So, Ronald Reagan is dead. He’s pretty much the first president I remember, despite living through Carter, as well. Can’t remember much of my life before four, anyway. I remember him with some fondness – he had a way with words that few people have, and a disarming affability that made him seem like your friend. I was too young then to understand the difference between trickle-down economics and a progressive tax system, between conservatism and liberalism. I didn’t remember how he never talked about the AIDS epidemic, but I did remember how I felt about him after the Challenger disaster.

So I have mixed feelings about the man. I read a book my fiancee gave to me that was a compilation of Ronald’s love letters to Nancy Reagan, and they’re a window into the personal life of the man – a charming, relatively simple man who loved a woman with all his heart. It’s hard not to feel great sympathy for him, and for Nancy, given the condition of his later years. It’s more than hard – it would take a person with no heart at all.

But then, aside from his personal love to his wife, aside from the charisma and the charm, there’s the other things. Things like the Iran-Contra scandal, the Savings and Loan fiasco. His silence on the topic of AIDS, at a time when hundreds, thousands, maybe millions could have been saved had the United States acted faster, more boldly, and with greater vision. There’s the legacy of Trickle-down economics, of the modern conservative view that government is the problem, not part of the solution. All these things are his legacy – his policy, his personal life, and the lasting imprint he made on the country.

In some regard, I’m willing to cut him some slack – I believe perhaps he was naive, but sincere. He believed in what he was doing, even if I disagree with it. That alone, however, isn’t enough. Bush believes in what he’s doing, sincerely, but he is a truly, despicably evil man. Reagan at least had the head to temper his plans with a sense of pragmatism. He was never the radical extremist that Bush is, and he was never as divisive and hateful.

So, in some sense, I want to condemn the man for his political legacy. For this “modern conservatism” I find so fundamentally repugnant. I want to tell him to go to hell, and in text, I have, elsewhere. But part of me then feels sympathy for the man, for the life that Alzheimer’s took from him, and for the lost peace he might have had in his later years. Part of me feels grateful that he was able, despite his policies, and the actions of his administration, for the optimism that he brought to the leadership of the country. The leadership at least built on words of hope, rather than fear. Maybe I’m too young to remember the rhetoric of the Cold War, is all. I don’t know.

My feelings are mixed, I suppose – it would be too easy to simply label it as hatred for his legacy, but sympathy for the man. A public figure like the President leaves an indelible imprint on the nation, and with his passing, perhaps what you take from him is what his legacy ultimately is. I suppose then I would rather have hope, than hate – rather than the shortsighted evil of modern conservatism, the optimistic hope of an eloquent man, one who could bring the nation together, and make it believe the world could be a better place.