America's Jesus

I've been following the Presidential campaign pretty closely over the last few months and one tendency I love to observe in the GOP candidates is their messiahnizing of Ronald Reagan.

The genius of appealing to Reagan is that his administration is far enough removed that we can't touch the legacy any longer, but it's also close enough that anyone who is unhappy with things today can say "Shit, things were better when Reagan was in charge."

This is the troubling part about appealing to Reagan. Every GOP candidate, with the exception of Ron Paul, has argued that they best embody the Reagan-esque style of leadership. Any conservative unhappy with the way things are today, the war on terror, gays on TV, evolution in the classroom, can trick themselves into thinking that back when Reagan was boss, things were better and whoever can be most like Reagan will fix everything up.

On the Democrat side, a lot of of pundits argue that Obama is the "vessel" candidate: he is so vague and unproven that people can put whatever they want into his ambiguous campaign for change. What's funny is that the Republicans' vessel candidate isn't running, he's Ronald Reagan. Whatever people want, they can remember Reagan as having embodied it. This is why Reagan is America's Jesus.

The vast majority of people who appeal to the idea of Jesus Christ have less familiarity with the New Testament than I do with Jane Austin. But we have this general idea of who he was and what he was about. In terms of morality, we can attribute just about anything to Jesus as a "get out of having to think free" card. Reagan has the same thing. Respect.