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The Holy Teflon Emperor

The BS meters were flying off the charts all week long here in Washington and across Mediaworld. For those of us, with low tolerance levels for mind manipulation, it was a tough time. But there were a number of lessons to be learned and, if you turn off the tube and close your eyes, it is easy to also imagine the founders of this great republic rolling in their graves as Washington, the concept, put on one of its most imperial spectacles ever.

The lies were flying around so fast and furious --all in the name of feel-good, they say-- that it's hard to know where to start. But let's begin with the event itself: it was said that we haven't had a presidential funeral since Lyndon Johnson's 18 years ago and that the big deal we made over Reagan was somehow just another turn of a long wheel. They knew that few around could remember that far back and that, in fact, there were marked differences. Importantly, the caisson march down Pennsylvania Avenue was evocative of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated while in office. For those deaths the nation was in trauma and the healing power of great mourning and procession had a truly profound state function.

The Reagan funeral was orchestrated for wholly different purposes. It was meant to erase memories and to bolster what had been the rising tide of conservatism in America, of which Reagan played an important role, and which most recently has been brought to decline by his ideological successors. The script for the funeral was meticulously developed by people in concert with Nancy Reagan, who has been determined to do her best to redeem herself and burnish the reputation of her late husband, a man who has virtually been off the public stage for over 10 years as he suffered from a progressive mental and physical affliction that held no way back.

As to the major myths: It is absurd to insist that Ronald Reagan single-handedly won the Cold War. As Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview to the Washington Post this week, we all lost the Cold War for its great material costs and for the apocalyptical destruction it almost brought down on all our heads. In many ways, Gorbachev's policy changes from within and without as the Stalinist model collapsed, forced Reagan's hand and in that light, we can be thankful that Reagan was wise enough not to snatch defeat from the hands of victory as might have been had he been a more stubborn and insensitive man insistent on waging war at all costs.

For those who wish to give Reagan and all former presidents for that matter, their due respect in passing, it is perfectly reasonable to provide the trappings of state mourning, from lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda to a funeral in the National Cathedral. But the enormity of the expense that has been lavished on the Reagan affair is obscene. Will anybody add up just how much has been spent on military and police honor guards, the shutting down of the federal government for a day, the cost of flying Air Force 1 back and forth the country, etc... all for this amazing display of imperial power?

Here are the myths: Reagan was a simple man of the people who wished to bring back the virtues of the Republic in a time of seeming decline by lowering taxes and diminishing the power of the federal government. His simple but clear vision would bring us forth from the quagmire of Vietnam to a straightforward policy based on traditional American ideals of strength and freedom.

Most media-raised Americans today would be amazed by a visit to the Congressional Cemetery on Capitol Hill, a nearly forgotten place that is mainly used today by intrepid Capitol Hill inhabitants to exercise their dogs. Outside of J. Edgar Hoover and his longtime live-in companion, Clyde Tolson, very few dignitaries choose to be buried in the cemetery anymore. What's interesting about the place for the purposes of this discussion are the cenotaphs that were used as burial markers. This most democratic of concepts was that no one should have a more grandiose burial marker than anyone else; so a standard gravestone, designed by the same man, Benjamin Latrobe, who architected the Capitol, the
cenotaph,was dedicated to each of the dignitaries and even bore a standard inscription for senator and congressman alike.

We throw around the terms man of the people and frugality today the way the ancient Romans pined for the simpler days of their Republic. It's not hard on this funeral day to be reminded of the emperor Augustus whose burial was also manipulated by his wife Livia and those closest to the seat of power. Augustus, who brought a degree of calm to a government that had been rocked by assassination (Julius Caesar) and civil wars, always spoke of returning the government back to the senate and people. He was, he said, a kind of benign emperor in a temporary situation. Augustus was known to laugh at the inhabitants of his Eastern empire who had worshipped their kings as gods on earth. He also liked to play the role of simple farmer tending his own fruit trees up on that glittering hill above Rome, the Palatine, where his palace nestled.

But by the time he had died, he had lost all contact with the outside world and his second wife Livia had managed to get her son Tiberius, a man detested by Augustus, named successor. In gratitude, Livia had an immense temple built in the Forum below dedicated to a new god, the recently passed Augustus. And so the wheel turned and there would never be a republic in Rome again. After Tiberius came Caligula, who showed his disdain by naming a horse high priest and Senator. Caligula also waged a war in which he marched his army north towards the Germans and when he found the going rough --too much rain-- returned home in declared triumph bringing with him trunks filled with seashells; booty, he told his subjects won by his resolute victory over the sea god, Neptune. No longer would Romans have to wait for their emperors to die before they became gods. In this way the wheel turned.

Reagan, the anti tax and spender, the man who took government off the backs of the people, has two major federal buildings named after him in Washington, the international trade center and the airport. Both edifices are the most ornate and expensive in the city's history. Reagan didn't control the budgets but he saw no problem allowing his name to be placed upon them.

Reagan, a straight shooter, of course, took ultimate blame for the illegal trading of arms for hostages and the transfer of funds from that deal over the head of Congress to the hands of fighters battling leftist governments in Central America. It was a tawdry story that might have led to the impeachment of a lesser Teflon man. He said: "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages".... "my heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." He went on to say "mistakes have been made."

There is now a move afoot among those propagating the Reagan myth that his portrait should be put on a piece of money. The 40th President, as we have said, was the leader of a movement that would shrink government. He brought down tax levels for wealthy Americans while agreeing to allow payroll taxes --that are supposed to cover Social Security and Medicare-- to rise. Payroll taxes, on a percentage basis, unfortunately, take a much greater toll on lower and middle income Americans. As the instigator of a great military build-up, he tripled the budget during his two terms of office and left with the largest budget deficit in American history, a deficit that was erased by Clinton and then surpassed by George W. Bush in his first four years.

Vice President Cheney was able to say recently that Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't count. Our advice to the camp that advocates this kind of claptrap in the name of Ronald Reagan: Put his picture on the $1,000 bill, it may not get much circulation now but there was also a time when 1,000 lire seemed like a lot of denaro in Italy.

Reagan was a charming, genial man who served this country in some ways well and in others, not so well at all. He deserves our respect for his service but watch out for the myth makers. It's not Reagan's real legacy they have in mind but their own.