Monday, February 20, 2006

President's Day

This morning in my Toastmasters Meeting, others were asked to comment on their most or least favorite President. I was not given the opportunity, so I will take it now.

The first problem of choosing a President is that , if he is recent, his political party affiliation is the litmus test whether anybody will agree with you. All the lefties will sigh on the Republican Presidents and all the righties will groan on the Democrat Presidents. You can tell everybody's political tendencies by the look on their face when you say the man's name.

I am going to utter the great taboo to some and the last great hero to others. My favorite President is Ronald Reagan. But I think it'll be for a reason, it'll be hard to disagree with.

In the 70's, the future looked bleak. All the great standards had been rewritten in the sixties and early 70's. Some for the better, some for the worse. It was different. There were many 50's shows on TV and in the movies- a longing for another time. It was no longer safe to go into the water, fly an airplane, and any building was set to burst onto flames- or so the movies told us.

As a kid hitting the early teens, I remember feeling a sense of hopelessness for the future. I didn't quite get what happened in Vietnam, but apparently it didn't turn out so good. My parents talked of never owning a home again. There were long gas lines and very little gas. There were missiles pointed at us from Russia ( Sorry, I mean the Soviet Union). Clothes were hideous, foreign cars were taking over, and there was a huge increase in talk of Armageddon in religious circles.

Then along came Ronald Reagan. He talked of a bright future, he went toe-to-toe to the Soviet Union- pretty much calling their bluff and breaking their bank. He showed to them and the world that we were the "Jones" with whom they needed to keep up, not the has-beens we were feeling like. Whether you think it worked or didn't work- his Reaganomics restored confidence to the people who surrounded my family. He said the answer was found in the common man, the individual- just give him a chance. Maybe the future wasn't so bad.

Ronald Reagan may not have cleared the world of evil, maybe he didn't solve all the economic problems, maybe he was more words than matter. You can decide. But for me, Ronald Reagan gave me hope at a time many had lost theirs. And really, what more can a President really give to an individual?

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