Excerpt from Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated p. 271
The Reagan era marked the beginning of a new conception of the presidency, one that reinforced the twentieth-century tendency toward presidential domination of the political system. It was symbolic that Reagan attained the presidency by defeating the one president who had promised the American people that he would never lie to them. In 1985 Reagan's administration proceeded to violate the law by covertly supplying weapons to Iran and, in further violation, diverted some of the profits derived from the arms sale to the Nicaraguan "contras," despite a congressional restriction on such assistance. Then the administration proceeded to lie about the transactions. Reagan would come to symbolize the emergence of a political culture in which lying was merely one component in a larger pattern wherein untruthfulness, make-believe, and and actuality were seamlessly woven.The Reagan formula featured a president with little comprehension of, indeed little interest in, most of the major issues of the day but with an actor's skill in assuming a symbolic role, that of quasi-monarch. That same formula also aimed at replacing the idea of an engaged and informed citizenry with that of an audience which, fearful of nuclear war and Soviet aggression, welcomed a leader who could be trusted to protect and assure them of their virtue by retelling familiar myths about national greatness, piety, and generosity. It was demagoguery adapted to the cinematic age: he played the leader while "we the people" relapsed into a predemotic state.
Ronald Reagan converted a life of inauthenticity into a political art form by which the artist internalizes the inauthentic but expresses it as authenticity, the artful as artless. He had begun his career as a sports broadcaster who, without viewing the actual baseball game, "re-created" it for an invisible radio audience, embroidering the bare facts with colorful and imagined detail. Next followed a career of "real" acting. Reagan came not only to identify himself with his various roles but also to imbibe and reuse bits of wisdom from assorted movie scripts. Then came his stint as paid apologist ("host") for General Electric, extolling the virtues of capitalism, technological progress, the free market, and a notion of government whose principal--almost sole--responsibility was national defense. All that was required of the audience was to suspend disbelief.Inauthenticity need not imply deceit or insincerity. Rather it could simply mean imagining and believing in the imagined--which is what actors do. Reagan believed in all of the dynamics we have previously associated with inverted totalitarianism: unqualified admiration for the marvels of technology, free market corporate capitalism, and even a deep eschatological belief in the coming of Armageddon. What was the image of Reagan standing triumphantly beside the ruins of the Berlin Wall but that of a latter-day Joshua tearing down the walls of Jericho before entering the promised land?The roles Reagan played in his earlier career were an apprenticeship for his original contribution to American government, the creation of a "performance president" who fashioned illusion (a tough leader who had learned to throw a crisp salute) from inauthenticity (almost persuading himself that he had been present when inmates were freed from concentration camps). With little or no interest in policy and the details of governance he took on the task of evoking nostalgia, overlaying the present with an idealized past, warmer, believing, guileless, "a shining city on the hill" that provided an illusion of national continuity while obscuring the radical changes at work. The other element characterizing his administration was a presidential entourage that included hard-nosed, ideological zealots and operatives from the corporate world and the public opinion industry. These agents were intent on expanding the powers of the president, reducing governmental oversight of the economy, overriding environmental safeguards, and dismantling welfare programs....--
James A. Nichols IV
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"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." ---Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)
"I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians." Charles De Gaulle (1890 - 1970)
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