When Maureen Reagan, an opponent of her father’s pro-life
policies, considered a run for the U.S. Senate in 1982, reporters
asked Reagan: Is she serious? Reagan’s reply: “I hope not.”
Reagan’s brother, Neil, supported Maureen Reagan’s opponent.
The press used to revel in noting that the liberal Reagan
children didn’t understand, much less support, their father’s
conservative philosophical views. Now the press treats the children
as an authority on his views and custodians of his ideological
legacy. “Reaganite by Association? His Family Won’t Allow it,”
headlines a New York Times story about the Reagans’
rejection of George W. Bush as an ideological heir to Ronald
Reagan. By “family” here, the New York Times means the
Reagans who agree with its editorial board. The Times
makes sure to ignore Michael Reagan’s support for Bush’s
policies.
Patti Davis, however, receives a careful hearing from the
Times, even though her name change indicates that she’s
never wanted to be considered a “Reaganite by Association.” No
matter — her support for the “miracle of stem-cell research, a
miracle the Bush White House thinks it can block” is too useful for
the Times to pass up. The Times used to embarrass
Reagan in life with reports on his daughter’s various
pharmaceutical pursuits and drug experimentation; in death, they
honor him with her expertise on stem-cell experimentation.
When Ron Reagan Jr. was a ballet dancer and Playboy
writer, the press enjoyed reporting that father and son didn’t
understand each other. They quoted Reagan as wishing his son
pursued “more dignified” work than scribbling for Playboy.
But the gulf of misunderstanding between father and son has rapidly
closed, with the press turning to Ron Jr. for pronouncements on the
meaning of the Reagan canon. The Times relays his comment
that the Bush “administration is not my father’s — these people
are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive and just
plain corrupt.” The Times forgot to mention that Ron Jr.
voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Perhaps Ron Jr. considers Nader his
father’s political heir.
Ron Jr. is far enough out on the liberal spectrum that he
regards the Democrats as excessively conservative. In an interview
with Salon last year, he called himself a “progressive,”
rejecting both parties: “I’m certainly not a Republican; I couldn’t
belong to any party that had leaders like Tom DeLay. And the
Democrats are too busy trying to out-Republican the Republicans.”
His eulogy last Friday was so gratuitously and aggressively
anti-Republican television viewers might have mistaken him for one
of Paul Wellstone’s kids. Will Ron Jr. run for political office? “I
hope not,” one can imagine his father saying. But given the tone of
his eulogy, it would be surprising if he didn’t. (At the very least
he will harness the power of his father’s name for “progressive”
causes and organizations his father spent his career opposing.)
The press also have a sudden interest in Nancy Reagan’s
understanding of Reaganism. They no longer gleefully point out her
reliance on astrology now that they find her scientific views on
stem cells from destroyed embryos authoritative. In the 1980s when
Nancy Reagan was urging her husband to oust or marginalize
conservatives like Bill Clark from his administration — she
derided them as “jump-off-the-cliff-with-the-flag-flying” types in
her memoirs — the press reported Reagan’s resistance to his wife.
The Washington Post even reported that at one point Reagan
told Nancy to “Get off my goddam back!”
But these days the press accords Nancy Reagan canonical powers
over the meaning of Reagan’s ideas and vision for the country.
Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter has a pretty good hunch
that Reagan would agree with him on stem cell research. “I’d wager
he would have favored it,” writes Alter, who now informs his
readers that Reagan was just a liberal adroit at persuading “his
base to think he was with them even when he wasn’t.” How does Alter
know that Reagan would support experimenting on destroyed embryos?
“At Reagan’s core was his faith in the power of personal
experience. His own personal experience revolved around Nancy, of
course. If she passionately favored stem-cell research, it might
have taken him a while, but he probably would have come around,” he
writes.
In life, making Reagan come around was job one for the
media. Not much has changed in death. The press’s idea of honoring
Reagan’s “legacy” is to undo it — a task it seeks to accomplish by
touting the liberal views of his wife and children (sans Michael)
as his own.
