Because Saturday is The Gipper's 100th birthday, our nation has turned its one, non-lazy eye from the fulmination in the Middle East and Lloyd Blankfein's dumptrucks of money to discussing Ronald Reagan's “Legacy” and how we can go about resurrecting it (kinda like baseball's Ted Williams but with less cryogenic decapitation).
Time Magazine seems to believe that Reagan is our president's “role model.” Sure, Barry spent the better part of the 80's and 90's undoing what he called in his memoir the “dirty deeds” of the Reagan White House. But running for higher office forced him to see the “stylistic and instinctive” similarities between them. This is to say that you need the Hungry Man vote these days, and if Barry had to bowl a few frames and scarf down a few hot dogs, and claim that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that..Bill Clinton did not,” then by God he'd say it!
But that was in 2008–so 15 minutes after he said that and all the journalists were in the back of the plane gulping their mini bottles of Dasani and texting “OMFG” to their bosses, Barry probably said “Geezus that was awful, I can't wait til I win this thing so I can stop comparing myself to that senile John Wayne-wannabe.” You know, kinda in the same tone of that Nancy Reagan/seance joke he made?
But haw haw, two years later and while our country's wealth is siphoned off into War and Wall Street, the Bill & Ted of La Brea tar pits, Barry grabs the Just for Men Gel (don't laugh! Lincoln needed botox!) and finds himself on the campaign trail again, cribbing his State of the Union from Ronald Reagan, trying to convince Joe Loko's like us that he's just as “optimistic” as a clueless actor was 20 years ago.
Thankfully, 6th grade social studies student/President of Citizen's United (sound familiar?) David Bossie has an editorial in today's Daily Caller that FINALLY sets the record straight.
President Reagan served his country with a grace and style that cannot be matched, especially by the current occupant of the White House. He stood up to the Soviet Union by calling it the “evil empire” and courageously implored General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” President Obama used his most recent State of the Union address to tell us how great communist China is and how Americans are lagging behind the Chinese in innovation. President Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism. If he did, he would not have said “…America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” President Reagan believed America was a “shining city on the hill” and that it was always morning in America.
CANNOT BE MATCHED. Not by Thomas Jefferson OR Match.com. And it's always morning because Jack In the Box serves breakfast ALL FUCKING DAY! The sun never sets on the sausage burrito empire! And Bossie's right to chastise Barry for being such a cynic. When Reagan perfected Nixon's Southern Strategy he did it with a twinkle in his eye and a jellybean in his mouth. Nothing cynical about exploiting poverty stricken racists. Indeed, “President Obama, you're no Ronald Reagan.”
I'm too young to remember anything about President Reagan. But I do remember his funeral. My family was sitting around the living room, passing the Pepperidge Farm Entertaining Selection. In between bites of sweet, sweet enriched flour, my grandmother looked up at the coffin on the TV and said “ehh, he was alright. A good lookin' man, though.” Think Barry will realize the power a good lookin' man can harness? Maybe he should try acting.
