Youtube Video of a Supercool Ronald Reagan hanging out with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin

[pinochet]

Here is a youtube video of Ronald Reagan hanging out with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG5WAFzwlIA

This video has inspired me to make some observations. One of the greatest mistakes conservatives make in analyzing the 1980 election, is to exaggerate the weakness of Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. I am not a Carter-hater, and I think Carter was a better President and stronger leader than several American Presidents, including Obama, Clinton, James Buchanan, etc. To say that Reagan won his election victories because his opponents were weak, is like saying Muhammad Ali became the heavyweight boxing champion of the world because his opponents were weak. Such an observation would diminish the accomplishments of both Ronald Reagan and Muhammad Ali.

Ronald Reagan was elected to his political offices because of a combination of good ideas and his (for lack of a better word) Supercool-ness. Ronald Reagan was not the first Presidential candidate in the post-war era to have strong conservative beliefs. Sen Robert Taft lost in the 1952 Republican primary to Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater lost in the 1964 election. Both were as strongly conservative as Reagan, but they lacked Supercool-ness. I am absolutely convinced that Jimmy Carter could have beaten Barry Goldwater in 1980 election, if Goldwater was the candidate. Goldwater was a really tough guy, but he was lacking in Supercoolness. This made him unattractive to young voters and women.

Reagan was also a tough guy, but his Supercoolness partially concealed his toughness. As an intellectual counter-puncher, he was as skilled as Donald Trump, but his style was witty counter-punching. Those twinkling Irish eyes, better hair than Mitt Romney, the 50,000 Watt smile, and the razor sharp wit, was a deadly combination.

Reagan carried the aura of a winner since he was very young. He got a job as a lifeguard at the age of 15, and before he had graduated from college, he had saved 77 lives. Reagan was profiled in the December 1939 issue of Motion Picture magazine wearing only his swimming briefs, and at the time, he was an internationally recognized movie star. Even the liberal Slate magazine could not resist carrying a reprint of the article. Scroll down in the article to see it:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/29/photo_page_from_fan_magazine_shows_reagan_s_status_as_teen_idol.html

Reagan won his election victories against very strong candidates. In the 1966 election for Governor of California, he stood against Pat Brown, a very strong and politically experienced Democratic candidate, who had beaten Richard Nixon in the contest for governor of California in 1962. Pat Brown ran in the Democratic Presidential primary in 1960 and 1964. When Reagan, an actor without political experience, challenged one of the most experienced Democratic politicians in the country, his candidacy was seen as a big joke. Reagan had to perform like Fonzie, the character from the Happy days TV show which came on a decade later, who epitomized cool-ness on TV. His victory over Pat Brown in the 1966 election was a big shock.

In the 1960s popular culture, the showbiz superstars who epitomized Supercool-ness in American popular culture, were the Rat Pack. The leader was Frank Sinatra, and the members were Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. They used to perform in Las Vegas to sold-out venues, where they traded jokes, and tried to outshine each other in a Supercool-ness competition. The Rat Pack campaigned for John F Kennedy in 1960, and helped to get him elected. Kennedy fit in very well in the group, because he was high on the cool-ness factor.

The Rat Pack were American Patriots, and turned against the Democratic Party in the late 1960s, because of the anti-Americanism of the left-wing element of the Democratic Party. By 1976, they had become supporters of Ronald Reagan. Reagan lost the 1976 primary to Gerald Ford, because Ford had a reputation among both Republicans and Democrats of being an extremely nice guy. The media and the country really loved Ford, for pardoning the middle class kids who fled to Canada, to avoid serving in the Vietnam war. Ford's Supernice-ness was able to beat Reagan's Supercool-ness, in the 1976 Republican Presidential primary.

The Youtube video is from 1978, and it shows how well Reagan fits in, hanging out with the most Supercool people of that era.

