Ronald
Wilson Reagan 1911 - 2004 - my personal epitaph
Not that I have ever forgotten about him. There were many days
in the last years when I wondered how former President Ronald Reagan
might be doing, hoped his disease might be gracious and merciful to him
and his family, searched the internet to find sites dealing with him
and his presidency.
When I heard of his death late on Saturday, June 5th 2004, though,
vivid memories came back into my mind and heart and a mixture of
sadness for that man`s passing finally away from this world and
gratitude for having been able to witness the time of his presidency.
And anger on hearing German TV news with all the old cliches about the
"last cold war warrior"; slight anger, really, for I have my own truth
about him, my own memories, my own gratitude and my own reverence.
A shining city upon a hill - I glanced it during the years of the
Reagan presidency - and never again since then.
It was about 1976 when I first read about Ronald Reagan (when he had
almost a lifetime behind himself); I was 14 years old then, read the
TIME Magazine to improve my English. He was running for the presidency,
lost to the incumbent Gerald Ford and the dreadful, dreary Carter years
of the late seventies followed. Of course, as an underage German who
has never been to the United States of America all this should have
been of minor importance to me . And yet it was not: I had always had
strong (anti-communist, anti-socialist) political views, even when I
was very young, inborn or educated into me (e.g. by my grandmother with
whom I was allowed to watch debates in the German Bundestag in times
when Konrad Adenauer still spoke there and I was hardly six years old).
To me it was important what happened in the one nation that was able to
protect Germany from being taken by sinister forces so few kilometers
away from my home in southeastern Bavaria. To me it was important where
in the world people did not fall to socialist ideas but upheld their
beliefs in freedom, pursuit of happiness and self-responsibility.
Margaret Thatcher was one spark of hope when she came into power in
Great Britain. Jimmy Carter was a nightmare. Really - that was what I
felt: seeing this dreary, sad, depressing American president
talking of malaise and making it a reality really was very hard for me,
though a German, though far away, though with a government of my own to
dislike.
Ronald Reagan was different: sure, here was one major politician whose
every political convictions I shared; the first in my life who said the
very things I thought about the world in my own mind or which I could
easily adopt and believe in. But more, much more than this, even from
my scarce resources of gathering information about him I could feel his
good-humouredness, his joviality, his interest in people, his joy
of life, his basic well-meaning, his hospitable and humane nature, his
courage, his big-heartedness which
to me soon became the hallmark and the basic personal traits of this
man. And a wisdom that was more than mastery of facts and details but
referred to fundamental questions of man and his society.
I was not very astonished when I found in our school library a
collection of transcripts from the McCarthy hearings on unamerican
activities and read what the friendly witness Ronald Reagan had told
the tribunal: asked whether in his view the American communist party
should be prohibited by law the anti-communist Reagan quoted Thomas
Jefferson and his trust in the strength of an informed American
democracy and public; no, in Ronald Reagan`s view the communist party
should not be made illegal; it was important to inform the American
public, to give it all the facts, to give it the arguments of
democracy and freedom - and to habe trust in the American people to
draw its own and right and good conclusions. These views, expressed 20
years before I ever heard of Ronald Reagan did not fit into European
cliches to be read in the newspapers of these days and ever since, but
were very well compatible with my own picture of Ronald Reagan that I
had begun to form.
In 1980 I was close to finishing school (which I did in June 1981) and
English was one of my main subjects. We were encouraged to discuss
things of our interest during our English course and soon I found
myself arguing for the Ronald Reagan campaign, while most of my fellow
students did not share my enthusiasm. I had become a fervent admirer of
Ronald Reagan.
I remember very well the day of his first inauguration in January 1981.
I searched AFN on my parents` radio, sat there in my parents` living
room and listened live to his speech (although the transmission was not
good and full of atmospheric noises); I even think that somewhere there
still should be the casette tape on which I recorded the broadcast.
Some parts of the speech I learned by heart those days: the passages
about America beeing a beacon of hope and a pillar of freedom. When
they sung "Oh beautiful America" on that day, I felt that good times
were to come now - and come they did.
Of course I was young then, in my prime, my personal world was full of
the options of youth and some of my memories of the Reagan years
certainly are gilded with the warmth that almost everyone feels when he
looks back to that time of his life. But I was happy politically then,
as well. Ronald Reagan restored America`s pride which had been almost
unrecognizable under the Vietnam, Watergate, Jimmy Carter and Tehran
debris of the 70s; and with that in my view he restored many things
that were good and noble and valuable in the rest of the Western world,
as well. Ronald Reagan restored America`s strength, which had been
declining, and with it the strenght of all the free World. He restored
moral values of family, of a god-loving society, of personal charity
and care for our next as opposed to undiscriminate and soulless state
welfare. He showed personal grit and courage when shot in an
assassination attempt (oh God, I so much feared it might all be over
after so few months and I did pray for him). The pictures of young
Americans shouting and demanding "four more
years" for this old man in 1984 showed how important he had become to
the future of America. And he did all this with
an air of well-meaning which was sincere and which I had never before
seen in any politician -nor ever after.
For all that he touched my heart as well as my political mind, for all
that I really loved him - and I still do to this day.
Those who ridiculed him for his "eight-hour days with long breaks in
between" (O-tone German TV on the day of his death), for not mastering
all the details of complex political developments, for delegating the
fine-tuning of political action to his lieutentants never realized that
this was part of what made him great: politics is not petty details;
petty details are dealt with by accountants and technocrats; politics
is about having a vision of what things should be like, is about
finding the direction for society to head into, is about translating
well-meaning and a love of people into images and descriptions for a
better future. The ability to do exactly that, his basic convictions
and visions made Ronald Reagan different from the bunch of uninspiring
technocratically minded politicians of his and our times. His speeches
may have been influenced by his Hollywood experiences, may have been
good acting, as well, but they gave me - and many others - something to
care for, something to be consoled by, something to work and strive
for, something to caress our souls as well as our minds.
We need not discuss whether his political actions and his presidency
were successful: the Soviet empire and threat is no longer, Germany and
Europe are reunited, America is still strong and proud. Success? - I
deem so, yes. There are other great problems and daunting threats in
the world of today - what we dearly lack is the benign leader that
Ronald Reagan has been.
To me the 80s of the last century were the best time of my life, and
this to a great deal due to how I experienced the man in the White
House. Success? For me this man and his presidency were very very
important and valuable, yes. When he left the public my own world grew
colder and greyer; my own personal truth.
I am glad that Ronald Reagan has died the way he is reported to have:
cared for by his family. A picture that suits this man very well.
On June 5th, to quote President George W. Bush, a great American life
ended at a ripe age; an American life, true, but when the bell tolled
for Ronald Reagan I heard it sound very very loudly, as well, and I
think so did many people all over the world. Farewell, Mr. President
and god bless you!