Dixon, Illinois: Reagan's Small Town

(Last week, I wrote a piece for the New Statesman's election blog. I submitted this as well, but it doesn't seem to have made the cut. The shame! Amiable Dunce, though, is still a reliable host for my writing.)

At the dedication of his Presidential Library, Ronald Reagan took the opportunity to muse on his past and its contemporary relevance:

I grew up in a town where everyone cared about one another because everyone knew one another, not as statistics in a government program but as neighbours in need…Our neighbours were never ashamed to kneel in prayer to their makers nor were they ever embarrassed to feel a lump in their throat when old glory passed by. No one in Dixon, Illinois ever burned a flag and no one in Dixon would have tolerated it.

This was in 1991, in the midst of the culture wars that swamped American politics as the Cold War drifted into history. Patriotism and American values as defined by rural and small-town life defined conservative rhetoric in the renewed battle against liberalism, and Reagan here was asserting his continuing loyalty to the cause (incidentally, out of the five Presidents at that ceremony, only one place his hand on his heart during the national anthem – Jimmy Carter). Today, seventeen years later, such reminiscence would delight the GOP crowds who continue to turn out for a campaign which increasingly defines itself around the symbol of the small town. Here tradition and morality and independent conservatism thrive in apparent cohesion with the vision of the iconic President Reagan.

Reagan, though, had more to say about Dixon and the place of small towns in the American fabric. Peggy Noonan, in her memoir of the Reagan White House, recalled a meandering Oval Office conversation on economics and the changing shape of the family in the 20th Century. Reagan reflected:

It was the rise of the city, too…You know, those sleepy old towns where generation after generation lived. And then those kids in the Midwest left; there was nothing in those towns – Lord, that’s why I left! And they wanted to see the world, so they went to the cities…

Reagan escaped from Dixon, Illinois. He aimed for Chicago, ended up in Des Moines and before too long found his way to Los Angeles. Hollywood celebrated the small town, and in those days wore a rigid façade of wholesomeness, but it was there that Reagan was trained in the big city values of celebrity, vigorous creativity, vibrant commercialism, and active, progressive politics. While he was to give up on the latter, or turn it into something else, it was still the city that made the Reagan who became President, and which made him a heap of money. The shining city secured him the American dream, which he proceeded to promote for the rest of his life. It is not just that McCain/Palin marginalise large swathes of the American people with their narrow focus, it’s that they ignore this vital aspect of American mythology, the cities which forged the nation’s ideas, images and dreams, leaving their vision strangely stagnant.

Would President Reagan Have Knelt Before Zod?

Following a several month long hiatus, I have decided to resurrect this blog for three reasons.

1) It is a useful means of procrastination.

2) To plug the possibly short-lived Three Weeks in America, the musings of my sister as she ambles round the States.

3) Because the presidency looks like it will be getting some attention in the near future, and I may as well Be Part of History as well.


So anyway, we all get much of our understanding of the presidency from its on-screen representations. Clips such as the one below inform us about how the office works, how it reaches decisions and acts upon them, as well as inform American identity with dramatic representations of important historical moments:




So this raises a few questions. How would Senators Obama and McCain act in such a situation, and do we want a president who would, in the end, kneel before Zod? Personally, I am surprised this wasn't raised in any of the debates - it's an important foreign policy issue. Reagan talked often about the potential of an extra-terrestrial threat, though this was in the context of how it might unite the interests and identity of the US, the USSR and the world in general. He never specifically addressed how he might act, as far as I know, in the face of an invasion by rogue Kryptonians (he did watch Superman II, though, at Camp David on 16th June, 1981). I suspect it may have been much like in the film: try to fob the alien off with Mike Deaver, then submit with an air of noble defiance. Pretty much the best you could hope for in that situation. Maybe Reagan, though, would never have allowed Superman to wander off and give up his powers in the first place.

I have a feeling that this might be Obama's course of action as well, while McCain would try something more reckless and angry, maverick if you will (is he even able to kneel?). But then what have you got? One dead president - and the choice between millennia of Kryptonian tyranny or President Palin. You decide.

Standing Athwart History, Yelling "Stop!"

"Listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered!"

This was directed at Gore Vidal in a live TV debate at the 1968 Chicago Convention and was clearly not one of William F. Buckley's finest moments, but it was the first that came to mind on hearing today that Buckley had died, age 82 (The encounter can be read about, and apparently downloaded, here).

