THINKING THINGS OVER
Fascinating Phenomena
Can an actor govern California?
BY VERMONT ROYSTER
Monday, October 13, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
(Editor's note: This column appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 3, 1967. Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California in November 1966.)
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=110004155
SAN FRANCISCO--An eastern visitor to these western slopes is primed beforehand on the questions he'll face when he gets home. He'll be expected to return as an expert on topless waitresses, the hippies of Hashbury and Ronald Reagan.
On the first question, suffice it to say after diligent research that there's quite a discrepancy between the idealized female form and its fleshy embodiment. As for the hippies, they somehow bring to mind those dropouts of another day, the mendicant monks of the Middle Ages, and strike you as more to be pitied than scorned.
The answer on Ronald Reagan isn't so simple but it is of the same order. That is, there's a discrepancy between the imagined Ronald Reagan and the man who is now governor of California, whether the imaginers are his foes or idolaters.
Anyway, seen close-up and in action, Governor Reagan doesn't strike you as necessarily destiny's tot, the one man fated to lead the Republican Party out of the wilderness or the nation out of the slough of despair. If, as some of his idolaters say, there's a deep philosophical mind behind the charming manner it doesn't show in a brief encounter.
Contrariwise, neither is Governor Reagan that puppet creation packaged by public relations that scoffers would have you believe he is. Plainly he's nobody's fool, either about the political issues he has so far had to grapple with or in the political gamesmanship he has had to apply to his grappling.
Moreover, in his political thinking he is more imaginative than either his supporters or opponents wanted him to be--and less of a doctrinaire than perhaps some of his friends hoped and all of his enemies feared.
So much for images. But it's harder to say what manner of man Ronald Reagan is than what he is not.
One thing he is, of course, is an actor; no rival, surely, to Laurence Olivier but still a man professionally trained to appear before audiences, in person and electronically. This background affects his way of thinking and doing things, as other politicians have always been affected by former experience as lawyers, doctors, haberdashers or pharmacists.It also means that he begins his political career with skills others must belatedly learn. Unlike Demosthenes he doesn't have to practice public speaking with pebbles in his mouth, unlike Eisenhower he doesn't need Robert Montgomery for a camera coach, and unlike Nixon he can do his own TV makeup.
Thus in one important qualification for a political leader--the ability to project, to articulate and to dramatize political issues--Mr. Reagan is already a pro among amateurs. This was illustrated recently when he went among a group of youthful Berkeley demonstrators, met them head-on in debate and won a not insignificant accolade, a reluctantly complimentary editorial in the Berkeley campus newspaper.
To do this extemporaneously in the rough-and-tumble takes more than a polished actor's skill at a playwright's lines. In many such confrontations with all types of groups Mr. Reagan has brought pause to the sneerers at the strolling player. The ex-actor has certainly proved at least as impressive as one ex-auto salesman.
Of course in any performance the thought in the spoken lines is as important as their intonation. And what Mr. Reagan is saying is not the least fascinating part of the phenomena.
In a recent half-hour luncheon talk here he ran the gamut. He defended higher student fees at the state university, confessed to being a "hawk" on Vietnam, attacked the workings of the state's welfare program and warned that its version of Medicaid would bankrupt the state treasury, criticized the state's judiciary for usurping legislative functions, and spoke with pride of having cut the state government's payroll and without apology at having raised people's taxes.
None of these things is included in the usual lexicon of popular political ideas. Most politicians indeed would consider any one of them dangerous, and all of them together as fatal. Yet it was with just such a program that Mr. Reagan won the governorship, and it has been by carrying out such a program ("I said what I was going to do and I did it") that he has gained political stature inside the state and political attention all over the country.One explanation for his success is the Reagan charm, but a better one is more likely the commonsense way in which he presents his ideas. When he first presented his university tuition plan, for example, his opponents screamed "horrors!" and denounced him for depriving the poor of an education. The governor simply pointed out that most of the actual students in the university came from middle-income families, just as at high-cost Stanford, ad asked why the sons of the well-to-do should be subsidized by the taxes of the poor. It was a simple argument that proved difficult to rebut.
So with his arguments about the monstrosities of the state's medical welfare program. The governor makes perfectly clear he's no callous man, saying over and over again that there's no question of the state's responsibility to the unfortunate and that he will not "retreat from that responsibility."
But why, he asks, should those who earn their own way, and pay their own doctors, provide medical care for their fellow citizens "more comprehensive than they can afford for themselves"? Answering that is a little sticky too.
At least it's proved pretty sticky for his political opponents in California. His first year's record in the legislature has been phenomenal; just when his opponents think they have him headed off, he turns on the charm, goes around asking "why" or "why not" and he's through the ambush before anybody can think of an answer.
Maybe the political debate out here isn't on a high philosophic plane, and maybe the governor will never qualify for the fraternity of eggheads. But it's certainly fascinating to watch him outfox the academicians and the pundits and turn upside down the notions of what's politically plausible.
As a matter of fact, after you reach a certain age it's more fascinating to a tourist than some of the other phenomena for which California is famed.
Mr. Royster, who died in 1996 at 82, was editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1958 to 1971. He wrote "Thinking Things Over" until 1986. Robert Bartley is on vacation. |
