Ronald Reagan: A Graphic History
I was in college when Ronald Reagan was elected president. I was a freshman who voted in her first election and saw her chosen candidate lose, but I quickly got over it. I was excited to be where I was and I hunkered down to the studying as well as the partying. When I looked up again, Reagan had changed America. The first change I noticed was that from one year to the next, many of my friends did not return to college: financial aid had been cut and they could no longer afford the high tuition. Students stopped dressing in sweatpants, and started wearing clothes more appropriate to the boardroom; law school and med school lost popularity to business school.
Other changes and events I read about and simmered over as the Reagan years marched on. AIDs ravaged communities, crack became an epidemic, Grenada was invaded, the military budget ballooned (with billions spent on the ridiculed Strategic Defense Initiative, i.e., Star Wars), Iran-Contra was exposed, along with the shadowy outlines of Reagan’s role in selling arms to terrorists to fund the actions of more terrorists as well as right-wing death squads ,and a million people (Americans included) were killed in Middle East showdowns and blow ups, and in the Iran -Iraq war (the U.S.armed Iran and normalized relations with Iraq, selling weapons to both sides of the conflict). And through it all, the truth was not spun so much as hidden under layers and layers of tinseled and glossy lies.
When Reagan died in 2004 the nation went into a paroxysm of mourning. He was deemed hero, honest cowboy, the common soul on the side of the powerless. The facts of the Reagan years were forgotten in the flurry of photogenic images of the strong, broad- shouldered man who brought down the Berlin Wall and Communism and got rid of those welfare mothers too.
The graphic novel Ronald Reagan (published in 2007) written by Andrew Helfer and illustrated by a team including Steve Buccelato and Joe Staton does an extraordinary job of telling the full story of Ronald Reagan, from birth to death. Relying on the extensive research and publications of historians Gary Wills, Lou Gannon, and Edmund Morris, as well as Reagan’s own autobiographies, Heller and his illustrators show us the Reagan who from very early on was a master of presentation. He gave his audiences in performance after performance, and speech after speech (THE speech that he used for years, altered slightly for the circumstances) a surface of trustworthy competence and honest goodness. Reagan’s personage could shine so brilliantly it blinded.
Ronald Reagan gets underneath the surface of the man and shows us Reagan’s habits of altering the truth and forgetting it altogether when that was convenient, and of switching loyalties and making hidden agreements. I never thought I’d feel sorry for McFarlane when his role in the Iran-Contra affair came out, but I did: when Reagan took no responsibility for the activities, selling McFarlane down the river. McFarlane attempted suicide as a result of the betrayal by one whom he thought was “the Administration’s last honest man, a hero, and patriot.”
Reagan relied on superstition and hoodoo rather than knowledge to make decisions, having no deep knowledge of presidential issues but relying instead on cue cards and sidekicks. Sidekicks like David Stockman who made up Reaganomics and later stated that “supply-side economics was an effort to reduce taxes for the rich.” He’d cooked the numbers to “make them look rosy for the rest of those country.”
Everyone from middle-school age on up should and can read this book. It is extremely engaging and readable, and well-illustrated. And after reading the book, everyone should consider what it is we need from our political leaders. Do we need a good act? Or should we demand substance of our politicians? Do we accept that the ends justify the means; that weakening communism or preventing a terrorist attack warrant whatever measures necessary, legal or not? Let’s debate these questions now, and support leaders who will participate in the discussion, who are willing to stand up and take open responsibility for their words and actions, leaders who do not act covertly, and leaders who understand that lying means the truth has not been told — and it is the truth we demand.
