Procrastinet

Kerry/Reagan '04

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea

Yeah, I said it.

(And no, unlike the folks at Bush/Zombie Reagan '04, I'm not kidding*).

What can I say. I saw Ron Reagan Jr. on Larry King last week. He was articulate, compelling, personable, and intelligent. I liked his take on the things he talked about, and I liked his vibe. He's developed, in his middle age, a strange kind of Ray Bolger-esque gravitas.

I'll put a chunk of quotes from the Larry King interview below the jump (click "Continue Reading") for those that are so inclined.

Anyway, since part of my brain is stuck on noodling about potential Kerry running mates, something went "ching!"

I know there are dozens of reasons he's a problematic choice, according to the conventional wisdom. Probably even scores of reasons. I think conventional wisdom would be, in this case, moot. I think the jiujitsu genius of a Kerry/Reagan ticket would short circuit conventional political debate.

Most important, I think Ron Reagan would be ideally qualified to do the one thing I *really* want to see the Vice Presidential nominee do: to noodge Dick Cheney into an A Few Good Men-style lid flip during the Veep Debates. Picture it:

REAGAN: Mr. Vice President, did you order the Code Red on Valerie Plame and the detainees at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib?

CHENEY: You have no idea what you're--

REAGAN: Mr. Vice President, did you order the Code Red?

CHENEY: I'm not going to stand here and be lectured by some little crypto-fag ballerina who--

REAGAN: Did you order the Code Red?!!

CHENEY: YOU'RE GOD DAMNED RIGHT I DID!!!!!

Plus - you KNOW you would just SLAM a Kerry/Reagan bumpersticker right on your car (or bag or whatever). You KNOW you would.

Dean proved that the left has a longing for a bit of the crazymotherfucker in this campaign. That's what the whole damn Kerry/McCain meme was all about. Well, this would sure crazymotherfucker the whole proceedings up a notch.

Or, we could continue to be professionally boring, as the Democratic party tends to. Just try 'em out in your head:

Kerry/Edwards (fine, snore, whatever)
Kerry/Gephardt (I'd rather eat glass)
Kerry/Vilsack (I've made it clear how I feel about this)
Kerry/Dean (never, ever, ever gonna happen)

or

KERRY/REAGAN '04.

Come on. Who's got the juice?

Some quotes from Larry King:

And you know what strikes me, too, is that you cannot be against embryonic stem cell research and be intellectually and therefore morally consistent, if you're not also against in vitro fertilization. Because the same thing results in in vitro fertilization. Thousands of blastocysts collections are discarded. Now you'll notice that most of the politicians who are against embryonic stem cell research don't say anything about in vitro fertilization. You might wonder why. Well, it's because what are they going to do, come out against people who want to get pregnant? That's a political non-starter so they're going not going to -- they are just going to shut up about that and go after stem cell research instead. They're playing politics with it and it is shameful. It is shameful.

(snip)

But I think it speaks volumes of both his character, and how that was perceived by people. And again, what they have to compare it with now. I think people have -- just feel like something's not right here in this country right now. You know, I hate to keep going back to the pictures of Abu Ghraib, but they're just, you know, they're emblematic of this, there's something wrong. And that the people in there right now are not like this guy we had then. This was a standup guy. This was an honorable guy. This is not a guy who would put the end run of the Geneva Convention so he could dunk somebody in the water until they thought they were drowning. You know, that's just -- yuck. You know, you really you just want to wash yourself off when you think of that. You didn't get that feeling with him.

(snip)

KING: What do doctors and researchers tell you?

REAGAN: Doctors and researchers, as I said, can't believe we're still having this discussion. This is like not believing Darwinian evolution, or something, which many people in this administration also don't believe in. You know, just by the by. It is so profoundly anti-intellectual and inhumane. I mean, we are talking about cells, undifferentiated cells, in petri dish. No fingers, no toes, no brain, no spinal cord, no feelings, no pain, no nothing. These are just cells. And we're talking about the potential to save real, living human beings. Children with diabetes, for instance.

Reagan is also member of the Board of The Creative Coalition, which as someone in the entertainment industry I'm down with.

So there it is. There still may be a week or two left. Draft Reagan.

Kerry/Reagan '04.

PS - I'm not the only one to give this at least a passing thought.

PPS - for a good chortle and some truly offensive prose, check out Whitehouse.org's take on the Ron Reagan vs. Dubya flap.

* When I say "I'm not kidding," that really depends on what your definition of "kidding" is. I'm not kidding qua kidding, in that I really do like Ron Reagan Jr. and think that there are many things that are appealing about a Kerry/Reagan ticket. But I'm kidding in that yes, I know that a) it'll never happen and b) there are probably many many reasons this is actually a bad idea.

Posted by rjt at July 1, 2004 11:44 AM