THE STORY SO FAR (PART I)...

This is the history of my "political" life. Where I came from, where I've been, where I am today. The nuts and bolts of the following was all originally composed pre-9/11. I'll try to break it up into shorter posts to keep it digestible.

Before 1980, I was a typical kid. I was one of the last generations of young children who could expect to go out and play in the neighborhood pretty much all day without my mother knowing where I was or what I was doing. She didn’t have to worry. I played with my friends, went to the park, played baseball…the regular stuff. I even had a huge empty lot in my neighborhood complete with hills, tall grass, piles of dirt and concrete, ponds and a tiny stream that cut the area into two ‘zones’. For lack of a more flowery description, we called it "the dump". Looking back I recall there were many sharp objects, hazardous material and places to fall from. But we played army or cowboys and indians and we never had a problem.

I became obsessed with Star Wars (the movie, not the missile defense plan) and watched a lot of TV, usually reruns of shows I was too young to understand when they were first run – Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, The Monkees, etc. My world was still a kid’s world and I wasn’t even aware that there were political parties, much less two major ones. I was interested in history, especially U.S. history, but I only knew famous people or events in the context of a bigger picture. As far as I knew, voters were simply Americans who chose one guy or the other.

It was during the Presidential campaign of 1980 when I first knew about Democrats and Republicans. I also found out that my family was the former and we didnÂ’t personally know any of the latter. My Dad was a union guy, a plumber and pipe-fitter by trade who worked for the city of Bridgeport, CT. I once asked my Mom if we were rich or poor. Giving me a puzzled look, she said, "Well, weÂ’re definitely not rich. But weÂ’re certainly not poor. WeÂ’re sort of in the middle." And as far as I was concerned, in the middle was an OK place to be. As I looked around my neighborhood, I noticed that I could say that just about every one I knew was "in the middle".

Now this is important because it was my first attempt at coming to terms with any kind of political identity. The world as I had come to know it (and America to me was the world) was comprised of decent, hard-working people who were "in the middle" and rich fat-cats, most of whom probably inherited their money and their extravagant lifestyles. We were Democrats and they were Republicans. You can see early on the class-warfare mentality. If you had told me that there were a lot of people like me who were Republicans, I would have been very skeptical.

My pre-teen abilities to conceive the way our society worked were ripe for the simple concepts of stereotypes and absolutes. All of us grow up observing our parents. Some of us reject everything they tell us out of hand and do the opposite. These are the rebels. But most of us conform largely to the way our parents and grandparents view the world. After all, when we are very young we think our folks pretty much know everything and they wouldn’t lie to us – would they? Well, there was that Santa Claus thing and the idea the dentist won’t hurt us a bit. But as far as the real world goes, there’s no inherent reason why we shouldn’t accept what the say and who we are.

So the distinction was clear. Democrats look out for those of us "in the middle" and the Republicans are all for the rich, the corporations and the bosses. These are distinctions that some people go their whole lives without questioning, even once. This was the template on which I based a search for political "heroes". But there was something else. I identified with the Democratic Party the way I would be a fan of a professional sports team. My father was a Giants fan. I became a Giants fan. He was a Mets fan, so I was a Mets fan. He was a Democrat, his father was a DemocratÂ… See a pattern here. It was what I knew best and what I identified with. It all came so naturally.

I vaguely remember that whole campaign. Carter was not popular. Even a household full of Democrats like my family couldnÂ’t say anything nice about him. But Ronald Reagan? He was an oddity, a Republican who was likable and made a little sense. He convinced a lot of Democrats to vote for him. And to this day, IÂ’m not completely sure who my parents voted for. I know they voted. They ALWAYS voted. My grandmother told me she voted for Independent (and former Republican) John Anderson because she didnÂ’t like either of the two headliners.

And Reagan won big – really big. And for the first time in decades, the GOP took control of the Senate. At the time, Reagan was a President that many Democrats, especially Liberal Democrats, considered their nemesis. He was extremely popular and likable and spoke to a country that was feeling pretty lousy about itself. He was able to connect with the average American and give them the confidence they needed to wipe off the layer of malaise that was covering the country and plow forward. The value of his leadership both home and abroad cannot be overestimated. Of course, I felt differently back them.

One of the greatest regrets I will always carry with me is that, as both an American and a student of history, I never allowed myself to appreciate Ronald Reagan during those eight years. That just wasn't going to happen. I did like him but I could never embrace his Presidency as so many others did because he was on the other team. Hell, he was the quarterback of the other team. I’d have any easier time cheering John Elway in Superbowl XXI. Unfortunately for me, that is the way I viewed it all – our team versus their team and their team had the ball. Forget that the economy was rising and the Soviet Union was falling.

Ronald Reagan could have been my political hero but I refused to allow it. If he were a Democrat, I probably would have had a picture of him in my room. My parents had John F. Kennedy and their parents had F.D.R. I was still waiting for my generationÂ’s Democrat. If seemed he would never come. In retrospect, it all seems kind of pathetic. (to be continued...)

Part II

Posted by: Gary at 11:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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