Ronald Reagan, The Culture and Our Crisis of Competence

If you want to find examples of incompetent or irretrievably stupid political leaders in America these days, you have only to turn on the TV or log on to Twitter. They are everywhere, and their basic ignorance is so on display, so in our collective face, that the only safe assumption to make is that along with a Crisis of Competence, our Government is also facing a critical Crisis of Shame.

As in… no one in Government seems to have any.

I believe I might die of embarrassment if I said or did even 1% of the things I see our “Leaders” saying and doing in public these days. And yet it seems not to matter to them one whit… they step on the banana peel, they stand up and dust themselves off, and stagger gamely off into the world towards their next great Ruprecht The Moneky Boy moment, as if nothing at all has happened.

And increasingly, there seems to be zero accountability for their stupidity... certainly not via our Praetorian Guard Press nor across the broader Culture, which seems determined to ignore these moments and to pretend that nothing at all is wrong.

It’s common these days to speak of The Culture as something dominated by The Left, and while there is no doubt that it is, there is also no doubt in my mind that this is not a recent phenomenon. The Left has always set the Cultural Agenda in America, or at least it has throughout my entire life, going all the way back to the Early 70’s.

Take Ronald Reagan, for instance, since we are on the subject of competence. The dominant Cultural portrayal of Ronald Reagan was of a dodering old fool, deep in the grips of a dementia that it seemed was always descending on the President while never actually landing. I can remember hearing some version of the “would you put your senile old grandfather in charge of the nuclear button?” joke almost daily. Nancy Reagan, it was said, had become something more like a nurse in the World’s most luxurious old folks’ home, than a loving and supportive partner to our 40th President.

And on and on it went.

This denigrating image of Ronald Reagan was so pervasive in The Culture that in order to stay on the cutting edge of comedy, Saturday Night Live had to do a contrarian take on the concept with a sketch that featured the great Phil Hartman as Reagan the confused old man when the Cameras were on, but who transformed into a hyper-aggressive, hyper-competent Drill Sergeant the moment they were turned off.

No President should be beyond mockery of course, but it’s fascinating to look back at the period and see how hard The Culture worked to convince us that Ronald Reagan was at best a lightweight who was not up to the job, and at worst a senile old man with one shaking finger always hovering over the Nuclear Button. Check out the introduction of Chevy Chase’s character Emmett Fitz-Hume as he pokes fun at The Big Boss over at 1800 Pennsylvania Avenue in the classic 1985 comedy SPIES LIKE US, a movie that is chock full of subtle digs at the President’s seriousness and mental ability.

Even BACK TO THE FUTURE took aim at the President, in a scene where Doc Brown imagines a future American Government run by a ridiculous collection of lightweight actors (Ronald Reagan, Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny and Jane Wyman) rather than serious Statesmen.

Strangely though, these same kinds of jokes are conspicuously absent across the broader Culture here in Joe Biden era, despite President Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline, and despite the fact that Joe Biden is the same age now, only two years into his first term in office, as Reagan was the day he left office at the end of his second.

Almost every false accusation they hurled at Reagan regarding his age and mental accuity is literally true of Biden in 2023… he even has a wife who often seems more like a public Nursemaid to His Brainlessness than Nancy Reagan ever did. Certainly Ronald Reagan was never so publicly confused that he had to be led around the White House lawn by a giant costumed Easter Bunny.

And yet SNL performs no skits about Biden, the Political Commentariat remains conspicuously silent about his evident decline, there are no jokes (subtle or otherwise) about Biden’s mental incompetence in the movies Hollywood releases, and the Social Media companies censor those who dare make the same jokes The Culture made relentlessly about Reagan in the 80’s.

Why is that?

Well… (spoken in Reagan)… it’s because The Culture is Leftist, and accusations of Presidential dementia were useful to The Left in the 80’s in a way that they are not now that one of their own is in The White House. So when Biden does things that would have seemed “over-the-top” and “unbelievable” even if they had appeared in an 80’s era comedy sketch about Ronald Reagan, we are lied to by The Leftist controlled Culture… they tell us that Biden simply suffers from a childhood stuttering problem, for example… this despite that fact that no one ever heard him stutter before, not in the almost 50 years he was in the Federal Government prior to his election as President in 2020.

