OPINION — That’s it. I’ve had it. I am officially over political candidates talking about their “hand size,” being mean girls to each other’s wives and having Twitter fights. Seriously, this is what it’s come to?
Last week somewhere between a detour to the L.A. County Airshow and my hometown of Santa Barbara, California, my family of five landed at the Reagan Presidential Library. Reagan was the president of my childhood. To me he wasn’t a Republican. He wasn’t a Democrat. He was: President.
And he was part Californian, so he kind of felt like mine.
Reagan’s ranch was less than 30 miles from my childhood home. When he came to visit Rancho del Cielo, his motorcade would pass by on Highway 154, dotting the Santa Ynez Mountains like a brigade of black ants. I only saw it once, but it commanded respect and elicited awe from this 8-year-old Punky Brewster lookalike.
For my three young boys, it’s a different story. President Reagan is as foreign to them as phone booths.
My husband and I tried to familiarize them with the “Great Communicator” en route to the library by piping in some of his most famous speeches on my husband’s smartphone.
Hurtling down the 101 freeway we listened to not-yet-president Reagan stumping for Goldwater about our capacity for self-governance. Snaking up the Simi Valley hills we listened to then-President Reagan challenging Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
They weren’t that impressed. But truthfully, it was because they weren’t really listening.
We then spent three hours in the library looking at Reagan’s collection of notecards with quotes and speech ideas, watching the video footage of the assassination attempt that put a bullet in his lung, reading his handwritten diplomacy notes, exploring the retired Air Force One that shuttled him all over the world and crawling through holes in the replica Berlin Wall.
They were slightly impressed. But truthfully, it was mostly because of Air Force One – and the assortment of Jelly Belly beans at the gift shop.
I won’t lie: The Jelly Belly beans impressed me, too.
Mostly though, I was impressed by the tenor of it all. It was dignified. It was substantive. It was presidential.
Reagan’s focus was on the issues. You don’t have to agree with his politics, but at least you knew what they were. You knew what he believed, why he believed it and what he wanted to do about it.
Throughout the library, there were clear examples of Reagan’s policies and his strategies to implement them.
He laid out his case about the threat of communism and his goal to expand freedom to Poland, East Germany and beyond.
He talked in actual dollars and cents about the national debt, the tax system and social security.
He talked in specificity about the right to work, limiting taxes and ending the Cold War.
In contrast, those aspiring to be president today hurl insults at each other and personal attacks have replaced policy debates.
Last week’s Twitter exchange between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz is a prime example.
Following a Super PAC-financed ad featuring a scantily-clad Mrs. Trump, Donald tweeted, “Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”
Ted Cruz responded, “Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless.”
Reagan famously said at the Republican National Convention in 1992:
Whatever else history says about me … I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts.
That is what I saw as a little girl in California watching the Reagan motorcade go up the hill: his best hopes, and mine.
If only the same could be said of the current contenders for his old job.
Kat Dayton is a columnist for St. George News, any opinions given are her own and not representative of St. George News.
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Twitter: @STGnews
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2016, all rights reserved.
As 62% of Utah knows, CRUZ may well surpass the Gipper as one of the best presidents this country ever had. If, with the help of each of us, the IRS is in fact abolished and replaced with a flat tax alone would make his mark in history. Toss in smaller government with a strong military we have a winner.
Oh and Kat, CRUZ had the appropriate response to the candidate who apparently doesn’t know about the anti-donald super pac and how that all operates by law.
I Find it interesting a murders, poverty, crime, impending wars, political crimes, ambassadors left for dead, 50,000 perused and illegally displayed top secret emails, murdered via agents left for dead and their deaths, blamed on news… Hungry American children, autism at an all-time high… The list goes on… We focus on the idiasynchricies of a person with incredible managerial possibilities and continue to focus our positive energies on such fine upstanding political deviates that cover their evil with fancy suits and promises of erasing college debts or turning our entire country into the pipefitters union(bernie) wouldn’t it b amazing that with your entire lives work, when it comes time to focus on that to help millions… The world o only cares about the few things u do that r outside the common norm. Plz don’t let politicians bribe u too.
You seem to have found a full-time career in finding something to whine about. Maybe a book of your best whines could be in order.