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Ronald Reagan, and an awkward moment on Gay Street in 1980

by Jack Neely

Ronald Reagan’s administration raised questions of when life begins; his death this past weekend raises questions about when life ends. The final end of his biological life inevitably stirred memories even among those who voted against him twice.

I’ll admit to some contrarian tendencies. Back in the 1970s, when a majority of Americans who were as young as I was boasted of themselves as liberals, I was a lonesome moderate, a Nixon apologist, a Ford campaigner. I had come to understand that we Republicans were realistic, level-headed folks who had no use for that liberal-Democrat parlor trick, charisma. I admired charisma in movie actors, magicians, and some rock stars, but I didn’t think the White House was the place for it. Political charisma seemed, to me, smarmy, disreputable, risky.

What this country needed, I thought, was a manager, just a competent guy with a head for figures and a five-dollar haircut, somebody we wouldn’t need to hear from every day. Ford was my man in ’76.

Ford’s Democratic challenger seemed all fluff, big well-brushed teeth and a carefully sculpted blow-dried hairdo, making promises that struck even an 18-year-old kid as unkeepable. Jimmy Carter, with his confessions of lust and his smiling announcement of an administration “filled with love,” made me wish he had some other accent. I looked forward to 1980, when we could elect a reasonable, modest, realistic man, a Republican. After Howard Baker got out of the race, my choice was a congressman from Illinois, a moderate with white hair and homely black-frame glasses. Good Republican that he was, John Anderson mainly just wanted to balance the budget, he said, and it wasn’t going to be easy. He said we’d have some tough times ahead, there was no getting around it, and nothing any president said could make it all better. I and 5 percent of the electorate appreciated his candor.

But then came this right-wing Hollywood hotshot Reagan, promising to balance the budget, lower taxes, and beef up the military. I didn’t follow the math. Candidate George Bush, who campaigned against Reagan here in Knoxville that spring, called Reagan’s approach “voodoo economics,” which seemed to me theologically plausible. For a week or so, I was a Bush supporter.

Worse, Reagan was a man who looked like maybe he spent as much time on his hair as Jimmy Carter did, and, like Carter, wore his smile like a permanent fashion accessory. Carter and Reagan seemed equally corny, all flattery and platitudes. They reminded me of TV anchormen or real-estate salesmen. I was already, at 22, a grumpy old Republican moderate, wondering what this country was coming to, and why nobody could see through these fluffy hucksters.

Voting for either, I thought, would be a small triumph of style over substance. Not everybody felt that way. Most of the folks I knew in Fort Sanders wouldn’t criticize Carter just because they were so terrified of Reagan. We were all convinced that Reagan would reinstate the draft and confront the Soviets in Afghanistan, just before he blew up the world with his stockpile of ICBMs. Environmentalists were pretty sure he would abolish the EPA. Plus, all the women I knew were campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment, and Reagan was dead-set against it. Everyone I knew, in short, hated the guy.

That summer and fall, even my colleagues at the conservative daily were worried about Reagan. It got around that the letters of Reagan’s full name numbered 6-6-6, the Mark of the Beast.

Some criticisms of Reagan seemed more visceral than reasonable. At parties, in bars, Reagan was matter-of-factly condemned as a “fascist.” Several leftish journals made an issue of Reagan’s age, caricaturing him in cartoons as far more wrinkled than he was, charging that he was too old to be president. Of course, some on the left may now be reconsidering what they said in 1980; Ralph Nader is older than Reagan was then.

They threw everything they had at him. I don’t know how many times I said that year, “No, I saw the movie. Bonzo was the chimp.”

Several friends and one professor got testy with my pro-Anderson stance, especially after Anderson bolted to make a third-party challenge. Not too long ago, I noticed the familiar slogan “a vote for Anderson is a vote for Reagan” still visible in a urinal at Sassy Ann’s, and figured it had once been intended for me to see.

On Monday, Sept. 22, 1980, six weeks before the election, I stepped out of the newsroom just because it was lunchtime, and the parade route was the handiest place to get a bite to eat. The Reaganites were waiting en masse in Market Square—thousands of them, I heard, among them Reagan’s former opponent for the Republican nomination, Sen. Howard Baker, who was reportedly still skeptical of Reagan. Earlier in the summer, Baker had declined a spot as Reagan’s running mate.

I was content to amble up to Gay Street, as I did most days, and duck in Blaufeld’s for a hoagie on pumpernickel. I got my sandwich and stepped outside to eat. There were some people standing around, here and there, but it wasn’t like the Santa Claus parade or anything. Some were kind of swirling down the sidewalk in the direction of Market Square, like leaves just before a storm.

I must have looked a little shifty, because a stocky, square-jawed guy in an overcoat that looked too hot for the weather, walked rapidly up to me, stood on front of me, and looked me in the eye. I showed him that my sandwich, while pretty big, was not actually a gun, and wordlessly he shoved off to the next suspicious-looking character.

The motorcade arrived, and I was a little surprised that Reagan passed by right out in the open, waving at people out of the open sunroof of a car. Ronald Reagan himself passed 30 feet in front of me. Telling myself it was no big deal, I took another bite of my Blaufeld’s hoagie.

Somehow, he looked square at me, and smiled, and waved, as if he knew me from somewhere. My first thought was that he was waving at someone else. I looked around, and saw no one. It occurred to me that he was waving at me because I was the only college-aged person on that block of Gay Street. I’d read a few days before that he didn’t have good numbers among collegiates.

I didn’t think of myself as a demographic, and I had no intention of waving at Ronald Reagan, giving him some notion that he might have a crack at the youth vote. And what if it got around in Fort Sanders that Jack Neely was standing out on Gay Street waving at Ronald Reagan?

The weird thing was, when I looked back, the old guy was still looking at me, with that sideways smile. He waved again, a little more tentatively this time.

Well, I couldn’t help it. I raised my Blaufeld’s hoagie and waved at Ronald Reagan. My mouth was full of salami and provolone, but I may have even smiled back at him.

After all, he seemed like a nice enough old guy. I worried about one thing or another over the next eight years, but I could never bring myself to hate him much.

June 10, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 24 © 2004 Metro Pulse