Although I suppose it’s inevitable and could be said for any
decade, the 1980s seem pretty dated to me now. I think back to
television shows like Webster, Knight Rider, and
Alf, popular music acts like Wham!, the Culture Club,
Duran Duran and a normal-looking Michael Jackson, and famous people
like Mr. T and the “Solid Gold” dancers. Big hair, Skidz pants, and
high-top Adidas sneakers now look as ridiculous as the mutton
chops, bellbottoms, and platform shoes that came before them.
Most of my childhood icons have been discarded like old
Transformers and G.I. Joe action figures. Many of the objects of my
nostalgia fail to measure up to my memories when I look back at
them today.
That’s all the more reason Ronald Reagan’s passing has been such
a bittersweet occasion for me. One of my heroes from elementary
school to adulthood is dead. But the press coverage has reminded me
that some things from the '80s were everything I remembered them to
be.
This leads me to recall another '80s pop-culture icon: Alex P.
Keaton. A character on the series Family Ties played by
Michael J. Fox, Keaton was a young kid clad in a jacket and tie who
confounded his liberal, aging hippie parents with his conservative
Republican beliefs and strong support for the Reagan
administration.
There were a lot of aspiring Alex P. Keatons in the suburban
Massachusetts town where I grew up. I participated in our school’s
straw poll for the 1984 presidential election as a second-grader,
proudly casting my vote for Reagan. When the results were announced
on the intercom later that day, I listened with rapt attention.
“Walter Mondale, 47 votes.” That’s not good, I thought
dejectedly. Forty-seven sounds like kind of a big number. And then:
“Ronald Reagan, 400.” My classmates and I erupted into cheers and I
could hear the adjacent classrooms going wild.
“Mondale’s a nose-picker!” someone behind me yelled. It wasn’t a
very charitable comment to make about a former vice-president who
actually was a good Cold War liberal, but kids can be so cruel. I
came home and excitedly told my mother that this result portended
victory for the president. My mother, whose political
prognostications I never trusted again, predicted otherwise. “You
just can’t stand to see old Ronnie go,” she told me.
What did we kids love so much about Reagan? There was just
something about him that seemed lovable. He ate jelly beans and
joked with professional athletes. His wife sat on Mr. T’s lap and
appeared on “Diffr’nt Strokes.” He especially had an appeal to
boys. He could both speak soothingly and reassuringly in that
mellifluous voice of his, with a manner that made it seem he was
talking only to you, while at the same time sounding tough. It was
as if the endearing characteristics of Mr. Rogers were merged with
the tough-guy personae of Clinton Eastwood; he could both read you
a story and beat up those bullies on the playground.
Reagan’s aw-shucks manner and understated one-of-the-guys humor
always reminded me of my grandfather, who was about the Gipper’s
age. Grandpa was an unreconstructed FDR Democrat who did not think
much of Reagan’s politics, but these complications did not trouble
my young mind.
There was even something of an ideological component to why many
of us who grew up in the '80s loved Reagan. At recess we used to
play Cold War games. The good guys were the Americans and the bad
guys were the Soviet Communists. Reagan was the leader of the good
guys.
One of my friends in second grade was a kid named Michael. His
parents were first-generation Americans and his grandparents who
lived nearby spoke with heavy Italian accents. Quintessential
Reagan Democrats (remember that Dutch carried the greater Boston
area twice). Michael was even at that young age a fervent
anti-Communist. Around the time “We Are the World,” a hit song to
raise money for children starving in Africa, was released, a girl
in our class stood up and read a brief essay suggesting that less
money be spent on weapons systems so we could feed the children of
Ethiopia.
Michael shook his head in disgust. “What are you going to do
when the Soviets try something?” he asked. “Throw Barbie dolls at
them?”
As we all grew up, some left behind their flirtation with Reagan
Republicanism while others of us began to adhere to a more adult
understanding of conservatism. For some of us in both groups,
Ronald Reagan continued to set the standard for what a president
should be.
I watch the tributes to our 40th president with a mixture of
political conviction and personal nostalgia. And as was the case 20
years ago, there is still a part of me that can’t stand to see old
Ronnie go.
