3am REGULARS
FAT MAN ON THE LEFT XVI - WHY ALL THE FUSS ABOUT RONALD REAGAN?
"One of the unfortunate results of enshrining a delusional Hollywood actor as president was that real grace and charm such as McGee had became verboten. There are those who say Reagan was charming. How could a man who said he didn't dye his hair black or wear makeup be charming when anyone who saw him up close knew that just wasn't true?"
by Lionel Rolfe
COPYRIGHT © 2004, 3 A.M. MAGAZINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Judging by all the hullabaloo over Ronald Reagan's long overdue death, making out that he was not only a great president but a great man, I must be the only person in the world with dubious memories of the fellow.
I first met Reagan face-to-face in the late '60s when he was California governor. I was staying with a Republican assemblyman by the name of Patrick McGee in the state capital for a few days. McGee had decided I was going to be a great political journalist. I had just finished a brief stint as a police beat reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. McGee invited me to spend some time with him in Sacramento so I could discover what politics was really all about.
Now McGee was a Republican, as Republican as anyone could be in those long ago days before the ideologues took over the Republican party.
I always figured that unless you owned a bank, an oil company or an insurance company, being a Republican was a rather pointless act. Then along came Reagan, who gave the ideological rightwinger types -- those glazed eyed fanatics who make me so nervous -- other reasons to be a Republican.
McGee was a bright guy whose political career had plummeted from the heights that had been predicted for him because of a proclivity for drink.
McGee was, as you might have guessed from the name, a charming Irishman who knew Latin and all kinds of literature -- unlikely attributes for a politician nowadays.
One of the unfortunate results of enshrining a delusional Hollywood actor as president was that real grace and charm such as McGee had became verboten. There are those who say Reagan was charming. How could a man who said he didn't dye his hair black or wear makeup be charming when anyone who saw him up close knew that just wasn't true?
McGee was the opposite of Reagan in other ways. Not only was he an immensely and genuinely charming man, he was quite frankly a womanizer.
Reagan had come to Sacramento, mentor to an administration composed, it would seem, primarily of business school graduates from USC, meaning their daddies usually owned insurance companies and such.
They were mostly ineffectual fellows, with pretty trophy wives. McGee had seduced maybe 90 percent of these fellows' spouses and thus was not universally loved by the Reaganites, including Reagan himself.
But McGee had become a powerful figure around Sacramento, and was, frankly, sort of the bagman for the highway lobby's contributions to Republican party coffers.
He took me to fancy steakhouses where large amounts of money were passed to him. He, in turned, passed out the largesse to Republican party candidates.
So although Reagan was obviously dubious about him, when McGee wanted to introduce me to the governor, I was quickly welcomed into the Inner Sanctum.
I had just grown a beard, a late '60s symbol which I still wear. Reagan was obviously not too comfortable shaking hands with me. But he did.
I forgot now what the conversation was about -- it was inane stuff. As I remember, Reagan was polishing a belt buckle or some such thing when we entered. It was obvious that while Reagan might not like McGee, his office was always open for him.
I think McGee, who had a sense of humor, had enjoyed bringing me into Reagan's office, knowing that I was not the usual type of person who visited the governor in his Inner Sanctum.
A few weeks later Reagan's daughter Maureen and I discussed the meeting. She laughed. She knew McGee, and knew her father, of course. In more recent years Maureen came to terms with her father, but in the '60s when I knew her she was quite down on him -- and particularly down on her stepmother, Nancy, who she described as a wicked witch.
Maureen's mother was Jane Wyman, quite a contrast to Nancy. Wyman was an intelligent woman -- Maureen no doubt got her brains from her mother.
She knew her father was stiff and uncomfortable around people like me and that, no doubt, was why McGee had brought me into his office, she told me.
The television has been droning on and on about Reagan in recent days, repeating over and over again what a great man he was, and so on and so forth. To me he was the man who enshrined ignorance, ushered in the "me" generation which venerated greed, destroyed the labor movement, began widening the economic gap between Americans, and leading the pack in heaping opprobrium on "intellectuals," thus enshrining stupidity and ignorance as part of the American way.
Now they are talking about replacing Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Reagan on our lowly dime. What an irony. Reagan was devoted to destroying FDR's New Deal, one of the best things that ever happened to this country. The New Deal was this nation's Social Contract. Reagan wanted to destroy it.
The gall of calling Reagan a great man, let alone a great president. What totalitarian doublespeak.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lionel Rolfe is the author of Literary L.A., Fat Man On The Left, and the forthcoming The Uncommon Relationship of Yaltah Menuhin and Willa Cather.
Photo by Boyd Lewis
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