It is unfair to open with this spat, because although it brings to mind the dreadful, shouty bickering that seems to characterise American political discourse, Buckley deserves credit for his articulate, intelligent and determined efforts to confront and change the American political mind. For over fifty years, Buckley has been a leader of American conservatism, taking it from the fringes into the forefront. While Reagan took his confrontational conservative ideology to public office, articulating it in consistent popular rhetoric until it represented the mainstream, Buckley was of the elite, the now-maligned intelligensia, articulating his conservatism in its terms through his journal, The National Review, which challenged the weighty institutions of The Nation and The New Republic. Equally, this eventually became a standard in American political thought. This is from the first issue of The National Review, November 19, 1955:

We begin publishing, then, with a considerable stock of experience with the irresponsible Right, and a despair of the intransigence of the Liberals, who run this country; and all this in a world dominated by the jubilant single-mindedness of the practicing Communist, with his inside track to History. All this would not appear to augur well for NATIONAL REVIEW. Yet we start with a considerable — and considered — optimism.

An optimism that, it seems, was well placed. But now, with both Buckley and the Communists out of the way, perhaps our current despair at the intransigent beneficiaries of his (and Reagan's) success can make way for a bit of optimism.

Reagan in the Race

Barak Obama and Mike Huckabee have received an equal number of votes in the contest to be crowned The Next Reagan, maybe some sort of broader system of elections should be organised to figure it out.

The memory of Ronald Reagan has been alive in the presidential race, with candidates in each party bickering over who likes him most. Clinton and Obama have clumsily accused each other praising him and his legacy, which bizarrely demonstrated the absence of of any Democrat leader of the past forty years with whom the candidates could identify to their benefit. Instead, they must disassociate themselves with the political trends of their age (Bill Clinton presents a problem for each: Hillary faces an increasing and multifaceted danger of being seen merely as Clinton II, or a stepping stone back to the White House for Bill, while any attempt by Obama to appropriate Clinton would just be insane - for now at least). It is of course in the GOP race where Ronnie gets the most action.

Before last week's debate at the Reagan Library, the LA Times drew up this little chart showing how many times each candidate had mentioned Reagan's name in previous debates (their chart, if you look, is really dull, so I jazzed it up a bit):


Andrew Malcolm suggests that considering Giuliani's glorious crash and burn, and Romney's faltering campaign, Reagan's name must not be as popular as once assumed. I'd argue that the numbers instead show which of the candidates are most comfortable with projecting their own distinct (conservative) image. Giuliani, being a useless vessel of ugliness and sheer ambition, had little to show for himself and thus made the most effort to cloak his shallow, mean soul in symbols of the past - 9/11 and Ronald Reagan. Dr. Paul, conversely, needs little imagery to shore up his own special brand. He has though, in I think one of the more interesting invocations of Reagan, argued that the Gipper's hasty withdrawal from Lebanon is the perfect model for his own isolationist designs.

In Wednesday's debate, Reagan was summoned again. McCain mentioned four times that he was a "foot-soldier" in the Reagan Revolution, marching happily under that sunny banner, bayoneting liberals this way and that. Huckabee assured us that he would not question Reagan's decisions in Reagan's own temple, (blasphemy I will be sure to avoid when I make the haj later this year): "I'm not that stupid. If I was, I'd have no business being president." Romney declared that Reagan would find McCain's campaign tactics "reprehensible."

To the final question - "Would Ronald Reagan endorse you? And if so, why?" - Romney gave a creeping, arrogant and intellectually hollow answer:

Absolutely. Ronald Reagan would look at the issues that are being debated right here and say, one, we're going to win in Iraq, and I'm not going to walk out of Iraq until we win in Iraq.

Ronald Reagan would say lower taxes. Ronald Reagan would say lower spending.

Ronald Reagan would -- is pro-life. He would also say I want to have an amendment to protect marriage.

Ronald Reagan would say, as I do, that Washington is broken. And like Ronald Reagan, I'd go to Washington as an outsider -- not owing favors, not lobbyists on every elbow. I would be able to be the independent outsider that Ronald Reagan was, and he brought change to Washington.

