Ronald Reagan: at least he acted like a great president
Billmon on Ronald Reagan:
In some ways, Reagan’s biggest triumph was the creation an atmosphere of existential crisis, in he could play the stereotypical role of the man on a white horse. He had a brilliant script, written by a new type of PR consultant (Michael Deaver generally gets the top credit) ready to exploit the synergies of the merger between politics and show business. And, like all great myths, it had enough correspondance with the reality of the times to be believable.
But there was always a kind of stage set quality to it – the sense that if you looked behind the facade all you’d find would be plywood and paper mache. The memoirs of many of the administration’s principles – not to mention Richard Morris’s bizarre biography – all reinforce this sense of unreality. On camera, reagan was the Great Communicator. But off camera, he seems to have reverted to a kind of good-natured but mindless passivity – like an actor waiting in his trailer between takes.