The Cult of Reagan: President of All Our Hearts

The gushing nonsense that has accompanied the centennial of Ronald Wilson Reagan’s birth can be no surprise to anyone even if, no especially if, you consider it mildly unseemly. “A Republic, if you can keep it” said Benjamin Franklin and Reagan’s beatification is another reminder that the United States long ago became a republic in name only. Or, you know, a RINO. 

There’s previous on this, of course, as any trip to Mt Rushmore demonstrates. At least one can say that three of the Gods chiselled there either built or held the United States together (Teddy Roosevelt’s presence shows how false gods are, like a purloined letter, honoured in plain sight.) And that, in a sense, is Reagan’s claim to greatness too.

Thirty years on, the details of Reagan’s presidency no longer seem to matter (just as well, given how the federal government expanded on his watch); instead he’s the kindly old fellow whose leadership marked the passing of the dreadful 1960s and 70s. Barack Obama says Reagan “understood that it’s always ‘Morning in America.’ That was his gift, and we remain forever grateful.” This isn’t true. For much of the 20 years preceding Reagan it was most definitely not “Morning in America”. Reagan’s achievement was to persuade Americans that it could be again. Sure, the Culture Wars still raged and moral panics still swept across the continent but through it all Reagan smiled and quipped, pottering around the White House and telling the United States that all would be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

That’s his legacy and it’s not such a small achievement either. Even so and even by the bloated standards of our times, Reagan embodies one central aspect of the Imperial Presidency: the Commander-in-Chief as the Priest-King and Father of the Nation. Here’s Congressman Ben Quayle plumbing record depths of bathos to observe that:

When I was a child, President Ronald Reagan was the nice man who gave us jelly beans when we visited the White House.

I didn’t know then, but I know it now: The jelly beans were much more than a sweet treat that he gave out as gifts. They represented the uniqueness and greatness of America — each one different and special in its own way, but collectively they blended in harmony.

For a long while and certainly at the time he was in office Reagan was an under-rated President; today he’s in danger of being over-rated. The problem with the Cult of Reagan is not Reagan, but the impact membership has on the believers. He was more flexible than his admirers today sometimes acknowledge. Few of today’s Republicans would, one supposes, endorse Reagan’s tax-raising 1982 budget. Nor, one suspects, would today’s nationalists approve of his decision to talk to the Soviets (indeed, at the time there were some who whispered that Reagan was “soft on Communism”.) Nor, for that matter, could a Republican with national aspirations today endorse Reagan’s liberal approach to immigration issues.

Indeed, it’s not clear a less gifted communicator armed with Reagan’s actual beliefs could really win the Republican Presidential nomination today. And that’s fine! Times change and so do parties. What was appropriate for the early 1980s isn’t necessarily appropriate now. Reagan should no more be held as a template for modern Republicanism than Churchill should for the Tory party. (Mind you, the Cult of Churchill is also stronger in the United States than it is in Britain.) But nor should an imaginary Reaganism hold sway over, or demand unthinking fealty, from today’s conservatives.

Perhaps all this worship is a feature of the American system. Some of the stuff that accompanied Obama’s progress to the White House was just as dreadful. In the end all politicians are alike and out will pop the cloven hoof. There’s no shortage of dubious gods as it is and thus no need to reinforce their number with mere politicians.

For some people Reagan has become the kind of platonic representation of a presidential ideal just as for others Princess Diana has become the lost embodiment of the perfect princess. At least monarchy is supposed to be symbolic. Politics is a different game and, not least in a republic, supposed to be a reaction against that kind of thing. That makes the Cult of Reagan – for all his achievements – even grislier than the Cult of Diana. In practice, of course, the Presidency is mainly a substitute for monarchy, not an alternative to it. That being so it becomes almost fraudulent and thus, ironically, ends by justifying the kind of craven worship republics once rebelled against.

PS: Reagan’s 1976 interview with Reason is well worth your time. Fascinating in fact and something to show those lefties who think he was a dummy.

UPDATE: In more Cult of the Presidency nonsense, apparently the nation needs to know what the President will eat while watching the Superbowl.