Thinking of Ron

The word was "progressivity."

It was the first presidential debate of the 1984 campaign. I was watching with my family at our home in Chico, California. President Reagan was attempting to explain ... I don't know, economic policy? All I remember is that he was meandering through a sentence in the same manner that Otis the Town Drunk waded through the sheriff's office in The Andy Griffith Show.

"... with regard to the, er. The, um ..." Reagan explained.

Pause. Tick, tick, tick ...

"SAY something!" I shouted at the TV. I was 18 years old, and I really liked Ronald Reagan, and he had just uncorked a word (I think it was a word) I'd never heard used in a sentence, ever.

It is difficult to relate the moment when your political hero of the moment falls mute. But I think the incomparable Henry Rollins did a great job of that a few weeks ago during a spoken-word performance at the House of Blues. Rollins wasn't talking about Reagan but President George W. Bush, who suffered a similar kink in his syntax when introducing a group of astronauts at a campaign stop.

"I'd like to welcome these ... spatial ... entrepreneurs," Bush had beamed.

"You know that icon on a computer—on some it's an hourglass, or a clock that keeps turning without stopping—that tells you the computer is in search mode?" Rollins asked, an eyebrow (and right fist) cocked. "That's what was happening in Bush's brain."

That same characteristic—the ever-winding clock—had locked up Reagan. He finally arrived at (or, more accurately, collapsed on) "progressivity."

As I remember that fragment of the sentence, he said, "... with regard to the, um. The, er ... progressivity, as I said ..."

NO!

I seriously lost sleep over that moment.

That I was so horrified at Reagan's seeming inability to construct a simple sentence during a debate speaks to how much I cared about him. I admit it was a superficial attraction, but powerful nonetheless. I haven't had that type of emotional bond with a politician since.

Why?

Looking back I attribute the fascination to naivete. Reagan spoke positively and always appeared to buy into what he was saying. That was just about enough for me—that kind of hypnotic veneer. He seemed tough but was easygoing. He was unencumbered by details but didn't strike me as stupid—only as smart as he needed to be. He seemed muscular, like he could really kick some ass. I fell for those photos of him swinging his ax on his ranch and those glinting "Make my day" comments.

Reagan was a Californian, too. We claimed him. I was part of a loose group of young Republicans in Chico—part of what was called the Reagan Revolution, which was a cool title because it reminded me of Prince's backing band.

We Revolutionaries trekked to Sacramento in the fall of 1984 to see Reagan's final campaign speech. Reagan spoke on the front lawn of the state capitol, a brilliant Northern California setting. There was the requisite collection of American flags hanging about the stage. Frank Sinatra said a few words and introduced Reagan. Around 20,000 Reaganites had turned out, shouting and jostling for a better glance at the president—a right-wing mosh pit, if you will. We yelled for Ronnie and at the protesters behind the barricades.

"You ain't seen nothin', yet!" Reagan roared at the end, quoting BTO. Yep, we hadn't.

Soon, I was over Reagan—I think it ended at the time Oliver North became a fixture on daytime TV during the Iran/Contra hearings. I remember thinking, "I voted for this?"

I don't regret it, though. Reagan was special to me—he was my first vote, ever, and my last Republican vote. Since then it's been Dukakis-Clinton-Clinton-Gore.

When I heard Reagan died two weekends ago, feeling pangs of nostalgia, I looked up "progressivity." I was relieved to learn that it was indeed a word, which means "the quality of being progressive; said of a tax system or taxation."

I'm still not sure it makes sense. But to Ronald Reagan, I'm sure it did.

The mask spoke to me. Those squinty, laugh-lined eyes, that rosy plastic complexion, the lipless mouth. I was 10 years old in 1987 and my fourth-grade class was preparing to put on a "Living Museum." Students would dress as famous figures and give a speech about who they were. When I saw that mask, I knew I was going to be the president of the United States.

I'd never seen one so freakishly lifelike. It was $30—no small fee for an adolescent—and my parents weren't going to pay for it. So I washed floorboards and cars, vacuumed, dusted the house and earned enough money for my mom to drive me across town to buy the face of Ronald Reagan, a man who, aside from being president, I knew very little about. I was more concerned at the time with Garbage Pail Kids, or finding a new BE / FRI match for my half-heart ST / END rings. But to wear that mask, I was willing to learn.

Not that any of the facts stuck with me. I remember having a fake button observers would push, launching me into "My name is Ronald Reagan ..." I don't remember the rest, except that a friend dressed as Nancy. But when we won the best-costume awards and toured other schools, it was my mask that got us there.

