Bloodless Coup

Hagiography

Reagan's funeral is on just about every major news channel right now. I understand that he is important figure to some people, and many consider him a founder of modern conservativism, but the endless coverage that makes him out to be a saint seems odd to me. In the end, he was just another person. OK, he was President, but so were (at this point) 42 other men. Hopefully, there will be many more. Anyone who knows anything about politics realizes that Reagan had his flaws. Those on the left acknowledge more flaws than those on the right, but anyone who claims Reagan had no flaws is seriously deluded.

So why all this pagentry? My best guess is that we haven't had one of these in a really long time, and we Americans equate our presidents to be kings. The last presidential funeral was Johnson, and the only one to die since then has been Nixon (who had a somewhat checkered past), so Reagan is the first we have been able to unreservedly celebrate/mourn in over thirty years. That's a lot of pent up pagentry. Calpundit had a nice argument that Reagan is deified by the mainstream right for being so relentlessly on message (against communism, small government, lower taxes, etc.) while the actual policies were a mixed bag (again, depending where you are on the left/right scale, your mileage may vary). That's fine, but in theory everyone should be judged on what they do, not how they look while doing it.

Thus, this continuing hagiography irritates me. It's not that I'm relentlessly anti-Reagan (or pro-Reagan), it's just that I'd love to actually remember the guy for his successes and failures, large and small. If we can't be honest about someone when they die, when can we? This is the last memory many will have about Reagan, and while this may help Reagan's overall image in a popular sense, it does a disservice to our popular democracy (in the midst of an election year). Celebrate him for his accomplishments, and honestly recognize the mistakes. No more, no less.