Regan

You know there’s some kind of love interest between the national media and the state when the following things happen:

  • A search on Yahoo! on the word “Regan” shows up every possible website associated with former President Ronald Reagan. (Google does not do this.)
  • Every major news agency and website lists the memorialization of
    Reagan at the top of its stories for a week. Not Iraq, not democracy, not elections, not terrorism even.
  • California, seeking to replicate the 1980s, elected a popular actor to its highest office.

By the way, you can send a condolence note to the Reagan family through the auspices of the Reagan Library.

7 thoughts on “Regan”

  1. Gotta love it! For some reason the transgressions of the Reagan years vanished down the memory-hole soon after he left office.
    By the same trope, notice how few homosexuals and non-military minorities have anything good to say about the man. If you see a *gushing* eulogy for the man, just think ‘October Surprise’, ‘Iran-Contra’, ‘Morning Again in America’, the certainty of Nuclear Death in the ’80’s AND the Urban Legend of the Cadillac-driving welfare Queen.
    Did Uncle Ronnie leave behind a ‘kinder and gentler’ America?
    I didn’t think so…
    (He only kicked over JFK’s legacy – “Ask not what your country can do for you, but how much you can skim off the top, while they’re scaring the h@ll out of you!”)

  2. Reagan, however one spells his name, was one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history. I think we tend to forget this because he was also one of the most blithely evil presidents in U.S. history.

  3. Could you inlcude a link for sending condolences to the 20,000 Latin Americans murdered during Reagan’s Contra wars?
    Btw, Reagan was a popular president for an entire two years of his presidency: 1984-1986. Look it up. Sadly, 1984 was an election year, of course.

  4. Emptypockets, I looked it up, and it was interesting. According to Roper Center Presidential Job Approval Ratings (http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu/cgi-bin/hsrun.exe/roperweb/PresJobRatings40/PresJobRatings40.htx;start=HS_presapproval_home), Reagan’s ratings dropped into the low 40’s from April ’82 to August ’83, but otherwise he was consistently in the low 50’s to mid 60’s. That’s a popular president.
    Clinton, though, scored higher overall, which isn’t how I remember it.
    Also, Bush senior was more popular than either man for the first three years of his presidency. Then, in January of ’92, his ratings dipped below 50% for the first time. From that point until the election, he took a beating from Clinton, dropping at one point to under 30%.

  5. For some perspective:
    http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Polls/reagan_ratings_poll_040607.html
    Starting in 1986 (around Iran Contra) Reagan plunged from the mid-sixties to the mid-to-high forties. Not so hot for an incumbent, particularly one that had just averted nuclear war after a career of promising it. There was a nostalgic uptick at the end, around the time candidate Bush was Atwaterrorizing Dukakis with scorn being heaped upon Democrats by the fistful. Reagan wasn’t a president with broad-based popularity, but he did bring together a remarkable coalition of religious lunatics, white collar criminals and racist totalitarians that still holds to this day. He will be remembered.

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