"You, Sir, Are No Ronald Reagan"
I first noticed it during the Democrat debates. There was something strange about AlGore --- I mean, something new. At first, I couldn't put my finger on it. Whenever the camera was on him, I was concious of an echo or a distant memory of ... what? Whatever it was seemed oddly familiar, yet jarringly out of place.
It was there in the new tilt of his head. It was there the way the shoulders were squared, the upper body slightly turned.
And then I knew. I was seeing the characteristic, confident stance of ... Ronald Reagan. AlGore, wanna-be Alpha Male, the inventor of the internet, the champion of Love Canal, The model for "Love Story," was now pretending to be Ronald Reagan!!!
The gestures, the mannerisms --- yes, even the new hairstyle were all copied from the Gipper. Peggy Noonan the brilliant Reagan speechwriter, noticed AlGore reusing Reagan style "vision statements." The Vice President even closed a speech with Reagan's famous line, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"
My fellow SI'ers, this is pathological. You need a clincal psychology textbook to explain it. And worst of all, is the deluded expectation that the ruse could somehow work.! The carriage, stance, and gestures of Ronald Reagan, a man of honor, cannot be borrowed by a lying, dissembling, smug, complacent boor. Reagan's heroism cannot be put on like an overcoat. Just look at any photo of Reagan: his bearing was earned by a lifetime of conviction and strength. It cannot be duplicated by the duplicitous. No weak, vacillating, ineffectual loser could ever pull it off.
So my message to AlGore is this, from all those of us who honor the 40th President of the United States: We know Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is a friend of ours. And you, sir, are no Ronald Reagan. |
