Super Bowl XLV: Will Ronald Reagan Ride Again?

Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday coincides with Super Bowl XLV. Will conservatives be partying like its 1980?

In late June, the state Legislature of California passed a bill to permanently declare Feb. 6 Ronald Reagan Day in California. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Schools would be encouraged to teach students about him on that day, Reagan's birth date.” The only others commemorated with a day are naturalist John Muir and gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk.

The Chronicle also reported that “The Legislature also passed a bill to create a special commission [the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission] to coordinate events in the state to honor Reagan throughout the year.” The legislation prohibits the spending of any “taxpayer dollars and would be privately funded,” the newspaper [pointed out.”
Had he lived, Ronald Reagan would have been celebrating his 100th birthday on February 6, 2011. That day, coincidentally, is the date of the National Football League’s Super Bowl XLV, which is scheduled for 80,000-seat (110,000 capacity with standing room) Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

While official national Reagan activities being planned by the President Obama-appointed Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission have yet to be announced, it would not be surprising if there was something substantially Reaganie scheduled for next year’s Super Bowl.

Although the Super Bowl’s host committee’s website (http://www.northtexassuperbowl.com/) hasn’t acknowledged that it has anything specifically planned related to the nation’s 40th president, given the make-up of the host committee, which includes a number of longtime conservative Republicans -- legendary Dallas Cowboy quarterback Roger Staubach is Chairman of the Host Committee Board of Directors -- and Reagan’s close identification with football, some type of celebration is almost certain to occur.

After all, one of Reagan’s most memorable screen roles was when he played George Gipp – an outstanding Notre Dame halfback, quarterback and punter who died in 1925 of streptococcal throat infection -- in the 1940 film Knute Rockne: All American.

It was Reagan’s delivery of Gipp’s last words to Notre Dame Coach Knute Rockne that has been repeated in some shape or form for decades: “I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy.”

(When I saw the movie as a young boy growing up in the Bronx, I was so moved that I wrote a letter to the University asking them for more information about Rockne, Gipp and Notre Dame. You can’t imagine how excited I was some weeks later when a package arrived in the mail chock full of articles, a mimeographed info sheet about Rockne and the university, and several pictures.)

“Win one for the Gipper,” became one of Reagan’s oft-used slogans and catch phrases during his political career, a career that essentially got its start when he was elected Governor of California in 1967.

Possibilities for observing Ronald Reagan Day

As might be imagined, people have been a-buzz about Reagan’s legacy since he left the White House. Whether he should be honored with a day (http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3294) is another question being asked. Earlier this year, with his tongue firmly planted in cheek, the Los Angeles Times’ Tony Pierce threw out some possibilities for observing Ronald Reagan Day (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/02/ronald-reagan-a.html):

* “Will you trade arms for hostages?”

* “Will you demand that someone tear down a wall?”

* “Will you drag your feet for four years while over 20,000 Americans died from AIDS before you address it?”

* “Will you end inflation?”

* “Will you switch party affiliation?”

* “Will you masterfully crack up a nervous group of reporters and doctors after some guy trying to impress Jodie Foster tried to assassinate you?”

* “Will you deregulate and later bail out the Savings and Loans?”

* “Will you just say no to drugs? Will you take a $700-billion deficit and turn it into a $3-trillion deficit?”

* “Will you allow yourself to be credited for ending the Cold War?”

* “Will you accept your role as leader of the Republican party, even well after your death?”

Reagan and Civil Rights

One area that Pierce didn’t have anything pithy to say was civil rights. By all accounts, after leaving the Democratic Party -- and becoming a Republican in 1962 -- Reagan was civil rights-averse. He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965, which, in 1980 he said had been “humiliating to the South.”

“His opposition,” according to Wikipedia, “was based on his view that certain provisions of both Acts violated the US Constitution and in the case of the 1964 Act, intruded upon the civil rights of business and property owners.”

On Tuesday, May 18, Rand Paul emerged victorious in the Republican Party’s Senatorial primary in Kentucky. Over the next 48 hours, Paul became national news both due to his surprising victory over the GOP machine, and, perhaps even more shockingly, for suggesting – in several interviews -- that the 1964 Civil Rights Act may have gone too far by telling private businesses in the South that they couldn't discriminate on the basis of race.

As Chris Kromm pointed out in a Facing South essay titled “Why Rand Paul’s views on civil rights are no surprise,” “the idea that the Civil Rights Act overstepped in its pursuit of guaranteeing racial equality in the South is hardly an alien idea to the political right. In fact, in certain conservative circles -- especially the anti-government, libertarian wing Rand Paul represents -- it's practically an article of faith.”

Kromm went on to discuss Ronald Reagan, who, while “now part of the pantheon of Republican and conservative heroes…. got his start in national politics stumping for Barry Goldwater, whose fierce anti-government views led him to view the Civil Rights Act as an attack on ‘the Southern way of life.’"

According to Kromm, “When Reagan made his own run for the presidency in 1976, he positioned himself as Goldwater's heir, picking up his first primary win in North Carolina on a platform stoking resentment of government intrusion in the South. In 1980, the Californian consciously launched his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi -- just miles from where three civil rights activists were killed in the 1960s.

“Like Rand [Paul], Reagan insisted his views were anti-government and not pro-discrimination -- ignoring, of course, that in practical terms, opposing federal civil rights standards would ensure that discrimination persisted,” Kromm pointed out.

NPR noted in a 2004 Reagan retrospective that “Today it is hard to believe that Reagan had such success using the Civil Rights Act as a whipping boy. The Civil Rights Act is now so widely accepted that it doesn't attract controversy in any region of the country -- including the South.”

Cross posted from BuzzFlash: http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3338

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