And don’t get me started on Kamala “The Cackler” Harris, Alexandra “I got my understanding of Economics from a Bazooka Joe comic” Ocassio-Cortez, or Karine “Noble Prize” Jean-Pierre. Hell, I’ll even throw in Marjorie “Lizard Space Lasers” Taylor Greene and Adam “Ghost of Kiev” Kinzinger, just to show you I can be Bi-Partisan.

It’s almost literally true that every time a U.S. Politician approaches a mircophone, every American, regardless of political affiliation, cringes so hard they pull a muscle. Our Government is so littered with highly-credentialed incompetence from top-to-bottom and side-to-side, that it sometimes seems a wonder the entire Government doesn’t tip over and capsize like Guam…

And yet… it was Ronald Reagen who bore the brunt of the Corporate Media’s “incompetence” accusation (and still does), even though the charge was never based in any observable reality.

As evidence that it was not, I submit to you an incredible historic artifact, one that could never and would never be repeated in the context of modern American politics.

In 1978, two years before he would be elected President, Ronald Reagan participated in a Nationally-televised debate… not because he had to (this was not one of those boring scripted monstrosities we are subjected to over-and-over during Presidential election years) but because he wanted to.

The subject of the debate was The Panama Canal, specifically, should the United States Senate ratify a treaty that would return control of the Canal back to Panama. Reagan’s opponent in the debate was the great Conservative philosopher and writer William F Buckley. Also present as participants in the debate was an army of the era’s most influential lawmakers and thinkers, including men like John McCain, George Will, Pat Buchanan and Jesse Helms. In other words, Reagan was not the Harlem Globetrotters in this scenario, sent gamely out onto the court to dispatch an unworthy foe for the amusement of a bloodthirsty Colosseum crowd. This was a real debate, on a complex subject, in which Reagan stood a fair chance of having his ass handed to him on TV.

It’s hard to imagine a modern American Presidential hopeful putting themselves in a position like the one Reagan happily submitted to in 1978. And not just because modern Presidential campaigns are highly scripted affairs designed to propel the candidate towards the White House along a glidepath that is as smooth and risk-free as possible, but because it’s hard to imagine a modern American politician who could actually pull it off. Think about a two-hour debate on a single complex topic against an opponent who was one of the most adept debaters of our time… which modern Politician could do that? Which modern Politician would even have the courage to try?

Do yourself a favor and watch a little bit of this debate… it is an incredible time capsule from what seems like a totally different America, despite the fact that it happened less than 50 years ago, the same year that the first SUPERMAN movie was released. Ronald Reagan is fantastic in the debate… his command of the facts is outstanding. He is charming and funny. And he has the improvisation instincts of some of the best comedians working today. All tools that would be on conspicuous display throughout his Candidacy and his Presidency.

“But, but George… his dementia didn’t manifest until well after he was elected President…”

Bullshit.

The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after launch in 1986, halfway through Reagan’s second term in office. That very same day, President Reagan delivered one of the great Presidential addresses… one that still puts a lump in my throat every time I watch it. Listen to his voice as you watch… full of strength, full of empathy, and full of poetry… even at 75 years of age.

Try to imagine our current version, or any version, of Joe Biden delivering that same speech… you can’t imagine it because you couldn’t bring yourself to watch it except through your fingers, the way you might watch a particuarly scary horror movie.

Ronald Reagan had the instincts and comedic timing of a lifelong performer, talents that would be on display throughout his Presidency. Moments after being shot in the upper chest, an explosive tipped “devastator” bullet lodged only an inch behind his heart, Reagan joked with his wife as he was being taken into surgery. “Honey…” he said, “I forgot to duck.” Six years later, long after The Culture had begun to assure us that the Alzheimers that would eventually kill him had begun to take over his mind, Reagan improvised this outstanding one-liner.

But sure, keep telling me Reagan was deep in the grips of a cripppling dementia, Mr. Corporate Media Talking Head.

Or… why not do something useful instead, like contrast this performance with Joe Biden, whom we are told is just fine… who, in her own words, “runs rings around” his spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre… but who is very obviously getting demonstrably worse, not better… and who still has two long and no-doubt painful years left in his first term.

And who, despite these facts, continues to insist that he wants to run again, for a second term. Dear God… I’m not sure if this sad state of affairs says more about Joe Biden, or more about us. I strongly suspect the latter.

But I do know one thing… our current Crisis of Competence will go on for as long as we continue to tolerate it. And The Culture will continue to insist that it’s not happening for as long as we tolerate that, as well.

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