Ronald Reagan would say, yes, let's drill in ANWR. Ronald Reagan would say, no way are we going to have amnesty again. Ronald Reagan saw it, it didn't work. Let's not do it again.

Ronald Reagan would say no to a 50-cent-per-gallon charge on Americans for energy that the rest of the world doesn't have to pay.

Ronald Reagan would have said absolutely no way to McCain- Feingold.

Much of this is news to me, and I expect few in the GOP will be impressed by such shameless appropriation. There's no argument behind his claims, no sense of familiarity with his hero, no respect, Goddammit! Huckabee gave the best answer, one that actually displays some elements of Reagan's style, and importantly, an understanding of why it is that Reagan's memory so dominates Republican discourse:

I think it would be incredibly presumptuous and even arrogant for me to try to suggest what Ronald Reagan would do, that he would endorse any of us against the others.

Let me just say this, I'm not going to pretend he would endorse me. I wish he would. I would love that, but I endorse him, and I'm going to tell you why.

It wasn't just his specific policies, but Ronald Reagan was something more than just a policy wonk. He was a man who loved this country, and he inspired this country to believe in itself again.

What made Ronald Reagan a great president was not just the intricacies of his policies, though they were good policies. It was that he loved America and saw it as a good nation and a great nation because of the greatness of its people.

And if we can recapture that, that's when we recapture the Reagan spirit. It's that spirit that has a can-do attitude about America's futures and that makes us love our country whether we're Democrats or Republicans. And that's what I believe Ronald Reagan did -- he brought this country back together and made us believe in ourselves.

And whether he believes in us, I hope we still believe in those things which made him a great leader and a great American.

Reaganesque!

God Save the Queen

Guy Fawke's night and Elizabeth: The Golden Age have me in a whirl of anti-Catholic fervour. They're always trying to assassinate our monarchs and I for one am sick of it.

Not really, of course. The fireworks are irritating me a bit, but not to the point of religious intolerance, and while there was plenty of outrageous papist villainy in the movie, that really just inflamed my hatred of the Spaniards, not Catholics in general. I was quite fond of Mary Stuart, for example.

The film is great; it could have been a bit more consistently paced, but the themes hold it together, and where the plot occasionally fails to engage, you can always look at Cate Blanchett's dress, or the architecture. It's visually brilliant, and completely unabashed in it dramatic composition of each scene. Lots of absurdly high shots of vast palace hallways, and painstakingly delicate positioning of the cast, so that some scenes almost resemble tableaux. Particular long-held shots of Elizabeth are clearly intended to recall the austere, splendid portraits that we are so familiar with - and the execution of Mary scene really reminded me of a painting I once saw, but I can't seem to find it on the net, so I may have just imagined a resemblance to an imaginary painting.

I've always liked Elizabeth, she reminds me of an English Athena: wise and beautiful, chaste and ferocious. Golden Age matched this view, where by the end, after overcoming the earthly temptations of Clive Owen, she came across as positively Godlike. Standing alone on the shores in exquisite armour, she seems bring about the storm that destroys the armada with her own divine, elemental will - possibly with the aid of her Merlin-esque confidant, Dr. John Dee. Phillip II of Spain, meanwhile, is a bowlegged impish fiend, his darkness put out by the light of the English Queen.

One other small aspect I enjoyed was Walter Raleigh's description of his ambitious vision for his colony in the new land of Virginia: "a Shining City." This is borrowed from John Winthrop who sixty years later used the biblical image of "the City on a Hill" to describe his hopes for his fledgling Massachusetts, and from Ronald Reagan who revived and personalised the phrase four hundred years later to envisage his own America - "the Shining City on a Hill." So there you have it, this film is about Ronald Reagan, saving us from the forces of totalitarian fundamentalism.

A Scene From Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Graphic Reagan

Apologies to all for the inexcusable lapse in posting.




The above is from Ten Nights of the Beast, a perestroika era Batman story in which the KGBeast goes rogue and attempts to shut SDI research down forever - a dastardly scheme which will ruin the USA and involves the murder of its chief visionary, Ronald Reagan. It is not Reagan's first appearance in a Gotham City tale. In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns we see his colourful caricature bumble and ramble and reassure Americans as disaster approaches, from the safety of a TV screen and later, a radiation suit. No doubt he pops up elsewhere in the world of graphic literature. I seem to remember his distorted, ghastly visage appear in Alan Moore's ghostly and paranoid Brought to Light - any other examples will be gratefully received.

