Noblesse Oblivious
It's Empty at the TopThere are few better examples of the optimistic spirit often associated with American culture than the child who is told she can grow up to be anything she wants – even President of the United States. It’s a sunny view of life’s possibilities, but of course we all know better. The halls of political power are far less accessible than parents might like their kids to believe. Intellect, wit, culture, and sophistication of the kind that turn you into the guest of honor at an inaugural ball are in short supply, as are tickets to the elite institutions that shape these qualities in the first place.
Now comes the long-awaited release of the “official” biography of Ronald Reagan to remind us it doesn’t always work out that way. Reagan: the president of humble origins who attended an obscure Midwestern college, acted his way out of a few flimsy paper bags, wound up as California’s governor, and later took the White House. Maybe anyone can be president.
Edmund Morris’s new book on Reagan drew initial critical reception and media commotion that emphasized the biographer’s odd narrative device: the insertion of a fictional version of himself (the writer) as a recurring character in Reagan’s life long before Morris and Reagan met during the 1980s. Every historian, it seems, has an opinion on whether this still counts as historical biography, or instead lurches into something else: Biofictography? Dramography? Biograma?
At some point, though, assessments of the book veer away from the biofictographer’s novel technique and onto his subject: the idiot Reagan. I disliked the guy from the start. From the night of his election in 1980 it looked like a nightmare in the making. For those who care about little niceties like poverty, the environment, education, economic inequality, equal opportunity, race relations, human rights, and social justice, the nightmare scenario lasted eight years (with no real relief in the transitional administration of George the elder).
This might be the appropriate place to spell out my disdain for Reagan’s politics and ideology, but the new book relieves me of this burden. He didn’t have any! The author Morris has filled a fair number of column inches and TV news magazine minutes lately with his musings about the enigmatic and impenetrable nature of Reagan’s character. This opaqueness is apparently what led Morris to the narrative invention of self-as-player in the drama of Reagan’s life.
But is the saga of Reagan a story about the cloaked inner life of an elusive public figure? Or could it be the banal empty-headedness of a man with ambition but no interior? Hendrik Herztberg in The New Yorker last week summed up this new biographical portrait acutely: Reagan was “intellectually inert, a terrible bore, a practitioner of denial, and a cold, unimaginative man who has no interest in, curiosity about, or genuine compassion for other people.” Hertzberg as critic praises Morris for this insight, noting it sheds “new light – harsh bright light – on Reagan’s character.” Harsh and bright, perhaps, but for those of us who painfully endured American politics during the 1980s, what’s new here? It was crystal clear at the time that the man was a bubble head; now the official biofictographer documents the obvious (along with the oblivious).
More remarkable than Reagan’s intellectual vacancy is that the conservative wing of American politics in the late 1990s continues to worship the man and emulate his emptiness. Exhibit A is George W., who proudly reveals, by way of an interview with and subsequent column by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, that he reads lightly and pretty much lacks affinity for arts, music, or literature. Sympathetic Republicans rallying to his campaign bank account seem utterly unfussed that the man is pretty much disconnected from world events and lacks a discernible life of the mind. Reagan was benighted, and he muddled through, so no biggie.
Further to the right lies Exhibit B – the squirrelly GOP candidate Gary Bauer, who recently summoned the media to repudiate some salacious gossip about extracurricular sexual activity. Bauer’s denial seems plausible enough, but the rush to purity it incited among the religious right was stunning. Suddenly the race was on to make it perfectly clear that true blue male religious conservatives avoid at all costs any situations where they, gosh, might be alone in a room with a woman! Gender relations and equal opportunity have come a pretty good way since Reagan’s reign of xenophobia. The right wing of the Republican party is poised to bring us back to the good old days. Among the GOP faithful this seems to bother, well, nobody.
So back to first principles: Can anyone grow up to be president, no matter how out of touch with the social and economic reality of ordinary Americans? Does the job of leader of the free world require even a modicum of a cultural and intellectual center? Is emptiness of curiosity and analytical insight the currency of political conservatism? Clearly yes, apparently not, and it would seem so. That, folks, is the legacy of Ronald Reagan – a cautionary tale for thoughtful participants in our little democratic experiment, but a disturbingly persistent raison d’etre for conservatives in late 20th century America.
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