Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (14 page)

So Ford made an important contribution as a “caretaker” president, but by the time the 1976 election rolled around, America was ready to turn in an entirely new direction for leadership. America had grown deeply suspicious of establishment Politicians, and wanted a different kind of president, a president who was not a Washington “insider,” a president who rejected the ostentatious trappings of power, a president who was moral and decent and sensitive and kind and earnest and truthful and pious and had nice hair like Phil Donahue. America was ready to be led by: a weenie.

“JIMMY” CARTER

jimmy Carter came from a simple God-fearing homespun southern family that was normal in every respect except that many of its members, upon close inspection, appeared to be crazy. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, he served as an officer aboard a nuclear submarine, where, due to an unfortunate radiation leakage, he developed enormous mutant teeth. Nevertheless he went on to become a successful peanut farmer and governor of Georgia for an entire term, thus acquiring all of the major qualifications that a modern politician needs to be president of the United States, namely: blue suits. He easily won the Democratic nomination in 1976 to face Gerald Ford, who won the GOP nomination after narrowly edging out former California governor Ronald Reagan by a score of four brain cells to three.

During the election campaign, Carter performed many symbolic gestures to show he was a regular person only much smarter. For example, he often carried his own garment bag. This impressed the voters, although it was eventually revealed by enterprising Washington Post reporters that the bag did not, in fact, contain a single garment. Nevertheless Carter won the election and went on to have several highlights.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION

The main one, without question, was when the president claimed that while he was out in a canoe one day, he was attacked by an enormous swimming rabbit. We swear we are not making this highlight up. Also there was an energy crisis during which Americans, showing the sense of self-sacrifice and community spirit that often emerges when the well-being of the nation is at stake, closed ranks and shot at each other in gas lines.

The lowlight of the Carter administration was that the economy did poorly. This troubled Jimmy a great deal, so much so that he gathered together all of the nation’s top thinkers for a special conference at Camp David. They thought and thought and thought, and when they were finally done, Jimmy came out and announced that the nation’s problems were being caused by “malaise.” This puzzled the average American, who had never even heard of “malaise, except on a sandwich, and who was under the impression that the problem was that unemployment and inflation were running at about 652 billion percent. “Any minute now,” the average American thought, “he’s gonna tell us we have to get ‘malaise’ shots.”

So there was much disillusionment among the voting public. The stage was set for yet another dramatic change in the nation’s political direction—a shift away from the soul-searching, the uncertainty, the intellectual complexity, and the multisylabic words of the Carter era; a shift toward a new kind of leader, a man with a gift for communicating the kind of clear, direct, uncomplicated message that had previously been associated only with Tide commercials. It was time for the Reagan Revolution.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How do they know what gender a mollusk is?

The 1980s will be remembered as a time when the nation broke free of the confining chains of the left-leaning bleeding-heart gutless namby-pamby Mister Pouty Pants Liberal school of political thought that had dominated the American political landscape ever since the New Deal; a time when Americans began Standing Tall, Talking Proud, Feeling Good, Sitting Straight, Pledging Allegiance, and Eating More Fiber.

Who was responsible for this sweeping change in the national mood? Amazingly, it was almost entirely the work of a single person, a strong, dominant individual who was able to change the course of history through steely determination, unflinching toughness, and sheer force of will: Nancy Reagan. But you also have to give a lot of credit to her husband, Ron, a distinguished war-movie hero who served, off and on, as president of the United States during this era, and whose administration made many historically crucial decisions, several of which he was aware of personally. Coinciding with this national mood change was emergence and rapid cholera-like spreading of the young urban professionals, also known as “yuppies” or, more affectionately, “suspender-wearing wingtipped weenies,” a new breed of seriously ambitious humanoids whose idea of a really wild evening was to get drunk and restructure a corporation. The role models for the eighties were men like Donald Trump, who had made several jillion dollars in the lucrative field of amassing wealth. But beyond being stupendously rich, Trump was also truly a class individual, as he revealed in his best-selling book, Trump: Truly a Class Individual, and in 1989 he captured the imagination of the nation when, in the largest private financial transaction ever, he purchased Ohio, the Coast Guard, the Italian Renaissance, and Mars (All of which he classily renamed “Trump.”).

Another major trend of the 1980s was the sudden ubiquitousness of the personal computer, a tool that has freed millions of people to use words like “ubiquitousness” without actually knowing how to spell them. In fact, the book that you are now reading was written on a personal computer, which is why it is devoid of the “typos” that were so common in the days of old-fashioned wersp oidop gfegkog pl;gpp$R$%I%.

But all was not peaches and light on the 1980s economic front. After a lengthy investigation, crack agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission discovered that top Wall Street figures were using “inside information” to make money, a revelation that came as a shock to those members of the public who had mince pie for brains. Investor confidence was further shaken by the stockmarket crash of October 8, 1987, caused by a herd of computers that were panicked into the worst international electronic stampede in history when a woman in Akron, Ohio, got angry and punched an automatic bank teller (Charging it later with sexual harassment.).

Another major economic upheaval was the sudden end of the energy crisis, which meant lower gas prices and harder times for wealthy Texans as well as large oil companies, thereby causing alarmed, thoughtful Americans everywhere to laugh until their garments were soaked with drool. Things were also very bad for the American family farmer, whose fields, by the late 1980s, were parched and dusty because of the bright lights being shone on them by television news crews doing heartrending reports about the plight of the family farmer.

Internationally, the major event of the eighties was that Prince Charles married Diana Spencer, thus assuring that they would be featured on roughly every third cover of People for the rest of our lives. But when all is said and done, which, trust us, will be very soon now, the story of the eighties will be the story of the Reagan administration and the many men and women who served in it, some of whom are already out on parole.

