Reagan Country

By Roger Rosenblatt

Smile, Mr. President. It really was stunning. It was supposed to happen, we saw it happening, it happened. Well, Coleridge said that anticipation is more potent than surprise. Even the overwhelming landslide came as no shock, though it may unnerve a country accustomed to contentious opinions to face evidence of such astounding unanimity. We ought to know, then, what this long-anticipated re-election means, what it says about America. Do we know? Mondale supporters suggest that we have become a nation of hedonists and Mammon worshipers. Reaganites, that we want a muscular America and Government off our backs. Does anyone here regard things so simply?

For some reason there has been a tendency to mythologize this campaign, to portray Reagan as an abstract force that has settled at the heart of the country and held it in thrall. Our barefoot boy. Our monarch. Reagan has contributed to this view by being at once highly visible and unreachable, creating a public presence so pleasantly familiar that it dismisses normal scrutiny; people like to have him around. But people vote for facts as well as feelings. There is nothing abstract about the appeal of lower personal taxes, lower inflation, lower interest rates; of greater national pride; of relative peace in our time. If the majority has chosen current prosperity over a deficit's shadow, how mysterious is that?

There is, too, the fact of Walter Mondale. Admirable as he is, Mondale did not run an effective campaign. He began his quest for the White House on the odd note of promising to raise taxes. Near the end of his campaign, he drove home differences of principle with the Republicans, but the passion came too late. In terms of abstractions, it may be said that Mondale represented the past of Big Government, now seen as less appealing than the past of free enterprise represented by Reagan. But most people recognize such polarities as the stuff of speeches; realism always tugs toward the middle. Reagan beat Mondale because to huge numbers of Americans he simply looked like the better man.

Whatever else was happening in the election may take longer to assess. Political observers tell us that Reagan makes people happy, and that Americans love to be happy. But where are there people who do not want to be happy, and what proof is there that Americans, more than anyone else, seek happiness at the expense of reality? For that matter, what proof is there that Americans are especially selfish, or that those who preferred Reagan care not a whit for the poor, or are cruising for a war with the Soviets? Most citizens are as generous as they are competitive, and have mixed and turbulent feelings on everything from public education to the arms race. A vote for Reagan hardly settled these matters. One thing may be said of this election: individuals, more than voting blocs, did the electing, and individuals are very private concerns. Reagan's triumph is at once straightforward and paradoxical. He may be an embodiment of the country, but it is a country no one sees clearly.

In a few months most of the scraps from the election will be left to trivial pursuers. Who said "Where's the beef?" How old is Gary Hartpence? Certain things will not be so readily forgotten: Mario Cuomo's keynote address at the Democratic Convention at one extreme, and George Bush's gee-whillikerisms at the other. The television debates--strangely useless and useful--will await their playbacks in 1988. Two forces in American politics certainly will not go away: women and blacks. Two issues, abortion and church and state, will not go away either. It should be interesting to see how they are dealt with outside the shouting matches of a competition for office.

But it will be most interesting to see where the nation settles down these four more years. If it is true that a man with certain principles was elected, and not an established set of values, then a set of values still waits to be established. There is no doubt that Reagan has a grip on the country, but what grip does the country have on itself? So memorable a victory tells us who we wanted. Now, what do we want? --By Roger Rosenblatt