CHAPTER THREE - LIVING THE DREAM

   When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980 I was a Democrat. I was a conservative Democrat and somewhat independent because I voted for Nixon in 1972. McGovern was just too far to the left for me then and for many Americans. After Watergate, however; I wanted honesty and integrity to return to the White House, if it had ever been there at all. Jimmy Carter passed himself off as a moderate and a Christian. I was excited about the prospect of what I thought would be a moderate Southern Democrat as opposed to a northeastern liberal Democrat being in the White House. In addition, a moderate Democrat, who was not a racist or segregationist. Gerald Ford was a good man but I couldn't forgive him for pardoning Nixon. In retrospect Nixon looks like a saint now compared to the corrupt Clinton and Obama administrations but my eyes are wide open now and they weren't in 1976. It seemed like the country was in a funk during the 1970's. We had been defeated in Vietnam. The military suffered from low morale and drug use was rampant. This was not only in the military but in society as a whole. There had been a serious gas shortage and long lines at the pumps in 1973.

 At the end of WW2 the United States was the lone economic superpower in the world and the greatest military power. We were virtually untouched by the war and the war had been a great boon to our economy. It is what brought us out of a depression that the government policies of Roosevelt's New Deal had allowed to go on for far too long. Our cities had not been bombed, and with the exception of the remote Aleutian Islands our territory had not been invaded by a foreign enemy. Many of our soldiers had sacrificed their lives and bodies during the war but they had done it on foreign shores and not in the vast numbers that the Russians, Germans, Japanese, and Chinese had. The American civilian population was virtually untouched but total civilian and military casualties worldwide was at least sixty million. Most of these casualties were civilian. At the end of the war we had no economic competition from abroad and most of our competitors today, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan were bankrupt and devastated by war. During the 1970's they were putting out high quality compact cars and many other quality products. Japan was modernizing and producing high quality cars and steel. These countries were capturing a greater share of our manufacturing market because we were caught flat footed.

 We had not modernized like our competitors had, especially Japan. Our American automobile manufacturers were producing junk cars and they were gas guzzlers. In the late 1970's our traditional manufacturing areas like Detroit, Pittsburg and Gary Indiana were becoming known as the "Rust Belt". By 1979 we were paying for the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty caused by the Johnson administration with high inflation and interest rates of twenty percent and higher. The real estate market was dead and we were in the worst recession since the great depression. This recession was even worse than the recession caused by the real estate market crash of 2007. 

 Our national defense posture had deteriorated and we were suffering through the humiliation of seeing our embassy staff taken hostage in Tehran. The pro-American Shah had been overthrown by the radical fundamentalist Muslims. On top of this Americans died in the Iranian desert in an embarrassing hostage rescue attempt that failed miserably. Incredibly Carter was saying that we needed to learn to adjust to the fact that our best days as a nation were behind us. I didn't want to hear my president say this because I didn't believe it. I wasn't ready to give up on Carter, however. As we approached the 1980 election I bought into the Democratic propaganda that Reagan was a dangerous cowboy that was going to get us all killed. Just like the propaganda of the 2016 election today that Trump will get us all killed.

  I liked Reagan's movies and I identified with his distrust of communism. His message was hopeful and he destroyed Carter in the debates. Because of my ignorance, however; I cast my vote for Carter. I was becoming more conservative, however; and troubled by my allegiance to the Democrat Party. Part of this change was spiritual. In the late 1970's and early 80's I was really getting into the meat of the Word and closer to God. I began to seriously ask myself why I identified as a Democrat. They were pro abortion through all nine months of pregnancy and even as a Democrat I had never been for abortion. 

 The Democrats were proponents of homosexual rights. I had never mistreated homosexuals, except for the time I gossiped about the possibility of my friends being homosexual in Turkey, but it didn't take me long to realize how wrong that I was. I have had many homosexual friends over the years but as a Christian, however; I didn't believe in the right of homosexuals to adopt children or the right to be married. The Democrats pushed the radical feminist doctrine which I felt was destructive to the family and to the proper raising of children. I always felt that women deserved to be paid the same as men if they were doing the same job as men. They should be able to work any job that a man could do as long as they were physically able to pull their weight. I did not believe, however; that women should be in combat and I still feel that way. To me radical feminism was anti-male, anti-family and anti-Christian.

 On the more secular subject of national defense I was aware that something had happened to the Democratic Party in the late sixties and early 1970's. They were sounding anti-military and anti-American. The Democrats had been the biggest resisters to the war in Vietnam and they insured our ultimate defeat in Vietnam by ending the funding of the war. There were many in the party who were literally for unilateral nuclear disarmament, which is totally insane. I was so depressed on election night, however; that I literally wanted to cry and I couldn't sleep after Carter lost. I must have been drinking the  Kool-Aid. Reagan's presidency quickly turned me around, however. His words and speeches inspired me. On the very day he was inaugurated our hostages were released from Iran and the country was ablaze with patriotism and American flags. His message was that our best days were not behind us but before us. In his "Evil Empire" speech he broke from our old foreign policy of containment. Reagan not only intended to contain the Soviet Union, he wanted to put it out of business. Almost immediately I felt like I was a soul mate with Reagan. I seemed to anticipate and understand his every move and I felt secure under his leadership. It felt good to be proud of our president again.

We were in court March 30, 1981 when John Hinckley tried to assassinate Reagan. We were there for Steve Ikemire's trial and it was like a scene from a movie. During the trial someone approached the judge with a note and handed it to him. With a shocked look on his face he suddenly interrupted the proceedings and said that he had just been informed that President Reagan had been shot. A collective gasp rose up from the court room and I remember sinking low in my seat in disbelief. First there was the assassination of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and now Ronald Reagan. There had also been the nearly successful assassination attempt on George Wallace that left him paralyzed in 1972. All in the span of less than twenty years. The judge then said that the condition of the president was unknown at that time. I can't remember if he adjourned court for the day but I remember being glued to the television after I got home.

 Reagan was the oldest president elected in history until that time. The hypocrisy of the Democrat party never fails to amaze me. Reagan was too old to be president back then according to the Dems but there is no problem with Biden, who is pushing  80, and has the cognitive abilities of a 4 year old. Age was one of the biggest issues with Reagan critics on the Dem side during the 1980's and they were constantly making fun of his cognitive gaffes. Reagan looks like Albert Einstein next to Biden today. At least he could finish a sentence. At first the media made it sound like Reagans wound was not life threatening. Over the next few days the world would find out just how close Reagan came to dying. The Shawnee Indian called the "Prophet", who was the brother of Tecumseh, supposedly put a curse on William Henry Harrison and every president that followed him that was elected in an even year.  

 Every president elected since 1840 would die in office at 20 year intervals. William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia and he was elected in 1840. Lincoln was elected in 1860 and died in office. Garfield was elected in 1880. Mckinley in 1900. Harding in 1920. Roosevelt in 1940 and Kennedy in 1960. Reagan was elected in 1980 but hopefully he broke the curse by living, who knows? I admired Reagan's grit, tenacity and humor during this whole ordeal that could have killed a younger man. Reagan made me realize that I had been a conservative all along but I just didn't know it. I took stock of all my beliefs and decided that like Reagan, I didn't leave the Democratic Party they had left me. The man that I thought was a cowboy and reckless turned out to be the greatest president of my lifetime, until  Trump came along. He was responsible for the longest period of economic growth in American history and put the Soviet Union out of business. I was very proud to serve under Ronald Reagan as my Commander-In-Chief.