline-loon-job who emerges from the Republican heartlands happens to be....  You may laugh, and, let’s face it, you probably can’t help it.  But we ought to take them seriously, no matter how faux-folksy they may seem to us and no matter how many gaffes they may make.  Who do you think they model themselves on?  You betcha!