Dubious Legacy

First Aaron Burr, and now this.

In the rush to lionize the 40th president of the United States, there's a push on to put the face of Ronald Reagan on the $10 bill, replacing Alexander Hamilton. This would be, I think, a short-sighted mistake: politically motivated, sentimental and somewhat ignorant.

Myself, I was never all that fond of Reagan. Oh, he was pleasant enough as the host of Death Valley Days, which is as far back as my memory of him goes, and he was by all accounts a nice man, extremely personable, optimistic and reassuring.That is what made him so popular, even beloved. He made Americans feel good. But does that make him a great president, worthy of bumping one of the Founding Fathers off the $10? Not necessarily.

Reagan's presidency was marked by Iran-Contra, soaring deficits, an increase between the gap between rich and poor, and the unchecked spread of AIDS. In a comment that I've remembered all these years but can't track down or quote verbatim, someone once said that he was the kind of President who would give you the last dollar in his pocket, and then sign a bill taking away your Medicare. One of the funniest SNL sketches of the late Reagan era showed the president as a decisive, high-energy genius, pulling an all nighter to converse with Gorbachev in Russian and issue rapid-fire orders on every issue to his bewildered staff. I don't know whether there was any Alzheimer's in evidence by1987 or so, but such high-octane competence certainly wasn't the style of a president who once said that trees caused pollution.

It is bad taste to say nasty things about a recently-deceased President, and I really don't want to tear the man down here. Some of the accolades being heaped upon him this week are justified. Democrats and liberals therefore bite their tongues this week as Republicans, conservatives and the general public sing Reagan's praises.

But the $10 bill? That's a pretty big accolade, one not to be offered in a moment of acute sentimentality. To displace a historical figure as important as Alexander Hamilton, who helped to shape this country long before Reagan was born, one must be able to make the case that the new honoree had a greater and more beneficial effect on the 228-year history of the United States than Hamilton had. I think it's too soon to make that judgment about Ronald Reagan.

Besides, Hamilton needs all the publicity he can get in a country that tends to ignore anything that happened before each of us was born. Until this latest controversy, the last time the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury got much press was in reprints of James Thurber's 1942 science fiction story "A Friend to Alexander." Oh, and in a 1990s milk commercial.

That said, I have a great deal of respect for Reagan, and even more for Nancy Reagan. Her love, courage, dedication and candor, especially inthe last years of her husband's life, are an inspiration to anyone who has ever been a caregiver, or struggled privately or publicly with family and health problems. Kudos and condolences to her. I wish her all the best in her efforts in support of Alzheimer's research.

Karen