No Explanation

So I'm reading a magazine in 1988-1989 and in the back of something like People there's one of those one-page editorial kinds of pieces. There's a pic of Reagan in a plaid cowboy shirt. He's kinda half turned away, but has turned his head to smile at at someone just off camera, and he has his cowboy hat in his right hand and has it raised in a friendly wave. The headline says something like, "So long, Gipper. And thanks." It dawned on me that I was going to miss the big lug.

Jimmy Carter was my commander in chief back inna day. He embarrassed the living shit out of me. Since then I have decided he's just a really swell guy ... but he was a really lousy president, and is a pretty lousy EX-president, too. Anyway, I'm disgusted with Mr. Carter's inept presidenthood, but Ronnie Ray-Gun was just itching to "throw down" with them big nuclear six-guns, so I voted for the intellectual Independent, Anderson in 1980 (first year I voted, I think).

Fast forward to 1984. I don't recall who was running against Reagan, but in four years I had come to really like the Gipper, and I voted for him. As a guy who had literally sweated under the stress of living on a strategic USAF base with Soviet nuclear cross-hairs painted on it, I had bought into the media prophecies of Reagan being nuke-happy. Four years later I realized that the press had pantsed me and that Mr. Reagan was not as dangerous as they had tried to convince me he would be. He was highly quotable and fun as hell to watch and listen to.

He also made a lot of sense to me.

So, in 1984 (George Orwell territory) I voted for the guy who scared me before based on media spin and hype.

When he left in 1988 and I saw that headline and pic, I got kinda misty for a moment.

That was the first thing I thought of when I heard that Mr. Reagan had died. "So long, Gipper. And thanks."

I have no explanation for why, but from the time I have been aware of presidents, Mr. Reagan is the only president I ever loved. There was a pic of Ike in a frame on a wall in my folks house when I was a pre-schooler. I was in like 2nd or 3rd grade when JFK was shot on my birthday. LBJ was from Texas but I was still too young to notice or care about presidents. Nixon was the anti-Christ in my high school days protesting the Vietnam war. Ford was just sort of a nobody after the thrills of Tricky Dickie (Nixon). Then came kindly, limp-wristed Carter.

Since Mr. Reagan we've had Bush 41, Clinton, and now Bush 43.

Other presidents have stood up and addressed the press in photo-opportunities when there have been disasters (like the shuttle Columbia), but when Mr. Reagan spoke about the Challenger disaster, he sat in the White House and symbolically brought us into his "home/office" and spoke warmly to us in our grief. He quoted the cool poem which contains the lines, "Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth ... reached out my hand, and touched the face of God." Imagine Clinton or Bush 42 doing that.

I enjoyed having a president with some class, style and a poetic heart.

As much as Republicans are trying to spin Bush into being a new Reagan, it is only vaguely accurate. I'm not trying to stir up sentiment on the side of Republicans at all.

I just felt like Mr. Reagan was a friend, and I wanted to say goodbye to him and "brag" on him.