It is never too late," George Eliot wrote, "to be what you might have been."
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Ronald Reagan very much believed in that. He refashioned himself any number of times, always keeping track of the goal, never keeping track of the clock.
As was often pointed out when he ran for president in 1980, he would become 70 within a few weeks of being inaugurated. Only William Henry Harrison had been that old when he became president, and he died of pneumonia one month later.
Ronald Reagan didn't care. Things had always worked out for him. Which was one source of his optimism: He had achieved everything he set out to achieve. He had gone from humble beginnings to become a sportscaster, then an actor, then a governor, and, finally, president.
He had always attained his goals, had always lifted himself up by his own bootstraps, and saw no reason others couldn't do the same--once he lifted the burden of the welfare state from their shoulders, that is. "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people," Reagan said in his famous 1964 televised speech on behalfof the Republican Party, "is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits."
Such things were not needed, not by Ronald Reagan anyway. Not only was his own life evidence ofthe fact, he felt, but so was the other great influence onhis thinking: the movies. In the movies, things almost always turned out for the best. Things almost always turned out just swell.
Reagan knew the movies were fantasy, but he knew that Americans loved fantasy, and it was a world in which he liked to dwell, a world where America was always right, where good always triumphed over evil, and where a sunny, can-do attitude and a bright smile were better than a pocketful of gold. "For Ronald Reagan, the world of legend and myth is a real world," said Patrick Buchanan, former White House communications director, in 1988. "He visits it regularly, and he's a happy man there." Presidents we now associate with hope and optimism--John F. Kennedy, for instance--often sounded the most somber notes in their speeches, as if the weight of the world was upon their shoulders, which, of course, it was. In his inaugural address Kennedy pledged to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
This was not the language of Ronald Reagan. He promised peace and prosperity, guns and butter, a triumphant America and a vanquished Soviet Union--all without any real sacrifice on the part of the American people.
"Let's make America great again!" he said. And his "morning in America" and "shining city upon a hill" were designed to stand in marked contrast to the gloom and doom of Jimmy Carter's malaise.
Things would work out because they always did, they always had. All Americans needed was a leader who could give them a sense of confidence, inspiration, and hope--just as he had done in the movies. Just as he had done when he played a dying football player and asked his team to "win one for the Gipper." As Reagan told broadcaster David Brinkley near the end of his second term, "There have been times in this office when I've wondered how you could do the job if you hadn't been an actor."
