Dutch is Gone

And with him a part of our adolescence, already quickly fading into history. The first time we thought this day might have come was March 30, 1981. On that day, we heard on the junior high school P.A. that Reagan had been shot, and a girl in our English class, mistaking the announcement for a death announcement, shouted "Good Riddance."

We were children then; we are no more. And we will not today repeat such gruesome sentiments. From our perspective at the Panhandle Truth Squad, President Ronald Reagan's legacy was mostly bad, but today we mourn a man and not a legacy. Neither do we refuse to call this duly-elected man by the proper title, President Reagan.

Mostly, however, we mourn an attitude, by now deader than the 40th president. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously said that he and Reagan were bitter antagonists before 5:00 pm, but that shouldn’t affect their friendship after five. So it is in that spirit, and in the desperate hope that such common ground may someday be found again among Americans, that we at the Panhandle Truth Squad drink a martini toast to an American president.