All this is preamble to the news that Reagan has finally got his own comic book. Ronald Reagan: The Graphic Biography was published last month and has been serialised here at Slate. As some of you may imagine, news of this (which first reached me via the Good Liberal) had me giggling and twirling with gleeful anticipation. It would be a wonderful merging of my interests, something that I had imagined myself on occasion. I had even more than once promised a strangely unenthusiastic Little Red Bull a script for him to draw, encountering Reagan at various stages of his life (this never got off the ground).

It is perhaps unsurprising then that when the book finally made it through the striking postmen and into my hands, I was a bit disappointed. First off, it is too small. It need not be a 300 style monument, but the tiny A5 pages make for a cramped and jerky narrative, and the story definitely deserves some panoramic images. The other problems indicate the difficulty not of incorporating Reagan's life into a visual narrative, but of making that narrative a "serious" biography (the publishing branch behind this is embarrassingly called "serious comics"). It becomes far to text heavy, driven by the captions rather than the panels. We are presented with a necessarily undetailed text, accompanied by illustrations in which the dialogue is almost only taken from actual quotes. This is done out of the understandable desire to keep the book factual, but it means that its medium loses its strengths. There is no fluidity, no action, no drama. The panels often represent scenes days or months apart, only linked by chronology and the explanations in the captions. Occasionally the authors are reduced to the crude iconography of editorial cartoons to represent an event, or a point, which reduces the weight and the innovation of the idea.

The problem is clear - to fully exploit the medium the narrative would be dramatised, and thus fictionalised, or it would have to become a lot more abstract. I'd be happy with either direction, but the purpose here is to write biography, not theatre or art. Kudos anyway to Helfer, Buccaletto and Staton - all experienced comics writers - for the idea and the attempt. Opening up new avenues for the medium to explore is always worth the effort, especially if they are historical, and even more especially if they are Reagan-themed. The next "Serious Comic" to be published will be about J. Edgar Hoover, apparently - hopefully they will have found some solutions to the problems they met with Reagan.

Earliest Political Memory

That despicable Tory, Caroline Hunt, has apparently tagged me in a blog meme. Being relatively new to the blogosphere, I have not heard of this practice before, but it seems quite straightforward - a bit like a chain letter. So, assuming that if I don't do this I will die a prompt and horrible death, I will now describe my Earliest Political Memory.

Such a task allows for a certain amount of self-mythologisation, a projection onto one's tiny past self of a formative instance that describes who one is today, or a version of what one would like to be. I could re-imagine my responses to the Gulf War, or the fall of the Berlin Wall which were, in truth, half-hearted and, well, childlike. I could invent a serious-minded five-year-old me who followed the catastrophes of the Sudanese Civil War with insight and mature world-weariness. All I really knew though, was that there was a War. What I will do, unsurprisingly, is bring it all back to Reagan.

Unfortunately, even here I have no clear memory of a single incident which set me on the course to where I am today, no recollection of any pithy insight or revelation. I do remember Reagan being The President, and that simple conflation could perhaps be the root of the fascination with which I regard him now. Scratching my head, the earliest memory of any specific reaction to Reagan involves a cartoon in Mad magazine from, I guess, 1987 or '88. I read this issue several times on that summer trip to the States, and it included comical take-offs of the movies Splash, and Big, I think. The cartoon in question was part of a series with the theme "It's cute when../It's not cute when..", and in this case went "It's cute when your children play at Cowboys. It's not cute when the President of the USA plays at cowboys." The images showed a delightful scamp in hat and bandana running around with a toy gun, juxtaposed with a caricature of the Gipper himself dressed in buckskins, grinning goofily and saddling up on a nuclear missile, to the alarm of some worried looking aides. I remember being informed enough at the time to understand why this was funny, and quite enjoying the idea of a happy man riding around on the back of a missile.

So that's it, I'll now pass on the burden and demand that dcat recount for us his memory of Strom Thurmond entering the Senate, or whatever.

