An Open Letter to the Ghost of Ronald Reagan*

June 11, 2004

Dear President Reagan,

In 1980, the first presidential election I was old enough to participate
in, I cast my vote against you. I never regretted that. I only regret that
you repeatedly won.

It is not because I, like so many, was never touched by your personality
and charm. It is because you chose to be a king, not a president. There
were many bitter comparisons, in fact, throughout your presidency, between
your approach to that office and constitutional monarchy. You seemed to
relish the royal stance--symbol, not leader, of a nation. (You also
complained, I recall, that the constitution limited your hold on the
presidency to two Teflon-coated terms. You honestly aspired to be
president-for-life, King Ronald.)

I never knew you as a person. One of our cultural flaws as a people, as
Americans, is that too often we forget that there is a difference between
emotionally responding to a pop-image of a celebrity and having a real
relationship with the person. Like most Americans, I did not know you. As
such, I can experience no meaningful grief. I cannot mourn for you--it
cheapens the true pain of those who love you through having known you, the
depths of which I can only imagine and humbly respect, distinct from that
of people who imagine they knew you because they recognize your image, with
misty eyes.

So, if I sound cold here, it is because I am not touched with grief. What
I'm left with, instead, are my perceptions and memories of you as the
primary resident of the White House in the 1980s.

I was dismayed, throughout your presidency, by your popularity. I remember
being amazed at how desperate and shallow that popularity seemed to
be--people measuring your success by your orchestrated (and all-too
successful) efforts to create a feel-good national trend of uncritical
thinking. You told America it was time to feel good about being Americans,
without giving us any reasons to other than sentimental clap-trap.

Meanwhile, you enjoyed your life as millionaire host-with-the-most at White
House galas while your administration cranked out numerous reasons to feel
distinctly bad about being associated with our government's actions.

Lest we forget:

You appointed officials based, it seemed, on their eagerness to undermine
the offices they were designated to head. The smug James Watts who said his
primary agenda at the Department of the Interior was to undo the
protections which is that agency's mandate. Your Secretary of Education,
upon being sworn in, similarly declared that if he was to have his way, he
would shut down the Department he was hired to run. In short, you hired
people who had disdain for their own positions. A cynical game.

Your anti-communist stance, which is eulogized as evidence of your
strength, was so radical as to betray startling ignorance of a frightening
and dangerous depth. We are all lucky--just plain lucky--that the Soviets
were on the brink of economic implosion and were led by people of cooler
temperament and shrewder intellect than our own president during those
precarious times of nuclear danger.

Your anti-Red posturing went well beyond the Soviets, however, as your
foreign policy--often implemented illegally--proved. Invading Grenada;
mining Central American waters; allowing the funding of the School of the
Americas and its torture manuals; blatant violation of the law in funding
right-wing militias trying to overthrow their own government in Nicaragua
justified by that government being left-leaning (in other words, not
absolutely cooperative with North American capitalistic exploitation of its
resources).

I remember how close we came to launching a full-scale war in El Salvador.
The flip-side of Nicaragua, in El Salvador the contra's were the
left-leaning villains in struggle against an oppressive--but
"pro-US"--fascist regime.

Of course, your support for fascism went even beyond the anti-communist
paradigm. You supported the disgusting regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the
Philippines; the Duvaliers in Haiti; apartheid in South Africa.

And here at home, what did you do for those of us who did not happen to be
wealthy?

You busted the unions. You didn't give a damn about the national debt you
tripled and how it would impact the people who struggled financially even
in the best of economic times. But there is one public position you
took--it may not even merit a footnote in retrospective biographies--which
to me symbolizes everything you did wrong, the immorality of your domestic
policies, and that is your assertion that ketchup is a vegetable.

It sounds funny, but it wasn't, and it still isn't, even as your remains
are lowered into the ground today.

In the context of bloated military spending to a wildly irresponsible
degree; enormous tax cuts that were the disastrous show-piece of your
absurd model of "trickle down economics" (even you reluctantly were forced
to admit, later, that the wealthy benefactors of this tax cut simply horded
the resulting additional wealth, demonstrating how effective they were at
preventing any downward trickles); hurling our nation into a cycle of
deficit spending that cost two decades of recovery…

In this context, when you kept telling Americans to feel good about
America, to recognize that this, somehow, was Morning in America, that we
were a Shining City on a Hill--in this context, you advocated cutting
federal school lunch programs--skimping on feeding the children of the
poor--by undermining that program's basic nutritional standards. You, the
corporate welfare king, declared that ketchup is a vegetable. Federally
funded school lunch programs required two servings of vegetables at lunch
for children whose physical and developmental health and the associated
ability to succeed in school was at stake. In your view, a couple of pickle
slices would count as one, ketchup as another. Throw out the salads, corn
and green beans. Ketchup--sugary corn starch and tomato sauce--will work
just fine. Just think! Pennies could be saved! Rescue the American
tax-payer! Get the government off our backs! Screw over the kids!

So, Mr. President, my fantasy is that the sentimental, feel-good
retrospectives on your days in office are tempered by a certain epitath
that I would love to see inscribed in the marble of your tomb. Forget the
jelly-bellies; forget the affable, boyish grin; forget the bizarre claims
that you were, at your index card-reading best, a Great Communicator. For
time immemorial, these words would accurately reflect your legacy:

"Let Them Eat Ketchup."

Sincerely,

…

______________

* Former President Reagan died June 5, 2004.  A national state of mourning was declared and elaborate funeral services were broadcast on live television.  Absurdly dubbed "The Great Communicator" (as well as the Teflon president--for the public's incredible indifference to his countless blunders), Reagan famously read from index cards prepared by aids during press conferences, and once, in a public address, embarrassingly referred to Diana, Princess of Wales, as "Princess David." His claims to having "ended the Cold War" are ironic as well as exaggerated. He loved the Cold War. The Cold War was his friend.