[Sivad]

I have to admire your respect for Ronald Reagan. However,
your description of him as “supercool” applies only in
the sense that everything I like is automatically
supercool. It may be a generational way of looking at
things. Errol Flynn was quite the Hollywood party boy
A lister. He and Reagan acted together and were friends
but Flynn described Reagan as a square. Reagan was
governor when I went to a California state College and
even those of us who supported him didn’t think of him
as anything close to supercool. His critics referred to
him as a ‘B movie’ actor. I loved the fact that while
Reagan closed the public colleges for a few days during a
period of upheaval he allowed my school, Cal Poly, to
stay open.

The real boost to Reagan in the presidential election of
‘80 was the fact that he was talking up the future while
Carter was telling us that things were in the shitter
and to get used to it. Like Obama today it was Carter’s
way of saying “this is bigger than all of us so it ain’t
my fault”. If the next GOP presidential nominee plays
the Reagan ‘morning in America’ card then it will be a
slam dunk against Hilarious. Even Democrats can only
take so much “it is what it is” talk. Reagan had good,
strong ideas but more than that he had the training and
experience to deliver his message. If you want to describe
that as supercool then at least we can agree on the
man if not the pathway.

[Ditto]

The media and the country really loved Ford, for pardoning the middle class kids who fled to Canada, to avoid serving in the Vietnam war.

Hmmmmmm. Ford did not pardon the draft dodgers.... Carter did, and outside of left wing circles, it was an very unpopular move.

[Bratch]

Errol Flynn was quite the Hollywood party boy A lister. He and Reagan acted together and were friends but Flynn described Reagan as a square.

Compared to Errol Flynn, most of the western hemisphere was square.

[5150 FREEPER]

Ping

[Sivad]

To be on Flynn’s personal list
of squares would be almost similar
to making Charlie Sheen’s list today,
yes. But I doubt Flynn bothered to
reflect on too many guys other than
Reagan.

[CapnJack]

Here is a good one. And there is another great actor on the far right who would have made a great President.

[SkyPilot]

Here is the link you posted as clickable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG5WAFzwlIA

Do you know how to post a link?

[MinuteGal]

What a photograph!!!!!!!!

Thanks so much...it's indeed a New Year's day treat.

Loved the guy on the far right!

Still do!

Leni

[Rockingham]

Good points. Reagan's election in 1980 was assured as the public became more acquainted with him and confident that he was not as Democratic myth had it, a militarist who would risk nuclear war and a radical right winger intending to dismantle the welfare state.

When Reagan was President, I knew a woman who was a longtime friend from his lifeguard days. I asked what Reagan was really like. "Just like he seems" she replied.

As it happened, she had just received and showed me the gift of a large signed, mounted, and framed picture of Reagan standing on the back portico of the White House, impeccably dressed, but relaxed and smiling as he leaned against a column. The picture came with a handwritten letter from Reagan reminiscing about her late husband, Prescott, and their days as lifeguards.

Reagan, despite his super cool manner and genuine toughness, genuinely enjoyed writing and reading chatty letters with old friends. Beneath the polished manner, his impeccable appearance, and record of accomplishment was in fact a genuinely nice man.

[itsahoot]

Muhammad Ali became the heavyweight boxing champion of the world because because Sonny Liston took a dive.

[itsahoot]

I’m sure there were purist future FReepers in 1979 who would have questioned Reagan keeping such dubious company.

Maybe if they used the same psychic that Nancy did.

[itsahoot]

Even to me, Carter looked like such a fool and whatever the heck he was doing was not benefiting America, nor Americans.

22% interest had nothing to do with it, right?

[itsahoot]

Compared to Errol Flynn, most of the western hemisphere was square.

Errol liked underage girls.

[Bratch]

5 surprising secrets about Hollywood legend Errol Flynn

By Reed Tucker  | August 25, 2014 | 1:36pm

He was one of Hollywood’s all-time great ladies’ men — a spirited womanizer who inspired the expression “in like Flynn.” The actor’s twilight years are recounted in Friday’s “The Last of Robin Hood,” which details Errol Flynn’s (Kevin Kline) raucous life and his relationship with an underage aspiring actress named Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning).

Here are five more scandalous facts about Flynn, who died in 1959.