ANOTHER VOICE
Ronald Reagan calls brilliantly on the corniest of all movie images — going off into the sunset
CHARLES MOORE
An. id all the coverage of the American Congressional elections, people seem to have missed the single most important doc- ument of the campaign. This was not the `Contract with America' which the Repub- licans propose to read out in the Congress every day for their first hundred days, but President Reagan's letter.
The letter was not an overtly political document. Addressing 'My Fellow Ameri- cans', Mr Reagan disclosed that 'I have recently been told that I am one of the mil- lions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease.' Mr Reagan went on to explain that he and his wife had wondered whether to keep the sad news private, but had decided that, 'In opening our hearts, we hope this might promote greater awareness of this condition.'
With this justification advanced, Mr Rea- gan gave a bulletin of his current state of health: 'At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done. I will continue to share life's journey with my beloved Nancy and my family. I plan to enjoy the great out- doors and stay in touch with my friends and supporters.'
After expressing anxiety at the strain his dis- ease would put on his wife, and confidence in the faith and courage with which she would bear it, Mr Reagan closed as follows:
. . . let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honour of allowing me to serve as your President. When the Lord calls me home . . . I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.
Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.
The letter was published two days before polling day. If I had been an American voter, I would have spent those two days wiping away my tears and then gone cut and voted Republican. Others appear to have felt the same.
For any connoisseur of political utter- ance, the Reagan letter is a work of genius. It is the perfect combination, which suc- cessful propaganda requires, of the genuine and the calculated. Not only is it true, pre- sumably, that President Reagan has got Alzheimer's, but everything else in the let- ter is true too. He does want to help attract public attention to the disease. He does love Nancy. He does believe in God. He is grateful to the American people and he does feel eternally optimistic for his coun- try. But the moment for the announcement is carefully chosen, and so is its expression. With an adroitness which takes one's breath away, Mr Reagan uses his own senile dementia as his last, best chance of stating his creed.
With the courage to use cliché effectively which makes America a so much stronger nation than our own, he calls on the corni- est of all movie images — going off into the sunset — and makes it powerful. He has acted out his life in accordance with a cer- tain idea of America, and now he is doing the same with his death. And because he is dying, and because he i's saying nothing which is politically controversial, no one can attack him for any of it. Indeed, his let- ter expresses a quality of gentlemanliness which disarms all criticism. It is courteous towards Americans, Alzheimer's sufferers, God, Mrs Reagan, his family, the great out doors and America itself. The egotism involved in writing such a letter at all is subtly concealed.
Anyone who does not understand how formidable Ronald Reagan is does not understand anything about America. You may dislike his policies or opinions, but if you assert, as so many English people do, that he is stupid or that (ha, ha, ha) he's admitting to Alzheimer's 15 years too late or that he is only the tool of others cleverer than he, you are either stupid yourself or you are just not paying attention. You need only watch how Mr Clinton, who grasps more policy detail each day than Mr Rea- gan did in a life-time, is floundering in a morass of contradiction, and you will see the brilliance of the second-rate actor with his allegedly third-rate mind. I do not really know whether President Reagan's policies worked. He appears to have won the Cold war. He appears to have lost the battle against big government. But the service he provides, more than any other American president since the war, lies in his imaginative gift. We know, because he imagines it every day, what sort of place his America is. We can then work out whether we want it or not. And when we have worked that out, we can work out which side to be on in any forthcoming American election.
Which makes it easier for me, I find, to be pleased by the Republican victory last week. Almost all the people I like most are appalled by Jerry Falwell or Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh or Oliver North (though they should, in fairness, concede that it was the Reagans who did him in), but I still feel very pleased that that lot has won. If I have to choose between the God of the Old Tes- tament and the spirit of the New Age, between a white redneck and a black drug- dealer, between a low-taxpaying, male chauvinist, gun-toting, steak-scoffing, anti- abortionist driving a huge gas-guzzling car with vulgar tail fins, and a politically cor- rect, jogging, HIV-positive, catalytically converted, pro-choice, macrobiotic, pro- IRA, state-employed welfare person, I'm for the former in each case.
And when I feel any doubts, any anxiety at the apparently pointless rage and bigotry and vindictiveness of some of those with whom I have thrown in my lot, I think of the inexhaustible benevolence of Ronald Reagan, and am reassured. That, as I say, is if I have to choose. I must admit that I'm quite glad that I don't.
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