Fidel Castro: American Hero

To be honest, I'm struggling to find an angle on this story, but I feel it deserves a mention. This week, marking the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Fidel Castro devoted a column in his newspaper Granma to a reflection on Cuban-American relations during the 1980s, in regard to Cuban responses to attempts on Ronald Reagan's life. First up is a full transcript of a conversation between the Cuban Foreign Minister and a US envoy in Havana about the recent shooting of the president, "written immediately after the meeting." This is a curious snapshot of the aftermath of the assassination, with Smith appearing quite shaken, and Malmierca sounding, at least in transcript, somewhat officious and robotic. There's a strange freshness to the script, in which after the formal exchange of concern and thanks, the two men briefly trade small information and speculation - familiar to any conversation in response to a recent but distant important event.

Castro presents this as a rather weak example of good Cuban intentions toward the USA, but he follows it up with the revelation that in 1984, he saved Reagan's life.

"A highly confidential report submitted in the summer of 1984 to an agent responsible for the security of Cuban representatives in the UN warned of a possible assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan by a far-right group in North Carolina. Upon receiving it, we immediately informed US authorities. Our official suggested that we deliver the information via Robert C. Muller, head of security of the US mission to the United Nations, with whom we maintained contact to ensure the protection of Cuban delegations visiting the international organization."

Apparently this resulted in the FBI rounding up the conspirators (something they seem to have forgotten about), and an informal word of thanks to the Cuban officials involved. The claims have been met with bafflement in the United States, but if Castro is making it up, it is not for the first time. The claim was initially made in a 1989 speech. Cuban-American relations were at a low point in 1984, a year after the invasion of Grenada and while interests clashed in Central America and Africa, where tens of thousands of Cuban troops fought wars of intervention. The significance of this, for Castro, lies in the constant threat of assassination that he himself has faced. Though by 1980, the US had officially rejected the idea of assassination, a high proportion of the 638 plots to kill the Cuban dictator were hatched during Reagan's administration. Castro seeks the high moral ground, showing that he will save the life of his enemy, even while his enemy seeks to kill him. One can understand why Cuba would likely see no benefit in allowing the murder of a US president, and the broader context of his regime, I am not quite convinced yet of Castro's benevolence. If it is true, I would certainly like to hear more details about who these right wing extremists were and why exactly they wanted to kill Reagan. I somehow doubt, however, that Castro will be forthcoming.

I'm still not sure, however, how this all segues in with the second revelation of Castro's column, that the US government has lied about its involvement in 9/11. Fidel's journalism leaves me confused, but definitely wanting more. Best line? "Blood donations have long constituted a tradition of the Revolution." No kidding.

R.I.P. Jane Wyman, 1917-2007

It is perhaps unfair that the obituaries of Jane Wyman, who died yesterday, focus so centrally on her marriage to Ronald Reagan, considering that the President had little contact with her in the near 60 years of his life which followed their 1948 divorce. Particularly since she had so little to do with his political career - his obsession with politics following his 1947 election to the presidency of the Screen Actors Guild was, it was suggested at the time, one of the reasons for their separation ("I'm so bored with him, I'll either kill him or kill myself," she is reported to have said). This is the fate, however, for America's first ex-wife of a President and mother of two of his children - Maureen, who's death sadly preceded both her parents, and Michael, the well-known conservative commentator. It is fair to say, anyway, that her lengthy and successful acting career would not merit her a mention on this blog were it not for her connection to the amiable dunce himself.

Their marriage was short-lived, and at the end tremendously unhappy, dying with the death of their prematurely born child. In its time, however, it was presented as an idyllic match, the innocent and beautiful love of two of Hollywood's favourite stars. To say it was a sham would go too far, but it was certainly an early example of Reagan's pervasive and fantastic public persona. "Jane and Ronnie have always stood for so much that is right in Hollywood," exclaimed the formidable Hollywood gossipist Louella Parsons, who claimed responsibility for the initial match and frequently presented the handsome couple as evidence of the industry's high moral values and chaste American ideals (the truth of which Parsons knew better than anyone). Such is the way of Hollywood, and you don't have to look to far to see similar games being played nowadays.

Wyman was a serious actress who met with much more acclaim and success than her second husband (another potential reason for their split), who no doubt did not envy the later supporting role of Nancy Davis. She no doubt also held admiration for Reagan's achievements, a respect most apparent in her consistent silence on their marriage and divorce.

Reconciliation or Recrimination?

