Summer Road Trip, Day 7: Two Leaders

Here in Southern California, even the hills smile at you.

Then you tell your kid to “look normal” and he does this:

Today’s destination was the Reagan Presidential Museum.  There were two parts to the experience, the Reagan Museum itself and the special exhibit on Chinggis Khan, the latter being what we were going to see.

I found it odd to go to a museum that covered an era I remember, if not from an entirely adult perspective.  It made me think about the content of history and how we select what we remember and how we tell the stories.  The museum tells a very specific, well-crafted version of President Reagan’s life that at times verged on propaganda and often left out inconvenient details, like, for example, Mr. Reagan’s first wife, who goes entirely unmentioned.  Having been to the LACMA earlier this week where we saw an Iranian artistic perspective on the deposing of the Shah, the extremely simplistic version of events presented in the museum seemed willfully simplistic.  Similarly, the cartoon version of the Cold War and Soviet (inexplicably, always referred to as “Russian”) imperialistic programs felt quaint and sinister at the same time.  I hurried through the section on Mrs. Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign and the one on “Peace Through Strength” to preserve my sanity/blood pressure.

All that said, I was touched by several things.  One was the genuine love that the Reagans had for each other.  It shone out of the photos and found articulation in the love letters and telegrams.  Another was the section on the assassination attempt.  The Brady Bill was the one good thing that came out of that situation.

It is not every day that I get to see Air Force One.  We walked through and saw such uncommon sights as knives on a plane, a cockpit with the door open, and seats with leg room.  There was also a replica of “The Football,” a VCR with a label indicating it was not for classified material, and multiple phones, both secure and regular.  Marine One was also in the museum; it did not look nearly as comfortable.

Here are two photos of Mr. Reagan, both of which seem to capture something essential about him.

Here is a piece of the Berlin Wall.  It reminds me that we live in interesting times.

T.R. is doing a good job with his education.  I know this because as I was reading the information in the museum, he was looking at the objects and giving me deeper information than was found on the cards.  It was like traveling with my own personal docent.  I learned how to pronounce Uighur, that “ger” is a better word than “yurt” for the kind of tents the Mongols used, and that one of the khan’s sons tends to get short shrift in the history.  By the way, we can thank the Mongols for such important things as hamburgers and pants.  The entry doors to the exhibit offered these two pearls of Chinggis’s wisdom.

We spent the rest of the afternoon laying low.