Somehow, he apparently managed to personify something the populace was yearning for.... I've never figured it out, but if anyone could pin it down, it would certainly give us a great deal of insight into the American psyche... Jon Johanning
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Somebody started to mention it when they noted Ford and Carter. But my theory was at the time and still is, that however indirectly, the US public mind does register many of the flows and currents of what we think of as post-modernity----and that public mind perceives those currents as shadows creeping along every street, announcing the late afternoon of the American Dream. The whole meaning to Reagan's campaign slogan, It's Morning Again in America was aimed at dispelling these doubts and realistic appraisals of what life was like for millions.
The American Dream which was of course always a fantasy but had been given a very classy re-modeling job during Kennedy's brief administration, and then promised to minorities by Johnson had been heavily mauled by years of war, political corruption, economic implosions of the rust belt, and an increasing dark pop culture. By the time Reagan showed up, the country was essentially divided between those who knew they were left out, were going stay left out, and aimed at other worlds, and those who had barely made it inside but saw their life's best fantasies fading into oblivion, while their worst fears were solidly confirmed in an ever longer list of impending dooms: economic collapse of whole communities, environmental and ecological depletions, political establishment apathy, social chaos of drugs and crime in urban communities, and generally not what living inside the American Dream was supposed to be.
Reagan seem to embody everything that was being erased by grim realities, and promised a restoration. And plenty of people bought it. Why not? Why not insist that the most hackneyed of American ideals that were little more than campaign slogans and were clearly ridiculous in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, might, just might work if turned into policies? It was better than what was, which was nothing, and where the whole idea of a future had disappeared into the tech noire world of Blade Runner.
So, it was going to be morning again in America, where the sun was rising, not falling. The creeping shadows heralded dawn, don't dusk. While all the rest of it was just turned inside out as if nothing at all had happened between Kennedy's New Frontier and Reagan's morning. And Reagan fulfilled his promise. He promised to deny the stark and crushing realities of american life and their likely causes, and he did.
Morning in America was yet another re-birth of the Matrix. But it wasn't all that seamless. Nonetheless, it was insisted upon with ever more vehemence and the stridency seems to have worked just enough to keep it alive...
CG