Quote: “Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!”
Quote: “For Reagan conservatives to say that because they don’t like something that President Bush has done or has not done, they will even the score by walking away from the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan — and thereby ensure the election of John Kerry, who is 180 degrees the opposite of my dad.”
Quote: “We have people in this country from the left who probably jump up and down every time an American loses his life.”
Quote: “Next time you write about the ‘family’ remember both dad and me. It’s our family, too.”
“The Legacy Lives On.” Right. This is a quote from his radio show web site. It pretty much sums up where Michael Reagan is coming from. He rarely misses a chance to point out that he’s the oldest son of Ronald Reagan. It adds legitimacy to his banal arguments by allowing Conservative faithful to bask in the extended glow of the Reagan presidency. He has made a career out of cashing in on his last name, writing books such as The Common Sense of An Uncommon Man: The Wit, Wisdom, And Eternal Optimism of Ronald Reagan and The City on the Hill: Fulfilling Ronald Reagan’s Vision for America. You may notice a pattern forming here.
I suppose the repeated Ronald Reagan tie-ins annoy me only because Michael Reagan was born John Flaugher. His mother was Jane Wyman, the first wife of President Reagan, and is a Reagan through marriage only. He was adopted by his step-father and was no doubt raised by him. But it seems somewhat disingenuous that he would be the Conservative standard bearer for the Reagan family, carrying on the tradition.
Oddly enough, except that he was the eldest son of Ronald Reagan, it’s hard to find out much about Michael Reagan. This is especially odd given that he has a presumably popular radio show. He is often referred to as a “broadcasting legend.” But it largely seems to be that he has made a career out of parroting the Conservative views of his father. It’s difficult to find anything that he has really done or said on his own that is not tied to Ronald Reagan.
This sounds mean, I know. I’m not trying to be. I just can’t seem to find out what it is exactly that Michael Reagan has done on his own that warrants such a reverence among Conservatives. Well, except for having that Reagan last name, which he has mined so efficiently for all it’s worth. I suppose that’s it. In his modesty he is using the Internet domain www.reagan.com for his personal web site, and seems mostly to view himself as the defender of Ronald Reagan’s legacy. He’s President Reagan’s son, so that doesn’t seem so far-reaching. The only problems come in when his personal ideology differs from that of his father and he pushes his own political views as those of his father, even when direct historical evidence contradicts him.
Suffice it to say that the main difference between Ronald and Michael Reagan is that the latter is farther to the right, and more combative and confrontational when it comes to the issue of Democrats, Liberals or other “Elitists.” Except for that one point, they’re almost the same person. Or at least Michael Reagan thinks they are.
Required Reading
– Wikipedia: Michael Reagan bio
Reference
– The Michael Reagan Show
– The Mind of Mike
