If you have trouble remembering President Reagan or what he stood for - if that is causing you to question whether he really impacted you as a person and as an American - if you wonder how you should feel upon his passing, I would like to share with you how I feel about it.
President Reagan took office when I was ten years old. Prior to his taking office, I had heard for most of my life about Watergate and what a crook President Nixon was, but did not really understand Watergate or why President Nixon was a crook. I knew what stagflation and the misery index were from seeing them explained on the news, but I had no appreciation for the impact they had on the American people. I knew President Carter was a peanut farmer from Georgia and that he gave away the Panama Canal, but I had no idea how he had become our president – were there really Americans who would elect somebody to give away the Panama Canal?
Prior to President Reagan’s election, I did not know anybody on active duty in the armed forces. This was probably because there just weren’t that many people on active duty in the armed forces by the time President Reagan took office. If you talk to anybody who served through the Reagan years, they will quickly let you know that he was their commander in chief of choice.
Though I had a deep love of country by age ten, I also had developed a deep cynicism about politics and politicians based on the adult conversations I had heard all my life. Strangely enough, I did not see President Reagan as a politician; though I was glad he defeated that politician from Georgia who gave away the Panama Canal. It was strangely American that I would identify more closely with a candidate from the opposite side of the country more than the incumbent president from just next door in Georgia.
President Reagan quickly became my president. I grew up while he served his term and learned from him what a president should do and how he should carry himself. He embodied the office of President like Bear Bryant embodied Alabama football – and for those of you who do not know Alabama football, there is no higher compliment. I respected President Reagan and thus grew to respect the office of President of the United States, though I still could not figure out how that Carter character had snuck in there. Though I would have not admitted it to my friends, I actually enjoyed those nights when President Reagan was on all three channels of my TV talking to the American people. When something bad happened, I wanted to hear what President Reagan had to say about it. If I did not understand an issue or I heard if some world events report on television that troubled me, I wanted to hear what President Reagan had to say about it. No matter how grim Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather or 60 Minutes could make things seem, President Reagan could reassure us in just a few words. After five minutes with the Gipper in our living rooms, we all knew that there was no challenge Americans could not meet.
What are some of the issues that President Reagan clarified for me? Though I had heard it discussed in school and even sometimes at church, I never understood exactly what abortion was until I heard President Reagan clearly state that it was the practice of killing babies.
I knew growing up that the USSR opposed us and was constantly taught that war with them was inevitable and virtually un-winnable. I heard many say that President Reagan was recklessly speeding up the process. I began to understand why the USSR opposed us when President Reagan described them as the Evil Empire and went on to describe America as a Shining City on a Hill. He made it clear to me that we were the good guys and they were the bad guys. As for the conflict being un-winnable for the United States, how about victory without firing a shot! Left by Mr. Reagan with no other choice, Mr. Gorbachev did tear down that wall! People my age had lived all their lives with that wall, but Mr. Reagan knew it could come down.
Growing up, it took me a while to realize that what I was taught in church about Jesus being the answer to life’s problems was different from what I was hearing in school, where I heard quite often that government was the answer. When were we to turnto God and when were we to turn to government? President Reagan cleared that up, too. He let us know that he believed government needed to get off the backs of the American people. He actually said he was most proud of the fact that his administration had turned the government back over to the people. He proved this when he did what most adults I knew considered the impossible by cutting taxes in the face of a Congress controlled by the big government Democrats. He believed that was the people’s money, not the government’s money and it should be returned to its rightful owner. After cutting taxes, I fully expected him to do something about death, too. Though he may have been our greatest President and the Great Communicator, President Reagan was still just a man with no power over death. He did, however, have a lot of influence over many, many lives (as of Friday, June 11, 2004, we are still counting the lives he touched).
Unlike most politicians of both parties today, President Reagan did not believe in government, but he did believe in God. He spoke with God and he spoke about God very often. Before Rick Warren wrote The Purpose Driven Life, Ronald Reagan lived The Purpose Driven Life. He believed the goodness of the American people came from their belief in God and I know today that he was absolutely right. When teachers and government kicked God out of school and replaced him with Darwin kids started bringing guns to school to speed up the false doctrine of natural selection. When government began replacing God in families, hope was replaced by mind altering drugs (some of which are proscribed by doctors) and “family counselors”. Now that government has effectively undermined the traditional family, it is beginning to redefine the family despite the grave consequences that will have for future generations. President Reagan spoke often of honoring God and limiting government and today his wisdom is becoming more and more evident.
The older I got, the more I realized that President Reagan was my president. He was the one who expressed the ideas that formed my political, religious, and moral positions. He knew good from evil, knew who to pray to, what to pray for, and made a conscious decision to expect the best of people. If President Reagan had only been my neighbor, he would have probably had the same impact on me. Thank God, he was my President and he had a similar impact on millions.
In a few months, we are going to get another chance to select a President. Though we elected the right man for the job when we elected President Reagan, that has not been true for every election. What will people twelve years my junior say about President Clinton’s influence on their character? This year, let us select a President who will embrace optimism – who can recognize good and evil – a president who knows who to pray to and who to pray for – a president who trusts the American people. When you go to vote, ask yourself these questions or people twenty-eight years from now may be asking, “How did that Kerry character sneak into office?”
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