In these recent heady days where we jittery world-watchers are on alert yet again for an imminent US invasion of Iran, it is hard not to imagine a broader agenda at work when a federal judge orders Iran to pay $2.6 billion in compensation to the survivors and the bereaved of the devastating attack on the US Marine barracks at the Beirut airport in 1983. Of course, I will not project that Dick Cheney has been pulling the strings behind Judge Lamberth's ruling, but the timing of the decision no doubt emphasises its significance, and will give support to any political depiction of Iran as a current threat and historical enemy to America. It also seems a rather strange move.

The precedent seems to be Libya's agreement in 2002 to compensate the families of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, but the differences are clear. Libya's payment, combined with something of an admission of complicity in the atrocity, were part of Gaddaffi's post-9/11 rapprochement with the west - a consensual political gesture, not the result of a unilateral ruling by a foreign domestic court. Iran, of course, refuses to pay, to recognise the authority of the court, or to admit to any responsibility for the attack. One might ask what the point of such a ruling is, when there is no hope of any forthcoming payment.

The Lockerbie bombing was also by anyone's definition a terrorist attack and an act of murder, but can the same be said for the barracks bombing? The barracks, after all, were a military installation in the middle of a warzone. While political expediency in face of the War Powers Act meant that in Washington, the Reagan Administration insisted on defining the Marine deployment as a neutral peacekeeping force, the reality on the ground was that the Multinational Force was aligned on one side of a civil war. Though bound by stringent rules of engagement not to fight, the Marines' vague objective to protect the crumbling Lebanese Government and train its army marked them out as a clear enemy to the various militias vying for control of Beirut, and even, to a lesser and more indirect extent, the IDF. The barracks bombing, while villainous and atrocious, was an act of war - how many acts of war result in demands for compensation?. Can the families of the Marines killed by sniper fire expect a similar court ruling?

Other questions arise, such as why Syria, also considered to be involved in the creation of the early incarnation Hezbollah which is generally credited with the attack, has not received a similar order. Then there is the fact that the extent of Iranian involvement in the attack is simply not known - did Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen order it? plan it? carry it out? or did they just give it blessing? All this is uncertain, which makes the basis for the ruling shaky. Stretching the questions further we might ask how the US government would respond to demands that it pay compensation to the Iranian victims of Saddam's army using US-made conventional or chemical weapons - let alone the civilian victims of the Contras. The court ruling seems to have little real authority, whether in precedent, logic, or in practical result.

At its very worst, this decision is politically designed (even if simply by one man) to escalate American public hostility towards Iran. At its best, it is an attempt to give relief and a sense of justice to over a thousand still-grieving Americans whose boys died on a mission of the best intentions but ultimately with no meaning or consequence. Either way, it is an odd, and entirely symbolic, use of the US justice system.

Close Reagan Aide Dies

"My obit will probably say 'Close Reagan Aide Dies,'" predicted Michael Deaver in 1988, "that doesn't bother me a bit. That's my life." Perhaps an easy call, and proved correct this week in the responses to his death on Saturday at 69 - Reagan's age when he won the presidency. Scanning the obituaries, the focus is on Deaver's role in Reagan's circle, from Sacramento to Washington, as his publicist and image-maker - his "director." Along with the above, most quoted is his modest and intriguing claim that "the only thing I did was light him well. My job was filling up the space around the head. I didn’t make Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan made me.” Deaver's talent was not to manipulate or to pull the strings of the Reagan puppet, but to compliment and magnify Reagan's own gift for the visual and the emotive.

It is modest of Deaver to reduce his position to that of stagehand, his influence in the administration was considerable, steady and helpful. It was apparently Deaver's stance that at least in part solidified Reagan's reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and prompted the President's private recrimination of Begin, halting the attack. Deaver also worked (with Jim Baker) to minimise the influence of the militant Al Haig upon the President, perhaps softening US foreign policy as a whole, and effectively ending Haig's political career. It certainly seems true that had the White House remained under Deaver's, and Baker's, scrutiny into the second term, the Iran initiative may never have gotten off the ground, certainly wouldn't have been left in the hands of fanatics like Oliver North, and would never have emerged as such a threatening scandal. Deaver's influence on such areas, while perhaps disproportionate considering his lack of expertise in foreign policy, could at least be described as level headed and decent.

