Reagan Roundtable: Growing Up Reagan by Joseph Fouche

Joseph Fouche at the Ronald Reagan Roundtable at Chicago Boyz:

Reagan Roundtable: Growing Up Reagan

….I felt the reinvigoration of American pride that Reagan fed during his term. The local culture in which I grew up was extremely patriotic anyway. However, the banishment of the clouds of Carterly malaise was clear even to a young child. The martial virtues were preached during those years and my interest in military history partially flows from that influence. G.I. Joe was a real American hero and the Ruskies were the bad guys. I would draw maps and redo the borders of the world in a future era when the Soviet Union was gone. I did it with more abandon than ten Sykes and Picot at an imperialist bender. I had no idea that the Soviet Union would be gone within six years and largely peacefully instead of a global conflagration. Peaceful falls and peaceful rises are better for the people of this earth overall but less appealing to nine-year old boys with action figures.

The outcome of Reagan and his administration on future events is not fully apparent. I’m sure we’ll get more ideas on that as this roundtable proceeds. However, for a child growing up in the 1980s, Reagan was the ideal president. Whether he was a good president or not really didn’t matter to a pre-teen just like it didn’t really matter if Douglas MacArthur was a great general or not. Douglas MacArthur played a great general for the newsreels and Ronald Reagan played a great president on TV. Those who overlook the advantage that acting talent gives to a president ignore a strength that Reagan shared with his idol Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Once, at a dinner party, FDR supposedly leaned over to Orson Welles and whispered, “Mr. Welles, you and I are the two best actors in America.” For many Americans, the detailed policy fluctuations of the New Deal didn’t matter. The New Deal was one of the great stage dramas of the Golden Age of American entertainment and FDR was its most consummate performer. The personal impact of FDR on my grandparents was clear even fifty years later.

FDR may or may not have been a great president but he played one on the radio and on film

Read the rest here.