I love Ronald Reagan, the man.
So I expected to eat up “Reagan,” the new biopic that opened last Friday.
Playing the 40th president, Dennis Quaid is affable and charming. However, the movie — which clocks in a🌺t 2 hours and 15 minutes — was not the complex portrait I was expecting, b��ut a hagiographic highlight reel.
A portrait of sainthood. And a shallow dive into the deep waters of Reagan’s extraordinary life, glossing over the messier parts of his administration — including the Iran Contra affair — ignoring the AIDS crisis and, perhaps most disappointing, there was no cameo of Mr T. with Nancy Reagan (played by Penelope Ann Miller).
The story itself is told by a fictional former KGB agent (Jon Voight) recounting the Gipper’s lifelong crusade to fight communism, and his role in the fall of the Soviet Union.
In fighting the Russians, I was expecting some moments that made me feel even a tenth of what the “Rocky IV” training montage did: unbridled patriotism and the urge to run a few laps around the block. It didn’t.
There were, however, redeeming moments in revisiting themes from the Reagan era, like optimism and bipartisanship — a concept that disappeare🅺d a generation ago.
And there was one especially poignant part of the film that made my heart swell: Reagan preparing for his famous 1987 speech in Berlin, when he appealed to the leader of the Soviet Union, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Leading up to it, then-Secretary of State George Shultz (Xander Berkeley) is seen pleading with Reagan to remove that blunt line for fear of ruining America’s tenuous relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev (Aleksander Krupa).
But Reagan is defiant — he refuses to take out the line and barks back, “There’s power in clarity.” The Great Communicator knew the words had to stay in and he had to speak them plainly and effectively. No middle of the road messaging.
It made me think about the ever-elusive clarity in our current political process, especially in the Biden-Harris administration and 2024 election. Everything now seems cloudy and overcast.
We’re not even clear on who is actually behind the wheel and running the country. Biden’s been working on his Vitamin D stores, lounging on the beach for the latter part of August like he’s president of Del Boca Vista, not the United States of America. He and Kamala Harris finall🦋y met yesterday in the White Hous💧e after six Israeli hostages, including American Hersh Goldberg Polin, were brutally murdered by Hamas.
Harris herself is the human embodiment of murkiness. Running in the Democrat primary🅷 back in 2019, she was very explicit about her beliefs, advocating for far-left policies. She was for banning fracking, scrapping ICE and ending private health insurance.
But since the Veep was told to get off the bench and subbed in to quarterback her ticket (itself, a ridiculously opaque process), she can’t even articulate her own policy positions. Instead, she’s had spokespersons float her policy flip-flops to reporters.
When she finally did sit down for an interview last week, Harris offered little clarification. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about her reversal on banning fracking — a major issue in must-win Pennsylvania — she said, “My values haven’t changed.”
Whatever that means.
Harris has even been showcasing a few different accents on the campaign trail. Just yesterday, she gave the same pro-union speech in Detroit and Pittsburgh. In Detroit, she sounded like a preacher in a Tyler Perry movie; in Pennsylvania, she spoke with h♉er usual n💃asal delivery.
Would the real Kamala please stand up?
When 🌱speaking, she pads her platitudes with filler and redundancies that cre🐽ate a messy knot of words.
Trump, who is beloved by his base because he doesn’t speak like a rehearsed politician on the stump, isn’t working with his old 2016 fastball, either. He is meandering too much for his own good.
It all makes me miss the wisdom and wit of a leader like Reagan. A man who charmed and di💮sarmed friends and political foes alike. A man who had moral clarity — and kneꦅw how to convey it.