It was the symbolic packaging and presentation of Reagan that was his job, however, and for better or worse, he will be remembered as an early master of the image-centred politics that is so prevalent today.

Poindexter wins in 50% landslide!

Despite an horrific level of voter apathy, Admiral John Poindexter has been chosen as Amiable Dunce's favourite Reagan Administration National Security Adviser, winning a full two of the four votes cast. That is twice as many as each of his closest rivals, Bud McFarlane and Colin Powell. Poindexter advised Reagan from 1985-6 before becoming a casualty of the Iran-Contra affair, for which he was convicted on multiple felony counts in 1990, reversed in 1991.

I would like to think that the admiral gained the respect of Dunce readers through his noble displays of loyalty his chief. "The buck stops here with me," Poindexter declared as the scandal mounted, hoping to protect the President from incrimination - to take a bullet for him, I'd say, like a good soldier. Unfortunately, this position instead contributed hugely to the impression that Reagan was not in control of his administration, an impression that brought Reagan closer to impeachment than any implication of his involvement in selling arms to Iran.

However, I doubt that Dunce readers are really concerned with such things as the virtue of self-sacrifice, he probably only got so many votes because he has a funny name.

Here's to you, Admiral Poindexter!

Where is John Wayne?

"I am sure it is quite embarrassing to General Torrijos to be called a 'tinhorn' dictator, and I didn't feel that was your style. I hope they weren't your words. This is more the style of a liberal punk who doesn't have to answer for his words."

So advised John Wayne in an open letter to Ronald Reagan in response to his railings against Jimmy Carter's (previously Ford's) Panama Canal Treaty - "We bought it. We paid for it. We built it. And we are going to keep it." The restraining words of a gruff sergeant to his overzealous young officer, perhaps, or of an older, wiser cowhand to his inexperienced colleague.

Reagan and Wayne are inextricably linked in American history thanks to their shared Hollywood careers, their similar public personae, their celebrity conservatism or even the fact that each shed midwestern roots for those dreamy Californian heights. Its a link reinforced, if not originally defined, by the superb historian Garry Wills, who has written books on each. Reagan's America is long familiar to me, and I picked up John Wayne: The Politics of Celebrity yesterday for £2.50 in a crummy little shop that despite its complete lack of charm continues to reward me with useful finds. I also got Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home for the same price.

The purpose of Wills' book is to chart not the details and course of Wayne's life, but his image. It is an image that is familiar to us all and that is unique not just in it's singular applicability to one actor, but in its breadth of meaning as an emblem of national myth and identity. "There is no better demonstration of the power of movies than Wayne's impact on American life," Wills writes:

"He was not like other actors, who simply hold political views. ...Wayne embodied a politics; or his screen image did. It was a politics of large meanings, not of little policies - a politics of gender (masculine), ideology (patriotism), character (self-reliance), and responsibility. It was a matter of basic orientation."

The idea of Wayne looms. See the mimicry of the near-children in Full Metal Jacket as they try to comprehend their war; see the struggling posture of "John Wayne" McCain. Joan Didion, apparently, was more familiar with the Duke's face than her own husband's. The question is, is there any equivalent encompassing icon in modern American culture? No, is the obvious answer, but you can see the efforts of some to present themselves as such as well as, perhaps, efforts to find one. Two superficial possibilities occur, each political - potentially in the above sense - and each aligned with the hero and the patriot and the manly. I mean of course Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis.

Gibson, whose early American work included the comically suicidal Vietnam vet Riggs of Lethal Weapon, as well as a leading role in the anti-CIA romp Air America, has since made up for these lapses of conformity. We all know what he's about, and each new product serves to reinforce Gibson's mythic status as Soldier, Protector, Patriot, Christian - even as his 'real life' antics don't. We Were Soldiers, in fact, bears strong resemblance to Wayne's polemic, Green Berets, except in quality - Gibson's effort is the far superior film. Each is about the honour of the American fighting man, and each includes a liberal journalist who saves himself by picking up a rifle. We Were Soldiers, however, carries the hindsight knowledge of defeat, while Green Berets - the only film to be made about Vietnam while the war still raged - carries an assumption of victory. Willis is of course back, dying hard again, as John McClane (John Wayne McClane?), the epitome of the manly individual with a gun. His own contributions to the political discourse have been somewhat flat-footed though. He's yet to pay the $1 million he offered for the capture or death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the rumours of a Green Berets-esque Iraq movie about the Battle of Fallujah appear to have been a non-starter. Wayne's impact, I believe, was peculiar to his time - to the industry and culture of 20th century film, to the America he inhabited, and, indeed, to his own style.

