The right-wing fascination with Reagan

Have you ever seen a group of people with bigger Daddy issues than Republicans? As a group, they always seem to be looking for the strong, stern father figure who will not only make sure they don't succumb to their more animalistic impulses, but who will protect them from the monster under the bed. For all that Republicans talk the tough guy walk, their fascination for father figures shows that they are really just frightened little children.

There's psychological help available for this, if they would only avail themselves of it.

The symbol for the Ultimate Daddy Figure for these people is Ronald Reagan, the "I'm Not a President, But I Play One On TV" president. Ronald Reagan was George W. Bush in that he spent two terms playing a role, except that Reagan was better at it. Ironically, for someone who never had much credibility as an actor, Reagan finally found that One Good Role that can take the third banana and turn him into a star.

The Republican attempts since then to find "another Reagan" resemble nothing so much as Hollywood's recent attempts to find the Next Great Action Star. With Tom Cruise having decided to not just take his Scientology out of the closet, but wave it around like one of Liberace's old gold lamé jackets, the movie industry has resorted to dragging out the Geezers of Action Movies Past -- Sylvester Stallone reprises Rambo, the sixtysomething Harrison Ford reprising Harrison Ford Indiana Jones when Aaron Eckhart would do just as well, and cueball-headed Bruce Willis starring in "Die Hard: It's Time Already." What's next, Robert Redford and Paul Newman in "Butch and Sundance: Back to Bolivia"?

Is there an image that better encapsulates the Republican Need for Daddy than this?

Ten sixtyish white men in nearly identical navy suits and red power ties, lined up as if in the opening of the old game show To Tell the Truth, each one saying, "I'm Ronald Reagan." "No, I'm Ronald Reagan." "No, I'm Ronald Reagan." You couldn't get more Daddyish if you had put them all in Ozzie Nelson-style cardigan sweaters. And of course the Chief Reagan, that OTHER actor whom a desperate Republican party fearing that NONE of these clowns are the Second Coming, was nowhere in sight. That Republicans are so desperate to recapture the Magic of Ronnie that they're speaking in glowing terms of the "charisma" of the dour-faced Fred Thompson shows the depths to which this party has sunk in its primal need to bring Daddy back from the dead.

Michael Scherer in Salon:

Ten Republican men gathered on a stage Thursday night to pound their chests. Each of them looked tough. Each talked tough. Each tried to be the alpha dog, the real-deal decider, the next Ronald Reagan.

"Ronald Reagan was a president of strength," said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, looking tall, tan and strong. "His philosophy was a philosophy of strength: a strong military, a strong economy and strong families."

"We should never retreat in the face of terrorism," said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, with a prosecutor's voice and a gleaming forehead.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the current front-runner, came out like a chained dog, pointing at the camera to punctuate his points. "We will do whatever is necessary," he said of terrorist-at-large Osama bin Laden. "We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell."

It was hard to miss the point. Republicans have a different code than Democrats. Liberals elect leaders with finesse and style, men or women who can inspire, who can seek out the truth and lead the nation there. When the Democratic presidential candidates debated last week, the front-runners were modest and reasonable and calm. Republicans, on the other hand, elect father figures, men who will never flinch and will always lay down the law. The candidates came out swinging.

Eight years ago, President George W. Bush looked as though he would pass this test. But he turned out to be a ninny. He led the conservative movement into a period of decadence and decline. He revealed the limits of American power by sending the nation into a losing foreign war. So the Grand Old Party has reached back to the past, to Ronald Reagan, the great California cowboy who never sweated the details. The Republican primary has become, in many ways, a fatherhood audition. Only a man's man will save us.

Find someone as macho as Reagan, Giuliani suggested, and America's enemies will fold in fear. "He has to look at an American president and he has to see Ronald Reagan," Giuliani said of the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Remember, they looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes, and in two minutes, they released the hostages." Of course, that is not what happened in Iran in 1981. But it doesn't matter. Republicans believe in their guts that Reagan's swagger released the hostages, grew the economy, and won the Cold War.

It's always struck me as hilarious that Ronald Reagan, a man whose relationship with his own children was hardly something to emulate, is held up as the Daddy di tutti Daddies for Republicans. I mean, here's a guy whose two children by his second wife Nancy are hardly Republican Dream Children. And while Patti Davis and Ron Reagan Jr. have grown into some pretty cool adults as far as I'm concerned, I doubt that their life paths as they transitioned from adolescence to belated adulthood are exactly what Republicans have in mind.

The one thing you DO have to say about Patti and Ron is something you can't say about Republican voters in general: They've obviously gotten the help they needed to resolve their father issues and have moved on with their own lives.

Would that the Republican voters Desperately Seeking Daddy could bring themselves to do the same.