By POLITIGIRL BY BETH SOLOMON
I ’ll never forget the day I met Ronald Reagan. I was 17. My Aunt Nina, a newspaper editor, took me to the annual White House Christmas party for the press. It was 1983. The food was great. Lots of chefs in big white hats stirred up a parmesan noodles dish with peas in skillets on flaming grills. Like most kids, I didn’t like peas, but they sure tasted good at the White House. Everything tasted good. The peas were so yummy I skipped the succulent roast beef under the knives of a second flotilla of white-hatted chefs.
We got in line to meet President Reagan and the First Lady. Nancy didn’t look too pleased. Who could blame her? An afternoon shaking hands with hundreds of strangers? The media? Eek!
A handsome uniformed guard asked my name and whispered it into Reagan’s ear. Taking his cue like a true professional, the President looked at me admiringly and reached out his hand. “Elizabeth!” he exclaimed, putting both his hands around mine. “I’m sooo glad to meet you.” He looked in my eyes and beamed lasers of energy and affection my way. No minor star, no light bulb could do the same thing. I was at the center of the universe. It was morning in America.
My aunt pulled me away as we gleefully shared some more parmesan noodles, and cream puffs for desert. The good life was … good.
Just down the road, in front of a Safeway store, Henry Franklin, a laid-off systems analyst, was selling flowers in a suburb. Bill Rich, who had just turned 50, was hawking mums at a nearby shopping center. He had lost his job as a bartender. And William Withers, a former construction worker, had taken to peddling roses in front of a nearby 7-Eleven to support himself and his cat.
They had all lost their jobs during Reagan’s recession of the 1980s. Writing about them for my high school newspaper, the Walt Whitman “Black & White,” I wrote about the cold, the jobs they lost, ordinary people slipping into hard times during “Morning in America.”
“Propped up behind mums and roses at their respective stands,” I wrote, “these three men espouse the philosophy that holding a job – any job – is better than not working.”
Franklin was taking home $125 a week while looking for other work. The others got assignments from a wholesaler whose business was down. They made a few bucks.
“People say they can’t get work and all that, but anybody can go out and do this,” said Bill Rich, the ex-bartender. “I’ll bet a lot of them are just too proud to do it.” He stamped his feet against the cold sidewalk. “The way I figure, it’s a living. I’m not standing in no soup-line or anything.”
Remember those? A tall, older man wearing a cowboy hat approached one of the multi-color stands. “Yes, I buy flowers regularly,” he said. “Am I on TV or something?” My high-school tape recorder kept rolling. “I think flowers are delightful to live with. I like all flowers, especially a single splash of color, like yellow or red.” He raised the bouquet he was holding. “These are for my mother-in-law.”
Little did I know, innocent me, these men were success stories in the making — Gordon Gecko’s, Wall Street moguls, probably going on to be multi-multi-millionaires. All they had to do was get in tune with Reaganomics (“Greed is Good).”
Ronald Reagan brought us what he called the largest tax cuts in American history. He brought optimism. The stock market surged. He radically increased defense spending and reduced spending on paltry social needs. The deficit tripled.
Sure, some people tried to rain on the parade. President George H. Bush called his policies “voodoo economics.” Homeless populations exploded. Millions lost their jobs. Some say, the effects of the Reagan Revolution — the budget and trade deficits — took 15 years to correct.
But all of that loses sight of the optimism we all had. On a cold sidewalk or munching White House peas, wasn’t it great to be optimistic? To vanquish the ‘Evil Empire’? To be on top again? To drive a big car?
It was a great time. And don’t forget, 15 years of “correcting” the Reagan Revolution brought us right to 2000, to an administration that makes the Reagan years look really good. (Beth Solomon is a Washington-based Left Coast writer reachable at)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 9, 2004. Read the original PDF.