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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (9026)	3/1/1998 1:02:00 PM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

The Sunday Times March 1 1998 UNITED STATES America wallows in Reagan nostalgia by Matthew Campbell Washington HE PLAYS the odd round of golf and returns the waves of passers-by. Ronald Reagan does not seem to know why they greet him, however. Afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, he apparently has no memory of his eight years as president but is happy to show visitors his jelly bean jar or pictures of himself as a lifeguard in his youth. The Great Communicator has gone. But almost a decade after he left office, a wave of Reagan nostalgia is sweeping the country as former political opponents acknowledge his place in history and Americans recoil from the spectacle of a Democrat successor besmirching the Oval Office with sleaze. "To have used the word 'great' in connection with him 10 years ago would have produced laughs from one end of Manhattan to the other," said Edmund Morris, author of an official biography due out later this year. "People are bandying it about freely now." Reagan's anti-communist crusade and economic policies were decried in their day as dangerously divisive and the former Hollywood actor was reviled as a threat to world peace by critics who dismissed him as an ignorant zealot. Not any more. As he shuffles through the sunset of his life - a metaphor he used in 1994 when he announced in a letter to "my fellow Americans" that he was suffering from memory-destroying Alzheimer's - Reagan is on his way to becoming one of the most remembered presidents in history. To commemorate his 87th birthday on February 6, Congress decided to rename the capital's airport after Reagan. A giant government building has gone up in his honour; and Republicans, vainly searching for a figure of his stature to carry their banner in the next presidential election, are waiting for the day when they can carve his likeness on Mount Rushmore. An American media that liked to vilify Reagan when he was in power - even the conservative New Republic magazine once described him as "brain-dead" - has joined in the orgy of eulogising. Business pundits, who once blamed "Reaganomics" for America's ills, now see the tough medicine prescribed by Reagan in his first term in office as the source of the country's economic strength today. "Bill Clinton is reaping the harvest that Ronald Reagan sowed," was the verdict of Forbes magazine. It is too late for Reagan to appreciate all the praise. When George Shultz, his former secretary of state, visited his home in California, Reagan asked a nurse: "Who is that man sitting with Nancy on the couch?" According to friends, Reagan, whose mental and physical powers faded slowly but steadily after he was shot two months into his presidency in 1981, nevertheless still conveys an image of vigorous good health. He travels to his office each day to welcome well-wishers and poses gamely for tourists when they spot him sitting in the park. Accounts of the gentlemanly dignity with which he has confronted his illness have undoubtedly fuelled public sympathy for the "Gipper", as he liked to be called after an American football player he portrayed in one of his films. The groundswell of Reagan nostalgia is also related to the widespread malaise Americans feel as they ponder the exploits of today's Oval Office incumbent. While the public may not care if Clinton "fooled around" with a White House trainee, the perception that he has undermined the gravitas of the highest office in the land will be far harder to overlook. "The White House has become the 'White trash house'," sniffed Morris. "What is going on makes one sigh for the lost purity of Iran-contra," he added, comparing Clinton's "Zippergate" affair with the scandal that tarnished Reagan's presidency when it emerged that profits from arms sales to Tehran had been illegally diverted to rebels fighting the leftist government in Nicaragua. The most telling signal of America's growing affection for Reagan was a 4 1/2 -hour television documentary broadcast last week. Its sympathetic tone was all the more remarkable considering that it was produced by the Public Broadcasting Service, whose liberal bias made it the scourge of conservatives in the ideologically divided 1980s. Instead of trotting out the usual stereotype of Reagan as a befuddled geriatric, the documentary portrayed the complex son of an alcoholic unable to relate to his children but endowed with an almost mystic power to commune with an entire people. It dwelt at length on the summers Reagan spent in his youth working as a lifeguard on the Rock River, when he claimed to have rescued 77 swimmers. The film chronicled Reagan's career as a Hollywood actor who, in dozens of films, played the villain only once; as president of the screen writers' guild who tried to save it from communist infiltration; as the governor of California who sent in riot police to keep the campuses safe from the reds; and - his finest role - as a president and "saviour" of America whose strong conviction and will to prevail resulted in the rout of a communist empire. The audience was reminded that even as the most powerful man in the world, Reagan never lost a simple decency and humility that manifested itself in unusual ways. The documentary revealed that he sent personal cheques when cases of suffering blamed on his economic policies were brought to his attention. When Reagan noticed from a bank statement that one of the cheques he had written to an impoverished widow in the hinterland had not been cashed, he telephoned her to ask why. She replied she had framed it. He explained he had intended her to buy food with the money and sent her another cheque. Staying at the Aga Khan's villa in Geneva in 1985 for a first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, the Reagans had been asked to to make sure they fed the goldfish. On the morning of his historic encounter, Reagan noticed that one of the fish was lying dead in the bottom of the tank. Mortified, he sent out staff to scour Geneva's pet shops in search of a replacement. On leaving the villa, the president left an apologetic note for the Aga Khan. The film, in which Gorbachev describes Reagan as a "very great political leader", provoked hundreds of adoring messages from the public, some contrasting Reagan's statesmanship with "what is going on in the White House these days", according to Joanna Drake at Reagan's office in Los Angeles. "The mail is pouring in from people saying, 'We wish we had him back.' " This sentiment is echoed among the Republican leadership as it looks for a candidate to fight the next election. But Richard Norton-Smith, former director of the Ronald Reagan Library, said: "There's no new Reagan out there. Reagan was sui generis." sunday-times.co.uk I am not sure how they decided that Michael Kinsley's New Republic was conservative.