In a 1984 foreign policy media blitz across China, the 'Great Communicator' evidenced an affinity for the 'Great Unifier,' Qin Shi Huangdi, the brutal First Emperor of the unified Chinese state. Ronald Reagan found the Great Wall built by the Qin Emperor "awe-inspiring." "Imagine carrying boulders up here," he said wistfully. Would he like to have a Great Wall of his own? "Around the White House," he joked, drawing circles in the air. He would later pose among the ranks of the terra cotta soldiers protecting the Emperor's tomb, playfully substituting his own head for that of a decapitated imperial guard. Reagan was never more serious than when he was joking.[1]
The Reagan presidency reintroduced the body of the leader as an effective mechanism in US politics. With it resurfaced reminders of a despotic past, attitudes and images that would seem more at home in ancient China or Rome, or in the France of Louis XIV, than in late-capitalist America. For all his archaism, Reagan worked. And to a surprising extent, he worked through the vehicle of his body. It will be maintained that he is still at work, even after his practical withdrawal from the political scene; and that he will continue to be at work, even after his belated death. United States policy under Bush has followed the political course set by Reagan blow by blow, Panama for Grenada, Saddam Hussein for Khomeini. Bush staged an even more crowd-pleasing Middle East hostage drama than his mentor had, escalating from threats to open war as he merrily set about trying to bomb his way to the mother of all reelections, in bloody one-upsmanship over the behind-the-scenes negotiations with Iran that had crowned Reagan's first term inauguration [Gary Sick, "The Election Story of the Decade," New York Times, 15 April 1991, A15]. The point is that Reagan's ghost is in the patriotic machine. The goal of this chapter is to identify the remains. Question: how can the evident archaism of Reagan's withdrawn body be reconciled with the unfortunate fact of its contemporary functioning?
Reagan, like the First Emperor, made unification his political mission. In Reagan's case, it was a reunification, of a 'spiritual' rather than territorial nature. The 1960s had torn America apart at the seams. Ronald Wilson Reagan would heal the 'wounds' of Vietnam.
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