Word: reaganized
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...President who best summoned this brand of patriotism was Ronald Reagan. After the humiliation of Vietnam, stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis, Reagan--the nation's oldest President--served as a living link to a stronger, prouder, earlier America. "I would like to be President because I would like to see this country become once again a country where a little 6-year-old girl can grow up knowing the same freedom that I knew when I was 6 years old, growing up in America," he once declared. As a matter of historical fact, that statement was downright bizarre. When...
...President, Reagan convinced many Americans that they were living in that mythic land once again. He was a master at associating himself with America's cherished symbols. The images in his 1984 "Morning in America" ad--the fresh-faced lad on his paper route, the proud mother in the simple church watching her daughter walk down the aisle, the burly man gently hoisting an American flag--moistened even many liberal eyes. In fact, Reagan practically became one of those symbols himself: the cowboy President, sitting astride his horse, framed by a rugged Western terrain...
McCain is a little rougher around the edges. Unlike Reagan, who during the Second World War only played soldiers on the big screen, McCain has actually seen combat. And as it did Bob Dole, the experience has made him a little more ironic and a little less sappy. (Dole tried to play the Reagan role in 1996, asking Americans in his convention acceptance speech to "let me be the bridge to an America that only the unknowing call myth," but he couldn't pull it off.) But if McCain isn't Reagan, he still exemplifies many of conservative patriotism...
...Reagan best evoked conservative patriotism, many liberals still identify their brand with John F. Kennedy, a leader forever associated with unfulfilled promise. If Reagan conjured the past, Kennedy downplayed it, urging Americans to instead grab hold of the future. He liked to cite Goethe, who "tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment, 'Stay, thou art so fair.'" Americans risked a similar fate, Kennedy warned, "if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress ... Those...
...well. He has refused to bash illegal immigrants. He has championed national service, an idea generally more favored by liberals, which helps Americans devote themselves to their country without donning its uniform. And by crusading against Washington corruption, he has acknowledged how defective American democracy often is, something Reagan, with his airbrushed patriotism, rarely...