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Reagan's dead
Time for everyone to take a turn thinking about Ronald Reagan's impact on their lives.
(I posted a variant of this in a thread over at Daily Kos...)
I was born two weeks after Richard Nixon was re-elected, and spent my early years hearing "Watergate" a lot without understanding it at all (which influenced later research interests). I don't remember Gerald Ford at all, except through reruns of Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live. I started first grade in 1979, and the following summer was the first time I was ever politically aware in any way; I liked Carter better than Reagan. In 1984 I liked Mondale, and studied the electoral college "landslide" in sixth grade. Finally, in 1988 I was in high school and liked Dukakis over Bush, but we got the VP back as president anyway.
Despite the fact that I was never a Reagan fan, I was heavily influenced by the Reagan years. Reagan was the model of a president for me the whole time I was growing up and learning about government. Other than my dim awareness of Carter, Reagan-Bush was the presidency for me until college. There's a huge sense of stability there.
I wasn't really aware of being affected by Reagan's policies, though the threat of nuclear war with the USSR was ubiquitous. (See the 1983 movie WarGames and the 1986 Sting song "Russians".) Obviously I was affected in many other ways, but I was too young to see the connections. It's been said that Reagan talked hardcore conservative, but governed closer to the center, which seems to fit with my gut feeling (especially since I wasn't too aware of his talk at the time); he did have a Democratic congress to help balance policy.
Come to think of it, just as the Reagan years match up pretty well with my grade school years (including the end of high school if you consider the Reagan-Bush years), the Clinton years match up pretty well with my college years: I started college a year before Clinton's election, took seven years to graduate, and then worked for the university until fall of 2000, right before that election. Definitely good years in many ways (well, except the first four months of 1994, but that's a totally different story).
(I posted a variant of this in a thread over at Daily Kos...)
I was born two weeks after Richard Nixon was re-elected, and spent my early years hearing "Watergate" a lot without understanding it at all (which influenced later research interests). I don't remember Gerald Ford at all, except through reruns of Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live. I started first grade in 1979, and the following summer was the first time I was ever politically aware in any way; I liked Carter better than Reagan. In 1984 I liked Mondale, and studied the electoral college "landslide" in sixth grade. Finally, in 1988 I was in high school and liked Dukakis over Bush, but we got the VP back as president anyway.
Despite the fact that I was never a Reagan fan, I was heavily influenced by the Reagan years. Reagan was the model of a president for me the whole time I was growing up and learning about government. Other than my dim awareness of Carter, Reagan-Bush was the presidency for me until college. There's a huge sense of stability there.
I wasn't really aware of being affected by Reagan's policies, though the threat of nuclear war with the USSR was ubiquitous. (See the 1983 movie WarGames and the 1986 Sting song "Russians".) Obviously I was affected in many other ways, but I was too young to see the connections. It's been said that Reagan talked hardcore conservative, but governed closer to the center, which seems to fit with my gut feeling (especially since I wasn't too aware of his talk at the time); he did have a Democratic congress to help balance policy.
Come to think of it, just as the Reagan years match up pretty well with my grade school years (including the end of high school if you consider the Reagan-Bush years), the Clinton years match up pretty well with my college years: I started college a year before Clinton's election, took seven years to graduate, and then worked for the university until fall of 2000, right before that election. Definitely good years in many ways (well, except the first four months of 1994, but that's a totally different story).