THE 1980 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN

In 1980 the Democrats were pretty much stuck with Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, who ran under the slogan “Four More Years?” The Republicans, meanwhile, had a spirited primary-campaign season, which came down to a duel between Reagan and George Herbert Walker Norris Wainright Armoire Vestibule Pomegranate Bush IV, who had achieved a distinguished record of government service despite having a voice that sounded like he had just inhaled an entire blimpload of helium.

Reagan finally won the nomination by promoting “Reaganomics,” an economic program based on the theory that the government could lower taxes while increasing spending and at the same time actually reduce the federal budget deficit by sacrificing a live chicken by the light of a full moon. Bush charged that this amounted to “voo-doo economics,” which got him into hot water until he explained that what he meant to Say was “doo-doo economics.” Satisfied, Reagan made Bush his vice-presidential nominee.

The turning point in the election campaign came during the October 8

debate between Reagan and Carter, when Reagan’s handlers came up with a shrewd strategy: No Matter what Carter Said, Reagan would respond by shaking his head in a sorrowful but personable manner and Saying: “There you go again.” This was brilliant, because (a) it required the candidate to remember only four words, and (b) he delivered them so believably that everything Carter said seemed like a lie. If Carter had stated that the Earth was round, Reagan would have shaken his head, saying, “There you go again” and millions of voters would have said: “Yeah! What does Carter think we are? Stupid?”

And so the Reagan-Bush juggernaut easily swept to victory in all but a handful of states (Which were immediately purchased by Donald Trump.), thus paving the way for

THE REAGAN REVOLUTION

The Reagan Revolution was run by Staunch Conservatives who wanted the government to stop wasting money on bloated, inefficient social programs and start wasting it on bloated, inefficient military programs. Foremost among these was the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” which is a far-flung network of highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art “defense contractors” orbiting a giant, five-sided structure called the “Pentagon,” which constantly emits high-intensity beams of “money.” In the event of a nuclear attack, electronic communications devices called “telephones” would be used to instantaneously alert the president and his top “defense strategists” that it is time for them to be whisked to secret radiation-proof underground “hideouts” stocked with food and water and recreational activities such as “Ping-Pong” and protected by vicious biting dogs from intrusion by sick, desperate, starving, and increasingly hairless “taxpayers.” Thanks to the miracle of computers, all this would take place in less time than it takes for a family of four to order breakfast!

However, in the area of foreign policy, the major focus of the first Reagan term was Central America, a region of immense strategic vitality to the United States because if it were to ever fall into the hands of communist troops, they would be eaten by insects. Thus it was with extreme interest that Americans viewed the struggle between the “Sandinistas,” a group of anticommunist ex-military officers from Honduras, to overthrow the contras , a group of pro -militarist ex-communists from El Salvador, in an effort to control Nicaragua, the site of the vital Suez Canal, which … No, wait a minute. sorry. What we mean is Americans viewed with extreme interest the struggle between the “Hondurans,” a group of ex-Panamanian Nicaraguans, to control the “Canal Zones” a group of pro-contra, ex-cathedral, nondenominational … No, hold it. Never mind. The Point is that there were a great many strategic things going on down in this vital dirtball region, which is why the Reagan administration called upon its crack intelligence strategists to put down their bananas and get to work. It was clear that we were going to take an active role in the region, a policy that soon led to the turning point in the battle against communist infiltration in the Western Hemisphere, namely:

THE WAR IN GRENADA

This war began when Cuban Communist Construction workers began actively engaging in suspected acts of construction on the island of Grenada which not only contains an abundant natural supply of American medical students but also happens to be in a very strategic and vital location.

Clearly some kind of action had to be taken, and on October 8, it was. Backed by massive sea and air support, nearly two thousand marines stormed onto the island, despite the very real danger that they might sink it. Nevertheless, they were able to overcome not only armed resistance but numerous loose goats, thus winning the war and paving the way for a peace settlement under which we agreed to give the Grenadans upward of $100 million, in return for which they agreed to be our friends, which they still were, we think, last time anybody checked.

Another foreign-policy triumph for Reagan was his 1984 visit to China, where he met for more than three hours with Mao Zedong before realizing that Mao was dead. Aides described the talks as “frank.”

This was exactly the kind of firm leadership that Americans had been yearning for, so Reagan was extremely popular when the 1984 presidential election campaign lumbered into view. And once again the Republicans got a lot of help from the Democrats, who by this point were acting as though they were conducting an experiment to see if it was possible to run a major presidential camPaign without winning a single state.

The Democrats nominated Walter Mondale, who immediately announced in that distinctive voice of his that sounded as if emanating from a nasal passage the size of a gymnasium, that if he were elected, he would jack up taxes. This shrewd move immediately earned him the support of more than half the members of his immediate family, and he went on to lose so badly that people are still, years later, showing up at the polls at all hours of the day and night and demanding an opportunity to vote against him.

But Mondale can claim one major achievement: He chose as his running mate Geraldine A. Ferraro, who will become a footnote (Geraldine A. Ferraro.) to history.

THE SECOND REAGAN TERM

The big excitement in the second Reagan term was the “Iran-contra” scandal, which was caused when somebody in the White House, we are still not sure who, but definitely not the president, decided to sell arms to the Iranian government, which is the same group of greaseballs who took American hostages, which is why we have laws against selling arms to them, but this case was an exception because the money was supposed to go to either the Sandinistas or maybe the contras, some strategic group down there, so it was perfectly OK to sell the arms, although we wish to stress once again that the president knew nothing about it, and even if he did he later forgot, which is no big deal because if a president clutters up his mind with every pesky little detail such as what the foreign policy is, he has no room left for important matters.