The wise ghost of John Wayne in Garth Ennis' & Steve Dillon's Preacher.

The Reagans (2003)

"This film is a dramatic interpretation of events based on public sources. Some scenes and characters are presented as composites"

So I was warned as I settled down to watch this three hour film of the story of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, their family and their White House (originally conceived as a miniseries for CBS). Pedant that I am, I was pleased to spot a historical inaccuracy in the very first minutes, where Michael Deaver comes to warn the couple of Senator Tower's conclusions in his investigation into the Iran-Contra affair, distracting Ronald from a western on the television. Deaver had in fact resigned from Reagan's staff two years previously, and was, or would soon be, facing his own investigation into his practices as a Washington lobbyist. Such factual deviations litter the film, but don't truly ruin it, and I won't insist on boringly listing everything it gets wrong - fun as it may be.

It was questions of interpretation, rather than detail, which caused the controversy. CBS decided to pull the series from its primetime autumn schedule, broadcasting it instead later in the year on its smaller cable channel Showtime, following angry preemptive reactions from conservatives, accusing bias and distortion. Though I haven't yet done anything near a full survey of the criticisms, they seem to fall into two categories. First, that James Brolin's Reagan speaks words which are unverifiable, untrue and ill-reflecting, in particular a comment about God and AIDS which was excised from the final cut (though similar to a comment Edmund Morris ascribes to his subject in his biography, Dutch; Dutch, of course, met it's own criticism). Secondly, that the characters of Ronald and Nancy are portrayed derogatively - Ronald as doddering, shallow-minded and not in control; Nancy as manipulative and astrology-obsessed. Also, the pair of them as distant and neglectful parents. However, in broad-stroke, these are characteristics which are apparent in all but the most simpering, hagiographic literature on the Reagans. Also, though the film is a drama, and dramatises these attributes in a pretty clunky manner, it takes pains to nuance its subjects with more positive, admirable qualities - love, compassion, ambition, principle, wit, and so on. Again, qualities that seep through into all but the most simplistic anti-Reagan hatchet jobs.

I suspect that the conservative reaction to the film was more rooted in an instinctive horror at an attempt to represent the Prophet, particularly a representation smeared with the fingerprints of the dastards of the 'liberal media', and motivated by the film's handling of Reagan's political achievements, which are the framework of his current iconic status. At least, his partisan iconic status. Essentially, they are breezed through and overlooked. His principles and ideology are reduced to a few already familiar soundbites, and events broken down to simple, signifying scenes. My favourite is one set in 1986, where George Schulz (a cipher of a character) rushes into the Oval Office waving a piece of paper: "Mr. President! You've ended the Cold War". US-Soviet relations are not mentioned for the rest of the film, replaced by the apparently more dramatically interesting internal machinations of Iran-Contra.

There's much more to be said about this, and about the manner in which it constructs Reagan's life and American history in general, but I sense this is getting too long, and will sign off with my own critical response. Not very good, really - though it is possible my own familiarity with the story added to the sense that it was simply covering events one-by-one. Judy Davis gave the best performance, but that still felt a little Dynasty (not that I've ever seen Dynasty). I was, however struck, not for the first time, by the filmic potential of Reagan's life. In general, it has great dramatic and visual possibilities, and a better script and actor could get alot of mileage out of Reagan's character (Brolin really just gives a passable impression of the President - as well as a good one of Reagan doing Carter). There is also great comic potential in Reagan's administration, which was enjoyably but tantilisingly explored here. Psychotic Al Haig, ever-mumbling Bill Casey, creepy and sly Don Regan, and the apparently inseparable troika of Deaver, Baker and Meese popping up in doorways and muttering their schemes ("You're always looking at each other" yells a justifiably paranoid Haig) - all this raised a chuckle and should definitely be made into a sitcom.

Someone should have a proper go at filming Reagan. Maybe Scorcese, when he's finished doing Edmund Morris's Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, should make a film of Morris's semi-fictional Dutch? That would be very post-modern, bound to piss everybody off.