Btw - folks a certain age will remember when Pat Schroeder labeled Ronald Reagan as "'the Teflon President," claiming that nothing ever stuck to him. But as his biographer Lou Cannon points out, that isn't "exactly" true, either.
Most of those who dealt with Reagan in public life saw the soft surface instead of the hard core, and underrated him. Before he became a “Teflon president†who seemed unaccountable for failure, he was an underestimated president who was given no credit for success. I argue elsewhere in this book that the “Teflon†view that nothing stuck to Reagan does not withstand close scrutiny. Reagan was not immune to the laws of political gravity. His ratings would fall when times were bad or when he was out of touch with the public mood, as they do for other presidents. But there is a small kernel of truth in the rather large grain of Teflon theory. The truth is that the American people understood that he was “one of them,†as Reagan said on the eve of the 1980 election, and extended to him the forgiveness they expected for themselves. Reagan had climbed the ladder of success from the lower rungs, demonstrating a combination of persistence and humility rare among either politicians or actors. While skeptics might say that Reagan was a modest man with much to be modest about, he understood the democratic calculus. Reagan knew, and there was an element of calculation in his knowledge, that the public appreciates humility in its political servants. Anticipating in his autobiography the self-deprecating jokes he would one day tell about his presidential work habits, Reagan quotes a construction foreman on a summer job as telling his father, “This kid of yours can get less dirt on a shovel than any human being that’s human.†He says nothing at all about the long hours he put in at Lowell Park.
Reagan, whose jaunty optimism rekindled memories of Franklin Roosevelt, was compared in these hard times to Herbert Hoover instead. Arriving at a Minneapolis political fund-raiser in February 1982, Reagan was greeted by a banner proclaiming “Welcome President Hoover.†In June, organizers for the homeless pitched a ramshackle “tent city†in the shadow of the White House and conducted similar encampments in fourteen other cities. The tent cities were called “Reagan ranches†and were intended to evoke memories of the Depression shantytowns known as “Hoovervilles.†The White House dismissed the protest as a publicity stunt, but disillusionment with Reagan’s leadership was evident in the public opinion polls. Reagan’s approval ratings, stratospheric after the assassination attempt and high throughout the spring and early summer of 1981, tumbled with the economy. When the nation edged into recession in midsummer, Reagan’s approval rating stood at 60 percent. It fell to 49 percent by year’s end and continued dropping. By the end of 1982, only 41 percent of Americans said they approved of Reagan’s governance, a substantially lower rating than his four elected predecessors had received after two years in the White House. When the economy went to hell in a handbasket, “Teflon†did not apply.
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