And that's what I think about now, as every channel flows with Reagan quips and moments of silence are observed and flags are lowered. What I wouldn't give to have that mask now, roaming the streets, talking about jelly beans and the Gipper, mourning with the nation. Then maybe putting it on eBay so that others can enjoy it.

What happened to the mask? In 1995, when I was 18 and voting for Ralph Nader while attending Oberlin College, the Ronald Reagan mask sat in my old closet in my parents' house. My hamster, Bitch, began nesting in the closet, finding warmth and security in that presidential mask. Until she ate it.

It was gym class, the last of the day at River Valley High School. Snow clung to the ground, so we lounged on the stage overlooking the basketball floor. Then the PA system crackled. Ronald Reagan had just been shot.

Happily ignorant of politics, I turned to my redneck compatriots for reaction. Reagan was the actor-president. As I remember, no one seemed particularly happy or impressed with him. Not that I cared. At that age, if it didn't have breasts and wear skintight jeans, it didn't hit my radar.

Still, he was the president. A modicum of concern might be expected.

No one knew what to think.

So our teacher spoke up.

"Hope they didn't miss," he said.

The comment shook me.

In the ensuing years, I never forgot the comment, while living through Reagan's sweeping tax cuts for the rich. I remembered it as the feds boosted the interest rate for student loans while cutting student grants. I remembered it when they stopped offering the free government cheese and bologna that sustained me during my first year in college. And I remembered it in the late-'80s, as light was shed on the Reagan administration's secret support of the Nicaraguan Contras.

People today say the same types of things about Bush. They said the same about Clinton. And Bush the First.

I'm no longer surprised.

On June 12, 1982, at age 15, I joined a million other demonstrators in Central Park in New York City to protest Ronald Reagan's arms buildup, the same one recently eulogized—along with the former president—as the warm and fuzzy road map to victory in the Cold War.

There was no question in my mind that Reagan was a villain, a warmonger and a fascist. My teachers at school believed that, my peers believed it and, most of all, every record on my turntable told me it was true.

More than a year earlier, I had memorized The Dead Kennedys' song "We've got a Bigger Problem Now," which opens with Jello Biafra almost crooning, "I am Emperor Ronald Reagan. Born again with fascist cravings. Still, you made me president." Then, after building to a frenzy of hard-core punk, the song's final verse has Biafra hysterically screaming, "Don't you worry, it's for a cause, feeding global corporation's claws. Die on our brand new poison gas, El Salvador or Afghanistan. Making money for President Reagan and all the friends of President Reagan."

That was one of the nicer songs.

The attempted assassination in 1981, for example, was the subject of endless jokes. There was a band called Jodie Foster's Army (I think I saw them play on a bill with Reagan Youth). Then there was Suicidal Tendencies' song "I Shot the Devil (I Shot Reagan)." The kings of bad taste, the Cruicif*cks, had a song called "Hinkley had a Vision." Even more mainstream acts jumped on the trashing-Reagan bandwagon. The Ramones whipped up "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)" and the Violent Femmes did "Old Mother Reagan," with singer Gordon Gano exclaiming of our 40th president, "She's so dumb. She's so dangerous."

Maybe it was the actor in him, or that he was on the wrong side of the '60s, but Reagan made a great villain. There were frequent Rock Against Reagan concerts in my hometown, advertised by flyers with a glowering cartoon caricature (my favorite had him in a Gestapo uniform). Everything about Reagan—the cowboy hats, his alliance with Christian Right figures like Jerry Falwell, his wife's designer suits and Just Say No campaign, and especially his casual jokes, like the one about bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes—made him the embodiment of a right wing that The Dead Milkmen, in an anti-Reagan song, said were "sent here to destroy the human race." So I stood with a million other Reagan-haters, having no doubt that we were all that stood between the president and the nuclear holocaust he was anxious to get started on.

Is it too late to admit I was wrong? To say that the Dead Kennedys were probably not the people to go to for the definitive word on foreign policy? The thing I didn't get about the Cold War is that it was a war, and there is no safe way to win one. If not for the Gipper drawing the rhetorical battle lines, détente might have ended with us paying endless foreign-aid blackmail to prop up a decaying Soviet Union, the way we do with North Korea. And that's just one might-have-been scenario.

Of course, I still have many quarrels with the Reagan legacy, including his choice to pay for the military buildup with brutal cuts to social programs (remember his attempt to count ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches?), his near-complete lack of interest in civil rights, his embarrassingly slow reaction to the AIDS epidemic. If he were running today, I still wouldn't vote for him. But now when I listen to my old '80s hard-core discs, as I do frequently, I feel a bit guilty, because in the end, Ronald Reagan, for all his flaws, was not the one blinded by hatred. To my endless surprise, that turned out to be me.