President Ronald Reagan's son Ron has appeared to be embarrassed by his father's conservative politics. Ron acts much as a petulant teenager who looks for rather loony excuses in the behavior of his parent, whom seems to have caused him embarrassment with his peers.
It's a shame that he can't let go of his adolescent attitude toward his father. Many of Ronald Reagan's political adversaries have relinquished their differences. If they have not come to agree that his presidency was among the greatest, they have at least realized that the Reagan era was a net benefit for the nation.
Ron, the son, also uses an instance in Mexico, where Pres. Reagan was six months out of office, riding a horse, and the horse shied and threw the former President. Ron sow this as proof that Alzheimer's had set in in the President's later years in office. Ron suggests that had his father been of sound mind and reactions, that he could never have let a horse throw him.
I ride a horse nearly every day, and no matter how good a rider you are, a horse can unexpectedly throw you, sometimes it just happens.
And like most of us, the older we get, the less most of seem to be able to remember. The memory banks just get to the brim and dump some of the stuff out. With age, things just don't stick as well in the mind...is that evidence that the majority of us over fifty are all afflicted with Alzheimer's?
This book seems to be printed on very thin material.
[Mooserider]
By PAUL BEDARD
Posted: January 14, 2011
[Excerpted, read the fine article at the above link]
2011 is a big year for Ronald Reagan fans, being the centennial of his February 6 birth in Tampico, Ill. But youngest son Ron Reagan is spoiling the good cheer with a new book that suggests the Gipper suffered from Alzheimer's disease while in the White House, a claim dismissed by Reagan's doctors and outside experts. "Had the diagnosis been made in, say, 1987, would he have stepped down?" Ron asks, regarding the disease confirmed in 1994. "I believe he would have," he writes...
...In addition to challenging the former president's doctors, Ron also reports for the first time that Reagan, right after falling off a horse six months out of the White House, underwent brain surgery, denied by Reagan associates.
Let's start with the Alzheimer's diagnosis. It was announced in 1994. While it prompted some to suggest they knew Reagan had the disease as president, his four White House doctors said they saw no evidence of it. But Ron, who became a liberal and atheist, disappointing his dad, suggests he saw hints of confusion and "an out-of-touch president" during the 1984 campaign and again in 1986, when his father couldn't recall the names of California canyons he was flying over. Arguing his case in the book, Ron adds that doctors today know that the disease can be in evidence before being recognized. "The question, then, of whether my father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's while in office more or less answers itself," he writes....
Even in the final tribute, Ron had to take a subtle poke at his father's politics and Geo. W. Bush:
Ron Reagan, Jr., deliver what sounded like a rebuke to President Bush during a final tribute before his father was buried on Friday.
Referring to his dad as "a deeply, unabashedly religious man," the Reagan son added, "But he never made the mistake the fatal mistake of so many politicians - wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. . . "
"He accepted [his faith] as a responsibility, not a mandate," noted the presidential son. "And there is a profound difference."
from Ron Reagan Jr.'s Eulogy for Ronald Reagan Monday, June 14, 2004
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