Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit. - Aeneas to his shipwrecked followers.
A drowning person may cling to the rescuer and try to pull himself out of the water, submerging the rescuer in the process. Thus it is advised that the rescuer approach with a buoyant object, or from behind, even twisting the person's arm on the back to restrict movement. - Water Rescue Instruction
I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy. -Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan saved 77 people from drowning before he was old enough to drink Tip O’Neil’s favorite Whiskey.
I met the old bastard once. We met in his small personal office that looked out over the grey-smudged Los Angeles beaches. When he noted I was a rafting guide he aimed his famous gestalt in my direction for a few minutes. He spoke about the lost art of rescue swimming without flotation aids.
He was then the embodiment of T. E. Lawrence’s fallen leaf. His eyes were frosted with years. He spoke of the water as if it was all he remembered. He had outlived an American greatness so massive it hurt my feet just to stand next to him. He spoke of the surf, out there beyond his years, like an aquanaut who had swum the shipwrecked waves with Aeneas.
It is undeniable that Dutch Reagan was well versed specifically and politically with the drowning man syndrome. When he was POTUS he ran his economic agenda as a running battle. He alternated between public strike and private compromise. He decried tax and spend socialism and then raised taxes like a drunken sailor to fund military job stimulus. He threw his enemies off the dock in other words, but he usually went in as well before drowning partisanship could drag the country under.
His vox was a terrible swift sword indeed, and the old man wielded it with Jedi acumen. He slashed blood from the livers of many rivals but he also, and famously, always stopped the attack before his enemies were so insulted that they never returned to the negotiating table. He lambasted The Congress every time the camera swung up towards his chin, but he kept the private bar stocked with Tip O’Neil’s favorite liquor.
He was, after all, from old Iowa where civility is sanctified and self-victimization is the greatest sin. He employed a very public verbal hard line. But the old man always followed his grand pronouncements with private, sober and tough but pragmatic compromise. As governor he did it with the hippies. As a candidate he did it with the Lead Hostage taker and future President of Iran. As POTUS he did it with Congress, with guys like Muammar Khaddafi and through eight long years with the Russian menace.
Did he get the best deal possible for his neo-con version of America? With the exception of his own economic advisers the Republicans all say he did very well.
So what in the great Iowa cornfield of destiny caused the entire Republican establishment to chain Ronald Reagan’s pragmatic legacy onto a gasoline soaked Viking funeral raft and send it out on the tide with a lit fuse? Because let's face it Peggy, Ted Cruz’s party is to the legacy of Ronald Reagan what Bull Connor’s was to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln.
These box-cutting maniacs have hijacked Barry Goldwater’s cockpit. Their censors have burned Bill Buckley’s massive dictionary and their bullies have stomped Theodore Roosevelt’s stick into useless powder.
Sure sure, they all want to talk the Reagan talk. But there is not a single member of today’s GOP who even pretends to walk the Reagan walkback. The lifeguard understood the complexity of the “Full Faith and Credit of The United States”. His willingness to accept political reality was his greatest strength. The unwillingness of this Republican Party to do so is their drowning weakness and they threaten to take the nation under with them.
Some day it actually might be a joy to look back on this fight surrounding health care reform, but not for any current Republicans. So they rage at night and in the day also. They replaced their great communicator with a growling chorus of phlegm and spittle. They are splashing in the wake of America’s fabled Christian moral destiny. And their only lifeguards fear the deep water. And they have become the drowning man. And there they go.
Again.
Ride for the High Country