... but where were we?
The genesis of our troubles becomes evident with Ronald Reagan: the first chief executive, who with public avocation, was allowed to adopt, and was willing to accept, the trappings of a divinity - Augustus as both emperor and god. George Washington had been very careful, in similar circumstances after the Revolutionary War, when he could have been crowned king, to demur. But not Ron! And who could have been more perfect and timely than he?
An ex-governor of the lucky state; handsome, familiar and approachable; he was a master of the pithy but vacuous sound-bite, targeted at a TV audience with severe attention deficit and poor analytical skills. He told the citizens that they were a chosen people, whose journey to the promised land was imperiled by foolish leaders and constantly betrayed by the Pharisees in “big government”. By fiat, he would sweep away the obstacles and take them to Canaan; and the vanity of the flattered citizenry was such that it accepted both the diagnosis and the prescribed remedy without a further thought. But, what chief executive makes war on his own organization? Truly, a perverse approach to leadership and management. However, and to our current regret, in his own mindless way he’d stumbled on a truth: he wasn’t running the executive, he was leading his people. Initially, his people were his co-religionists, then his subjects, and finally his worshipers, when the god of small-government and self-sufficiency was made man in the person of Ronald Reagan.
The cult took root. When he died in 2004, it was very hard to recognize 1980 from the hagiography - so rose-colored were the spectacles, and so short the memories. It’s even harder now, but the immense damage caused by this feckless approach to the business of government, continued and compounded by his successors, is plain to see in the current inability (or unwillingness) of the federal government to respond to this crisis.
The genesis of our troubles becomes evident with Ronald Reagan: the first chief executive, who with public avocation, was allowed to adopt, and was willing to accept, the trappings of a divinity - Augustus as both emperor and god. George Washington had been very careful, in similar circumstances after the Revolutionary War, when he could have been crowned king, to demur. But not Ron! And who could have been more perfect and timely than he?
An ex-governor of the lucky state; handsome, familiar and approachable; he was a master of the pithy but vacuous sound-bite, targeted at a TV audience with severe attention deficit and poor analytical skills. He told the citizens that they were a chosen people, whose journey to the promised land was imperiled by foolish leaders and constantly betrayed by the Pharisees in “big government”. By fiat, he would sweep away the obstacles and take them to Canaan; and the vanity of the flattered citizenry was such that it accepted both the diagnosis and the prescribed remedy without a further thought. But, what chief executive makes war on his own organization? Truly, a perverse approach to leadership and management. However, and to our current regret, in his own mindless way he’d stumbled on a truth: he wasn’t running the executive, he was leading his people. Initially, his people were his co-religionists, then his subjects, and finally his worshipers, when the god of small-government and self-sufficiency was made man in the person of Ronald Reagan.
The cult took root. When he died in 2004, it was very hard to recognize 1980 from the hagiography - so rose-colored were the spectacles, and so short the memories. It’s even harder now, but the immense damage caused by this feckless approach to the business of government, continued and compounded by his successors, is plain to see in the current inability (or unwillingness) of the federal government to respond to this crisis.