Reagan: his character and his consequences

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Washington, D.C.

Most people I know, and most Washingtonians, still call this airport “National.” Its airline code is DCA. But its official name is Ronald Reagan National Airport. It’s the most convenient way into the heart of the capital city. And it’s my destination at least once per month when I come here for business.

These days I am flying around the United States with alarming frequency, promoting my new book, The Anarchist in the Library. So I have much opportunity to reflect on the cultural diversity and political moods of my fellow Americans (conveniently, the subject of this series of columns). Spending too much time in airports, I also think too much about their environments, their social purposes, and their names.

Now as Reagan has passed on after many years of living with Alzheimer’s disease, it’s imperative that we reflect on his years as the public face of my country. Most accounts of his life this past week have dwelled on his character, not his consequences. I can’t separate them. His character distorts our memories. His consequences have polluted our values, expectations, air, and water.

Reagan did much damage to the United States and the world. But he was not the worst American who has an airport named after him. Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh has that honour in San Diego. Washington’s less convenient airport bears the name of John Foster Dulles, the second-most destructive secretary of state in the 20th century (Henry Kissinger has not yet merited any public buildings or monuments). Perhaps the finest American to have an airport named for him is humorist Will Rogers – who’s honour in Oklahoma City also raises the touchy question of naming an airport after someone who died in a plane crash.

It’s hard to justify the acute allergy that many of my liberal peers have to calling National Airport “Reagan”. I have never met a Republican who calls John F. Kennedy Airport “Idlewild”. And Democrats use no term other than “LaGuardia” to describe the airport that bears the name of the populist 1930s-era Republican mayor of New York.

We should embrace the name and remember the man. We should never forget what Reagan did. He was too important to ignore.

I suspect many liberals my age refrain from calling this airport “Reagan” because that name still makes us cough and gag in fury. Reagan set the narrow parameters of tolerated political discourse. He made politics thinner, less serious, less central to our daily lives. He made Washington seem a distant, foreign place (a notion ironically framed by seeing his name on the gateway to the city). Public life and service became suspicious or shameful, something that could only be excused by claiming to hate it and enter it reluctantly as a revolutionary or reformer. Public resources were plundered or starved. Public spaces were sold off or abandoned to rust and erode.

Reagan’s politics represented personal indulgence, immediate gratification, and getting something for nothing. It will be years before America outgrows his influence. The deleterious effects of Reagan’s rule are still with us. His influence has been distilled and strengthened to its most noxious elements by the George W. Bush administration.

Those of us who entered adolescence with Reagan’s ascent to the presidency still can’t believe that all those adults who had the franchise in 1980 made such a stupendous mistake. In eight years marked by stunning popularity, Reagan revealed how easily the American people could be manipulated by optimism, distracted by boldness, and bored by details of our government’s support for murderous dictators and terrorist rebels.

By the time my peers reached adulthood and could exercise our own franchise, the United States was deeply in debt. Public services were gutted and crumbling. Americans were re-segregated and culturally fractured. Children no longer played outside freely, even when they lived within secure, gated communities. Fear of strangers dominated public consciousness, even as rates of violent crime decreased. Schools crumbled. Prisons sprouted. Reagan and his henchmen had backed many bad actors like Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Ferdinand Marcos, Manuel Noriega, and the Afrikaaner government of South Africa. We are still paying the price for such short-sighted policies.

Still, it’s hard not to remember the Reagan years with some wistful nostalgia. In eight years of rule, Reagan did less damage to the environment, the economy, international alliances, and the health of American democracy than George W. Bush has in merely three years.

Most importantly, unlike Bush, Reagan was legitimately elected – chosen twice by impressive majorities of Americans who justifiably concluded that the Democrats had fallen out of touch with the concerns of middle-class working Americans. Reagan received more votes for president than any other person who has ever run for that office. Al Gore is a distant second.

Even while the last generation of liberals seethed with contempt at Reagan’s triumphs, they could not escape the burden of knowing that their own side had failed America by not inspiring support, not translating agendas into clear language, and being less than visionary.

The American center-left foolishly responded to its own weaknesses by arrogantly chiding and dismissing the groups that seemed to vote against their own interests: farmers, small business owners, and the patriotic working class. Democrats have been struggling ever since.

This year, Democrats seem strong, largely because George W. Bush – despite aping Reagan’s inclusive yet conservative rhetoric – has diverged from Reagan’s most important teachings.

Reagan likely would not have been so eager to enter a military conflict from which there was no clear political – let alone military – exit. More than anything else, Reagan loved declaring victory, even when he had done little to affect change. He called on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall. Two years later, Germans themselves tore it down. Somehow, Reagan got credit for that, as if he stood like Gandalf or Merlin, casting a magic spell. Mostly, Reagan believed in acting via proxy – by remote control, one might say.

I shudder to think that some day the huge airport that sits between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas could bear the name of a failed Air National Guard pilot who was grounded for skipping a physical exam. Charles Lindbergh would be laughing. Will Rogers would be shaking his head in disgust. Reagan, as always, would be glowing with American optimism and confidence, oblivious to absurdity and inanity, immune to the very cynicism that he spread.