Even liberals should miss Reagan: Melinda Henneberger

Rod Lurie, who directed the new TV movie Killing Reagan, noted at its recent Washington premiere that in this particularly brutish political year, “even Democrats are nostalgic” for the amiable actor who became our 40th president. It was a bow to the Republican hero whose willingness to do business across the aisle could easily earn him early retirement in 2016’s GOP.

The National Geographic film, airing Sunday, reminds Americans that Reagan was not mean-spirited, even praying for the mentally ill man who’d shot him. It took a lot to make him angry – to the point that even his pushy secretary of state Al Haig, who incorrectly insisted “I’m in charge here” after the shooting, usually failed to get a rise out of him. So respectful of the presidency that he wouldn’t remove his jacket in the Oval Office, Reagan was married twice, but adored the one true love of his life, describing himself in one of his regular letters to the mate he called “Mommie” as “the most married man in the world.”

Let’s just say it: It is impossible to imagine Ronald Reagan bragging like a middle-schooler in urgent need of being grounded for a couple of years about grabbing women’s genitals and getting away with it. Or saying any one of 100 other alarming things Donald Trump has said about women and other humans. Or, yes, behaving the way Bill Clinton did with an intern.

Unlike the controversial but best-selling Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard book on which Killing Reagan was based, the movie treads lightly on the unproven theory that Reagan never recovered mentally from the shooting, which happened only 70 days into his presidency. And yes, given O’Reilly’s role in mixing the current toxic cocktail of what passes for political discourse, there’s irony in the Fox News host’s co-authorship of so calming a look back at a president who rarely scowled and never told off-color jokes.

My favorite scene is the one in which Reagan, played by Tim Matheson, jokes on the operating table that he sure hopes his surgeon is a Republican, and his doctor answers, “We’re all Republicans today, Mr. President.”

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Oh for those gentler times, in which we knew we were all in this together, right?

Alas, no. Though that exchange did happen, even back then, we did not necessarily all draw together at moments of crisis. In 1981, as a recent college grad, I was a volunteer in a small Catholic social service agency in San Francisco’s Mission District that served women coming out of violent relationships. I will never forget several of our clients dancing and woo-hooing into the office on the day Reagan was shot, all set to celebrate his death.

Less than a year later, the Reagan administration cut job training programs like that one, with results that are with us even now. He ended the Cold War, but long ignored the AIDS crisis. He built real relationships with Democrats like House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who was one of the first friends he allowed to visit him in the hospital after he was shot. But he also stoked the unfortunate myth of the Cadillac-driving “welfare queen,” and maintained such close and supportive ties with repressive regimes in Central America that critics blame him for the wars that forced Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans to flee to Los Angeles and New York, where some joined the gangs they later brought back home with them.

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He revitalized his party, but as governor of California signed a bill that deinstitutionalized the mentally ill in an era still so primitive on that front that the psychiatrist treating Reagan’s would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., assured his parents that they just needed to show him some tough love.

Reagan’s policies are surely the reason Hillary Clinton supporter Cynthia Nixon, who plays Nancy Reagan in Lurie’s film, did not smile along with her co-stars when he suggested at the premiere that even Democrats missed the man. They are also a reason to ask whether it really matters that Reagan kept his jacket on — and his pants.

But my answer is yes, it does. We’re about to appreciate afresh that no matter who is elected in November, the drama-free personal dignity of presidents as politically different as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama remains a consequential as well as comforting counterpoint to non-stop shouting and scandal. And in a time of all-caps communication, that’s an example that may be even more important because we so often fail to live up to it.

Melinda Henneberger, a political writer and a visiting fellow at Catholic University of America's Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow her on Twitter @MelindaDC.

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