June 10, 2004, 8:46 a.m.
Reagan’s Mischief
A little rudeness can be a good thing.

By Duncan Maxwell Anderson

Even at showbiz parties in 1940s' Hollywood, Ronald Reagan loved to make people squirm.

My grandfather, a screenwriter and acquaintance of Reagan's, described for us the Hollywood social scene. There were two hostile camps: ordinary liberal Democrats vs. the Communists and their sympathizers.

Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, were the ringleaders of an informal group of anti-Communists who called themselves the "Bong Set."

"Bong" had nothing to do with illegal drugs, or even politics, but with Reagan and his friends' sadistic disdain for name-dropping, which actors as a group engage in fairly feverishly.

At a party, a gushing actress is loudly telling her friends, "I've just been so tired. I was up late last night, rehearsing that scene. Orson Welles came by to say hi to the director, and we had to do the scene again just for Mr. Welles — "

Overhearing the conversation, and imitating the solemn toll of a bell, Reagan and his friends would commemorate the dropping of the name by calling out: "Bongggg!"

Sophomoric? Obnoxious? Absolutely. And you could see that the same instinct (mellowed by grace and maturity) stayed with Reagan into his presidency.

Think back to August 1984, during a microphone check for his weekly radio address, when Reagan joked, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

The words went out over the airwaves, left-wing editorialists wrung their hands in print for weeks, and the Russians decided Reagan was even more dangerous than they had thought.

I would argue that Reagan's spirit of mischief was crucial to his tearing up the map of U.S. politics and defeating the Soviet Empire.

Today, it's hard to imagine how bad things were in 1979-80.

Jimmy Carter blamed what he called America's "malaise" on the American people themselves. But it was in fact just the hangover and headache from having let loyalty-challenged journalists and name-dropping Hollywood Reds run our culture for us.

On their advice, we let Nixon be forced out of office. Then we pulled out of Vietnam just for the sake of self-doubt, and let the bad guys win and slaughter everyone. Finally, Jimmy Carter let one of the weakest kids on the block (Iran) take 52 Americans hostage and steal our lunch money for good measure.

Reagan changed everything.

In his political life, Reagan's urge to say "Bong!" seemed to develop into his habit of stating a truth that everyone knows, but can't put into words, because they're afraid of what would happen if they did.
The Soviet Union is an evil empire. ("Bong!")
Since the United States is a sovereign country, it needs a functioning army. ("Bong!")
If you let people keep more of the money they make, they'll make more of it. ("Bong!")
If it's a choice between people and snail darters, people should get first dibs. ("Bong!")

I actually didn't vote for Reagan when he first ran for president in 1980, even though I agreed with most of his positions. I had no illusions about socialism or war: I'd grown up with many former Hollywood Communists as neighbors (nice people, gaseous ideas). At college, I'd argued with fellow students who favored totalitarian Marxist rule in the name of freedom. I knew Carter wasn't tough enough on the Soviets. I was even pro-life.

But I was from the pointy-head class, and wasn't used to Reagan's Middle American style. It takes people time to get over the shock of a new realization. In this case, it was the realization that the leading Democrats were no longer in favor of America. ("Bong!")

Today, many friends to the political left and right of me seem to be in the situation I faced in 1980.

President Bush told us on Sept. 11: "We are at war."

("Bong!")

But he's from Texas, and talks like a scary, believing American Protestant. Besides, war is indeed hell.

Many people are in flat-out denial, and have convinced themselves that President Bush is actually the cause of anti-American Muslim terror, including not only the murder of Nicholas Berg, but perhaps the attacks of 9/11, and possibly the incident between Cain and Abel much earlier.

The same people would probably have blamed Hitler's London air raids on Winston Churchill. After all, Churchill was so...unilateral. If he had made an alliance with Germany as Hitler requested — Hitler pointed out that Germany and England were from similar racial stock — Hitler would not have attacked England at all.

The world has changed since Reagan's day. Even the bold Reagan restricted himself to tit-for-tat responses to Arab terror, because with the Soviet Union still in business, he knew the world was sitting on a nuclear powder keg.

But we're in a different world now. We are facing a coup attempt by Islamo-fascists who are on a campaign, using immigration and high explosives, to subvert governments everywhere.

President Bush has the unenviable task of being the Churchill of his day. He is rude enough to tell us that our choice is not nuanced, like a John Kerry position, but simple.

We can win the battle, or lose it.

("Bong!")

— Duncan Maxwell Anderson is president of High Tor Media, Inc., a book-packaging company in New York. His grandfather Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter.

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