Today marks the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, a centennial to surpass all centennials, complete with a new 44 cent stamp and a two-year long General Electric celebration of their former ambassador cum 40th president.
The contrived event — what other president have we held centennial celebrations for?? — couldn’t come at a better time. The three factions of conservative America, the neo-, social and fiscal conservatives, have been desperately looking for a leader in time for the 2012 election. Reagan was and is their unifying father. As an ecstatic Fox News states, “Love him or hate him, Reagan had a major impact on the course of events that the world is still feeling today.” True enough. The Ronald Reagan centennial campaign reached it’s goal of raising $100 million dollars in just two years. The Super Bowl will feature a two minute video tribute to Reagan. And don’t forget the jelly beans.
The list of event participants reads like the evening news from my childhood years: Newt Gingrich, Edwin Meese, George Schultz and, as the GE website notes, “and ambassadors from several Eastern European countries, including Hungary, Serbia, Estonia, and Lithuania.” That would be the countries that, as the story goes, Reagan single-handedly wrested from hideous Communism. From AIDS funding to funding tyrants, to tax policy and trickle down economics, from labor rights to deregulation, most of Reagan’s policies have been long debunked as ineffective and damaging.
The Gipper dropped the ball for most of the rest of us and we’re still fumbling to recover.
2 comments
Michael Church says:
Feb 8, 2011
I’m not sure that “contrived” is quite the word you’re looking for. Perhaps “grandiose”?
Presidential centennials aren’t so uncommon. The Lincoln penny was introduced in 1909 as an observance of one president’s hundredth birthday. Theodore Roosevelt also declared a national holiday. In 1832, Congress set up a special committee to coordinate the centennial of Washington’s birth. In 1982, Reagan himself hosted a White House luncheon for the FDR centennial. George HW Bush hosted a centennial celebration for Eisenhower.
So the real question isn’t whether presidential centennials are contrived; it is whether Reagan deserves honors comparable to those given to the very greatest presidents. There has been debate over that from the moment he left office. As I recall, some people actually wanted to put his face on Mt Rushmore (or at least the dime), and were barely appeased by naming an airport after him instead.
ann says:
Feb 8, 2011
Thank you, Father Church, for the update on centennials! It’s not so uncommon, then, but contested.